Officially, they are still 7,000 years long since the WTS has never printed anything say that concept has changed. They have though slipped in statements saying that each day is thousands of years long without being specific. If a creative day is no longer 7,000 years long, it does undercut the teaching that 1975 was the end of 6,000 years of human history and that the 1,000 year reign of Christ was soon come after 1975.
Exactly. They have never backed down on this previous 7,000 teaching, just tried to roller-skate around it by making veiled references to "many thousands of years" and such. It is almost as flagrant as the way they now deny that 1975 ever had any real meaning in their chronologies.
Back when I was a young witness - even at 12 years old - this was just about the most unbelievable thing (to me) that they taught. I was asking myself - good God, didn't these people even read a 5th grade science book?
Plus, not a single one of the witnesses could biblically explain where the 7,000 year length came from - you could possibly make a case biblically for a thousand years (a day is like a thousand years to god) - but 7,000? There was no credible reason to pick this lengh.
I have a theory - I believe Freddy and the other 20th century end-timers came up with it out of whole cloth to make the 7th day end at 6000 years in their own time. This was, after all, the very basis of 1975 and the start of the millenium - and practically none of the witnesses back then prior to 1975 bothered to ask where these 7,000 year creative days came from.
EDIT TO ADD - and, further on this subject - for that matter, exactly what Biblical reason did Freddy ever have to conclude that the 1000 year reign of Christ would correspond to the last 1000 years of the seventh creative day? Why not the next 1000 years after the 7 x 7,000 = 49,000 years were over? That would at least have made a nice round 50,000 years...
Like I say, he was obsessed with having the end come in the 20th century.
