Hi everyone
It seems fitting to use my 1,914th post to address a doctrine that has shaped the lives of so many of us, and which continues to be a cornerstone belief that is used to keep individual Jehovah’s Witnesses trapped in servitude to a man-made corporation.
That said, we might well ask – who started it all? We might say Russell, who borrowed heavily from the Millerite teachings of the Second Adventists in advocating a chronology that included the year 1914. As we know, when we research early Witness literature we realise that the year 1914 featured in Russell's chronology only as the END of a series of events culminating in Armageddon, and not the beginning of Christ's presence. One might argue that if the year 1914 had passed by without incident, any premise that it was a year of special significance in bible prophecy would have been unceremoniously scrapped – or at least any movement clinging to such a notion would have found little momentum.
However, one man inadvertently added a spark that served to defibrillate that floundering doctrine, while also igniting a diplomatic powder keg that would plunge Europe into war on a scale never before seen. Who was he? Gavrilo Princip, the 19 year-old Serbian nationalist who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th June 1914, triggering a series of events that would lead inevitably to the outbreak of the First World War.
Arguably, the way things were diplomatically back then, even if Princip hadn’t ‘lit the fuse’ somebody else might well have done. It seems that sneezing at an inopportune moment in those days of tension and division might have been enough to trigger a global conflict. However, it is also perfectly conceivable that things could have rumbled on for at least another year until war broke out at a later stage, perhaps even on a lesser scale. We will never know for sure.
What is known is that the year 1914 became synonymous, even outside religious circles, with unprecedented turmoil as an indirect result of this young man’s actions. Would Russell and his followers have clung to his ideas so fervently if something of significance had not happened in that year? Quite possibly. However, it’s certainly unlikely that the Bible Students would have garnered so many fresh converts in the years to follow if their teachings, albeit heavily revised, did not pivot on a date that already resonated with so many. To this day, 1914 needs little introduction when the topic comes up in a bible study with interested ones.
Indeed, it is highly unlikely that the modern Watch Tower Society would have the stomach to resolutely stand by the year 1914 as a date of significance if world events in that year did not correspond with the start of a period of great upheaval. And as we know, it isn’t JUST all about 1914 – there are the associated events that supposedly followed in 1918 and 1919 when Christ ‘invisibly’ selected the Bible Students as his earthly congregation. These unobservable events were inseparable, and in the minds of Witnesses, they grant legitimacy to the Society’s claims to be God’s spirit-directed organization.
I have actually visited the very street in Sarajevo where the young Princip fired those fateful shots. At the time I was still heavily involved with the Witnesses, and considered the location as significant from a prophetic perspective. I now see that location and the associated events as significant from a profoundly personal perspective, as that simple assassination put a huge gust of wind in the sails of an ailing Millerite movement thousands of miles away in the United States, allowing it to eventually burgeon into the grotesque, damaging, and manipulative organization that we know today as the Watch Tower Society – the unquestioned overlords of Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide.
I don’t know how long the Society will continue to flog 1914 in their literature. I suspect they will do so for at least another twenty years before they begin to implement some form of doctrinal exit strategy, which will inevitably be even harder for reasonable-minded people to accept. What I do know is that the chronology surrounding 1914 is pivotal to Witness beliefs, even if normal Witnesses don’t realise the extent to which it influences their lives. It is for this reason that the Governing Body stubbornly hangs on to the doctrine by their collective fingertips, because it is their only tenuous link to a biblical mandate to rule unopposed. It is their harsh rulership that so threatens the stability of my own family if I do not keep my actions in check, and it continues to ruin the lives of so many others – even outside the Witness faith. I therefore cannot help but see Princip’s actions as having had a profound effect on my own life, and the lives of many others.
Obviously, for the many that died and suffered unimaginable loss in both the First World War and the Second World War (the latter being very much a continuation of the former), Princip’s actions take on far greater significance. However, I believe that those of us living in very real emotional turmoil as a result of the ongoing religious hysteria surrounding 1914 have this man to thank, at least in part.
Cedars
P.S. Please, if you haven't already done so, take the 2012 JW Survey, thanks!