What is the world's most eschatalogical religion, if not the JWs?

james_woods

What got me started on this was the other thread on the worn out time of the end message of the Watchtower.

I kind of thought it deserved a thread of it's own - being a little bit off the original subject.

Two questions -

First - I think we could say that the JWs are probably within the very top two or three of the most strident "time of the end" screaming people on earth. If they are not number one, then who else could possibly hold that honor?

Second - What other religion down through history has preached the immediate coming of the end, and actually lasted more than about a hundred years after it did not come to pass? I would guess that maybe the seventh-day adventists (from whom, along with the Millerites, a lot of this end-time JW stuff originated). But, the adventists do not really seem to be very strong on actual predictions of the end anymore - having been severely burned during the 19th century themselves.

Having said the above, would anyone care to speculate on how long the WTS can keep honking this Armageddon horn before the silliness of it all causes their total intellectual collapse, or at least forces a strong move toward a more moderate exchatology?

blondie

I think Jack Van Impe and John Hagee are in the running

james_woods

True enough, Blondie - but they simply cannot match the claim that the JWs hold: That the Watchtower has firmly convinced over six million (OK, their figures, but at least several million) people that the end will come during their own natural lives.

Nor can either claim as many prophetic dates marked out, published, and then passed by and overlooked.

It really is simply beyond comprehension how they have gotten away with this for so long.

Rapunzel

I suppose that the Watchtower will be able to go on "honking the horn of Armageddon" indefinitely. Even on this forum, there are a couple of posters who claim that Armageddon will come in 2011 or 2012. After the year in question comes and goes, I'm sure that revisions and recalibrations will be made to account for changes in chronology,

AnnOMaly

The most eschatalogical religions end up either getting their members to commit suicide or joining Yisrayl Hawkins.

james_woods

Like the Heaven's Gate? But, still - even Jonestown and Waco were really just little fringe groups. This Watchtower lie is a world-wide movement. While it hasn't come to mass group suicide yet, they have already proven many times their willingness to die for these false ideas.

Wonder why the general religious community, or the media, have not come down on them by now? Or why hardly anybody on the inside of it hasn't just stood up and said "enough of this nonsense already?"

drew sagan

The most eschatalogical religions end up either getting their members to commit suicide or joining Yisrayl Hawkins.

As it stands this statement simply is not true. I would add to it that physically isolated eschatological religions end up getting their members to commit suicide, ect

There simply is no record of a group holding the dynamics like the JWs moving into something like mass suicide. While the behavioral patterns in thought control and group ideaism may be similiar, the physical isolation of the group is usually always a determining factor in wether or not they go off the deep end.

Remember that many people in Jonestown did not actually wish to commit suicide, they did so only because guns were pointed at their heads.

BizzyBee

or at least forces a strong move toward a more moderate exchatology?

It seems that they have moderated the message of the immediacy of Armageddon. The language is so vague as to have lost all meaning. The word "soon" must seem like white noise around the old KH these days.

BurnTheShips

What is the world's most eschatalogical religion, if not the JWs?

In my personal experience, they qualify as the most scatological religion.

BTS

What is the world's most eschatalogical religion, if not the JWs?

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