by yaddayadda 25 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Historically thye have given out so many dates that proved wrong that continuing in this manner won't be a problem. As long as they can still convince jws that they are God's spokesorganization they can pretty much do whatever they want. The rank & file will follow like lambs to the slaughter
They've done it before and before and before. . . . and they will do it again
The phrase a sucker born every minute now has new meaning to me.
All they have to do is slide forward in time some of the fulfilments that they currently attach to 1914, while still retaining the date and some of the significance attached to it. For example: Slide the start of the kingdom reign to the start of the great tribulation so it ties up with the start of the 1,000 year reign better. Slide Satan's ousting to the future also and make the 'short period of time' when the devil has great anger as being fulfilled during the GT (this would probably be the hardest to explain away. Rev 12 would pose big problems to reinterpret for the Society since it has applied the 'composite sign' as being caused by the Devil's ousting shortly after 1914, and Revelation links the coming of the kingdom into power with Satan's ousting.) But retain everything else, ie, keep the 1914 chronology (just like the SDA's have kept Miller's old 1843 chronology) and re-engineer the parousia to be nothing more than an 'inspection' period starting from 1914 (when Jesus 'turned his attention' to the earth again, as the Society is fond of saying), keep the separation of the wheat from the weeds as starting around 1918/19, (interestingly, the separation of the sheep from the goats was simply slid forward from 1918/19 to the great tribulation around the mid 1990's!), keep the spiritual release from Babylon the Great around 1918/19, keep the resurrection of the anointed to 1918/19, keep the composite sign of Jesus 'inspecton presence (parousia)' from 1914 (but creates problem re order of events in Revelation 12, as mentioned above). All the rest could easily be slid forward to apply during the Great Tribulation. This could actually give the Society more credibility in the eyes of the rank and file, as it is quite plain to see that God's kingdom hasn't been ruling since 1914 whatsoever and more and more JW's must be starting to wake up to this possibility. As each year goes by more and more, especially older ones, must be puzzling over the absurdity of how Jesus could be 'reigning' for nearly 100 years but not yet have 'come'. JW's would rejoice that now they have solved the enigma of why the Kingdom starting ruling in 1914 but nothing has changed on planet earth (the answer being: it never was reigning at all from 1914), yet the powermongers at Columbia Heights get to retain their exclusive channel status via a diluted version of 1914. I would bet that this is exactly how the Society will spin it, but not before the numerical 'growth' and statistics finally go into a terminal nose-dive, likely shortly after 2014. There will be no major doctrinal changes until that happens!!
It would be bad business to drop 1914. The biggest marketing strategy of "logical" religion is visible proof of authenticity. The watchtower has theirs as "we predicted 1914 as a marked year" and then WWI comes along to prove they were correct. They will change their doctrine, but 1914 will always be a significant year because they can show they wrote about it before WWI. We have to remember that what they said about 1914, before 1914, was nothing about what actually happened. And they post interpretation is an interpretation of what they said.
steve
I agree Steven but I think you've missed my point a bit. They don't need to drop 1914, just slide a lot of prophecy attached to it up into the future.
Cog-Dis on the part of the proletariat will save the day for the WT Society, as they well know.
