1945

by glenster 12 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  Liberty

  Hi Glenster,

  Many JWs (or exJWs) are still not aware of just how powerful an influence the presidents of the WT Society had on the literature/belief systems before the Governing Body adjustment in 1975. President Rutherford was convinced that the Big A would come in his lifetime and his powerful influence was felt throughout everything the WT Society produced in the years he was in power. This was especially true as he watched the dawning events of WWII and its coincidental timing with Watch Tower doctrine and his own failing health. This can be clearly illustrated by all the WT quotes people have amassed for you from this period.

  By the time 1945 rolled around Rutherford had been dead a few years already and the rest of the zeal for the Big A hysteria was deflated by the new leadership's (Knorr & F. Franz) growing realization from watching world events in '43/44 that an Allied victory was going to be an eventual certainty. In short, the WT Society was doing in 1945 what they have done over and over again down to this day and that is back peddeling as fast as possible when the mundane realities of world events prove their "spirit directed" predictions wrong yet again. The Allied victory in 1945 was a big disappointment for the surviving WT leadership groomed by Rutherford and they felt it coming and had time to prepare, first with Rutherford's death, and then the news coming in from the battlefronts making it plain that there would be "no Armegeddon soon" yet again and this is reflected in the literature from this time, though never admitted outright. Never fully owning up to their failed predictions is a hall mark of the Watch Tower movement

  I have often felt that if the many horrors of the world-wide depression and then WWII did not preceed Armegeddon then nothing else ever would. If people were fooled by Rutherford's scare mongering back then it is quite understandable. Coincidences all conspired together to fit into the WT Society's otherwise nutty dogma and almost make it seem real. Knorr and Franz picked up the pieces left them by the previous presidents and soon regrouped and began creating a new set of "spirit directed" predictions based upon well known worldly news events and speculations happening in their own times leading to other big failures and dissappointments for the faithful JW in the coming years.

  The entire JW movement is discredited by the unpredicted evolution of current events and by time itself and not by the propaganda of disgruntled ex-members. Any objective study of the history of the organization clearly shows Watchtowerism to be time-proven FALSE plain and simple without debate or personal opinion having a bearing upon this conclusion. They are wrong everytime over and over again regardless of what I or any one else may think.
• 

  glenster

  ^ You can see that in regard to Russell's makeshift revisions of his prophecy
  claims for 1914, etc., too. Here's an example about his claim of 144,000 Jewish
  people (Rev.7:1-5) living in a restored Palestine by then:

  1908 Russell writes that he's not claiming his "Studies in the Scriptures"
  books are faultless, but "Even our enemies must concede, and many of them do
  concede, that the facts as they have developed year by year since we began these
  presentations in 1876 have most wonderfully, most remarkably, corroborated our
  expectations and continue to do so. For instance, the Jews had not thought of
  returning to their own land when, in 1878, we pointed out that the time for fa-
  vor to that people had chronologically begun, in fulfillment of Isaiah's pro-
  phecy, 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith my God. Speak ye comfortably un-
  to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her appointed hour is accomplished, that her
  iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all
  her sins.' (Isa. 40:1,2.) Zionism was not dreamed of at that time, and began to
  take practical form seventeen years afterward." ("Views from the Watch Tower,"
  Jan.1, 1908, p.5, Reprints 4110) (See 1880.)
  http://ctr.reslight.net/1914.html

  Russell created some revisionist history to make it seem like he predicted
  something in 1878 that was otherwise undreamed of and only went from an idea to
  the forming of a practice of it seventeen years later--in 1895. Compare that
  with the facts at the next link, such as in the section titled "British Influ-
  ence":
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

  For example: "Benjamin Disraeli wrote in his article entitled 'The Jewish
  Question is the Oriental Quest' (1877) that within fifty years a nation of one
  million Jews would reside in Palestine under the guidance of the British."

  In 1900, 144,000 would be just over 1% of the Jewish people in the world, which I
  thought was sporting.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jewish_population_comparisons

  What decided the run-off, I'm not sure. Apparently that they'd be good Jewish
  people but not so good they'd try to run anything. (I considered the possibili-
  ty he meant Jewish people who agreed with everything he said, but I think one
  percent would be too big for Christians let alone Jewish people, so forget it.)

  The figures I found are uncertain, but I think Russell missed this one, too.
  See Table 3 at the next link:
  http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm

  - I have a few quotes. Does anyone have more evidence of the anti-Semitism
  used by JWs leaders after Russell?

  - Here's one of Russell's insights on what the rarifiedly righteous Christians
  are supposed to know:

  1900 Russell taught that animals and plants will continue the cycle of birth
  and death in the future paradise on Earth, so good Christians won't waste time
  on dogs and flowers, and that the better Christians don't do it now.

  "These conditions prevailing in the animal and vegetable worlds will bring no
  pain, neither sorrow nor crying (`Rev. 21:4`) because all of the former things
  will have passed away. Amongst these will be present misconceptions by which we
  are inclined to attribute to the lower animals human feelings and sentiments--
  some even carrying these mistaken notions to flowers --loving and talking to
  their flowers as others do to a pet dog--imagining reciprocal feelings and sen-
  timents.

  "Restitution will not only bring to men greater knowledge but also sounder
  minds, in harmony with the divine mind,--so that their loves and hopes, like the
  divine promises, will measurably pass by the lower creatures and think and plan
  for and be absorbed in uplifting man--'the groaning creation.' And already
  those who receive a knowledge of the divine plan and with it the spirit of the
  Lord, find themselves no longer disposed to waste valuable time and affection
  upon dogs, flowers, etc., while the Lord's 'brethren' need sympathy and aid and
  counsel in the narrow way, and while mankind in general are in so deplorable a
  condition as at present--mental, moral and physical. And such a change of sen-
  timent is an evidence of their attaining more of 'the spirit of a sound mind.'--
  See '2 Tim. 1:7'." ("Watchtowers Reprints," June 1, 1900, pp.2640,2641)

  Nice little pup dogs are unimportant? The man was a charlatan.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog

  Gardening can give people something rewarding and enjoyable to do together.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardening

  I think you're supposed to teach those things as gifts God gave He didn't have
  to give. Russell seems like he can't see the pleasure past seeing himself as
  one.

  - when was the outlook on dogs reversed?
• 

  glenster

  Pahpa--regarding JWs leaders claiming no responsibility for the 1975 fiasco:

  1969 "In July of 1969, President Nathan H. Knorr addressed 81,000 Witnesses
  at Dodger Field in Los Angeles. 'Why are we looking forward to 1975?' he asked.
  And then he answered his question by stating, 'It is firmly maintained that by
  the autumn of the year 1975, the battle of Armageddon will have been fought and
  God's new world will have been established' (Los Angeles Herald Examiner, July
  21, 1969)."
  http://www.lamblion.com/articles/doctrinal/Cults/Cults-13.php