One of the Jehovah’s Witness doctrines that many of us have had trouble believing is that the seven angel’s trumpet blasts described in Revelation applied to events that occurred in the 1920’s at seven assemblies held around the world at the time when Judge Rutherford was the president of the Watchtower Society.
The Revelation Climax book (1988) contains this summary on page 173:
Highlights of Jehovah's Trumpetlike Judgment Proclamations
1. 1922 Cedar Point, Ohio: A challenge to Christendom's leaders in religion, politics, and big business to justify their failure to bring peace, prosperity, and happiness. Messiah's Kingdom is the panacea.
2. 1923 Los Angeles, California: The public talk, "All Nations Now Marching to Armageddon, but Millions Now Living Will Never Die," called on peace-loving "sheep" to abandon the death-dealing sea of humanity.
3. 1924 Columbus, Ohio: Ecclesiastics indicted for self-exaltation and refusal to preach Messiah's Kingdom. True Christians must preach God's vengeance and comfort mourning humanity.
4. 1925 Indianapolis, Indiana: A message of hope contrasting the spiritual darkness in Christendom with the bright Kingdom promise of peace, prosperity, health, life, liberty, and eternal happiness.
5. 1926 London, England: A locustlike plaguing of Christendom and its clergy, exposing their rejection of God's Kingdom, and hailing the birth of that heavenly government.
6. 1927 Toronto, Canada: An invitation, carried as by armies of cavalry, calling on people to forsake `organized Christianity' and give heart allegiance to Jehovah God and to his King and Kingdom.
7. 1928 Detroit, Michigan: A declaration against Satan and for Jehovah, making plain that God's anointed King, enthroned in 1914, will destroy Satan's evil organization and emancipate mankind.
This is an interesting interpretation of Jehovah’s Witness activities in the 1920’s, but a problem occurs when we read what Judge Rutherford actually wrote at the time, in the book "Millions Now Living Will never Die" (1920):
That period of time beginning 1575 before A.D.1 of necessity would end in the fall of the year 1925, at which time the type ends and the great antitype must begin. What, then, should we expect to take place? In the type there must be a full restoration; therefore the great antitype must mark the beginning of restoration of all things. The chief thing to be restored is the human race to life; and since other Scriptures definitely fix the fact that there will be a resurrection of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful ones of old, and that these will have the first favor, we may expect 1925 to witness the return of these faithful men of Israel from the condition of death, being resurrected and fully restored to perfect humanity and made the visible, legal representatives of the new order of things on earth.
If Rutherford had been right in his prediction for 1925, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob had been resurrected then there would have been only three or at the most four trumpet blasts! One prophecy cuts right through the middle of the other and the two cannot co-exist. The idea that the seven trumpet blasts were seven assemblies is pure fiction, made up years after Rutherford's embarrassing gaffe.
It is obvious that this is just another example of the Faithful and Discreet Slave re-writing history to suit the facts and gloss over their record of false predictions.
Is it just a question of time before all these prophecy failures are completely forgotten and no longer referred to, just like the "Millions" book?