by cameo-d 59 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
A CO stated that the end is right on the edge of the podium and we are inches away.
But in the 70's I remember a wonderful couple I deeply loved. They were up in age and had ill health. Sadly the wife became bedridden and everyone would tell her to just hang on because the end is so close. She died a few months later and her husband died a year later. Neither got to live to see the end that was sooo near.
My view is that they tend to oscillate between using a timeframe or date and asserting things through signs and events, forced or otherwise. More recent examples of timeframes and dates are 1975, "this generation" and the dwindling number of annointed (all of which have proved to mean nothing). Examples of signs and events are the international year of peace in 1986, the terror attacks of 2001 and the perceived "persecution" of the witnesses.
In the past few years a far greater proportion of assemblies and conventions have had apocalyptic themes than say ten years ago. I expect them to try to muster anticipation in the coming years by engineering opposition (a la Malawi) and a campaign to announce the "judgement message". This will prompt the mentally captive faders to attempt to get back in before the ark door closes. I can see them losing members over the next ten to twenty years and encouraging their membership to withdraw further from contact with the rest of society, perhaps even suggesting closed communities. Parallels will be drawn to 66CE when the Jews were told to flee Jerusalem and stay in the mountains.
Just my 2 cents.
No, the district convention didn't claim to be "the last warning." Yes, it was full of doomsday, end-of-the-world talks, but there was no announcement that this is a "final" or "last" warning. Rather, they just said that it was "imminent" over and over again.
Nonetheless, I'm not surprised if some Witnesses came away with that impression. This year's DC was heavy on the end of the world rhetoric.
There may have been a few statements about the JW teaching that at the very end of the last days the JW message will turn "harder"--like hailstones. In other words, the JWs teach that their message will change from one of salvation to one of judgment. Similarly they also teach that one day soon the figurative "door of the ark" will close, and nobody else will be allowed to join. They've been saying this at least since the 1970s and...of course...this has not happened.
Personally, I doubt that the Witnesses will ever change to the "hailstone" message. It's bad for business. Rather, just like The End, it will always be "right around the corner."
We are on the doorstep!!!!!!
One thing is clear, they desperately need to freshen up their end-times doctrine to continue to beat the drums. People don't care about stuff like global warming being a sign o the times. Bro' Prince could release his latest album and stir up more anticipation than that.
In days gone past, the WTS taught that after the destruction of Babylon the Great and the door was shut, that jws would preach one more time, a message of judgment or destruction. So I doubt that they would teach that happens at a convention.
When I was at Bethel in the seventies family members were discouraged from looking at the older publications for obvious reasons, I wonder if they discourage members now from looking at the old 'Truth Book' or 'Paradise Lost Book' or the other publications with the 75 date in it from the sixties and early seventies.
I think we all need to stop trying to convince ourselves its not coming(armageddon) it either is or it isnt but i would rather die independently wrong then wrong with the wts .Thats really all that matters if your comfortable in your choice let the fire rain from heaven your last minute repentence probably wouldnt be accepted by Jah anyway
Men that are hungry for power and money will say just about anything,
manipulative, exploitive bastards with of course a fine Christian smile on their faces.
Last chance--meaning people are to hurry up and get in without cross-referencing it, so they can be scammed. Doesn't this sound like September 1975?
