On "The Generation" from 20-year-old ...

by AlanF 26 Replies latest jw friends

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  AlanF

  I recently got hold of the book The Catholic Answer to the Jehovah's Witnesses (Louise D'Angelo, Maryheart Catholic Information Center, Meriden, Connecticut, 1981). It's a pretty critique of the JWs in many parts, especially on the topic of "JWs and false predictions". With regard to "the generation of 1914" it said:

  When all the people who were born in 1914 finally die, perhaps after the year 2000, this should spell the doom of the Witnesses -- but don't bet on it. The Witnesses of the future will probably never be shown the two publications I have just quoted from [ones that talk about 1975 and the surety of the WTS's 1981 "generation" teaching], and the "all in one generation" doctrine will be forgotten, along with all the other false predictions about the date for the great battle of Armageddon.

  Note that this was written in 1981.

  AlanF
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  Gopher

  Interestingly, a TIME magazine article written back in about the same year (the one that covered Ray Franz's exit from the WT Society) had an interesting prediction about JW doctrine. As I recall, it said that the JW's were painting themselves into the corner with their "1914 generation" doctrine, and if Armageddon didn't come relatively soon, the WT Society would probably invent a new teaching.... It would be the idea that Armageddon invisibly occurred in heaven unseen to human eyes, with the implication being that the interpretation was still true, and some new "spiritual era" would have begun (that last part was my own logical extension).

  Seems like the writer understood the "reworking of prophecy" that JW's consistently perform (in hindsight) once their predictions fail.

  -J.R.

  This post was not evaluated by any mental health professionals.
  Any opinions expressed are those of a fuzzy, cuddly rodent.
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  larc

  Alan,

  I remember a similiar statement in a book, Armaggedon Around The Corner, published in the early 60's. Gopher, he made the same prediction, that they might make it an invisible Armageddon. The book is in my local library. I will look it up and see if I can find the quote.
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  dubla

  isnt it funny how everyone except the blind jws have figured out the recipe to their doctrine entrees?.......if it doesnt come true, throw in a pinch of "new light", and stir.

  aa
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  Amazing

  Alan: Very fascinating. The 1914 generation, counting 10 to 14 year old JWs and up, was already over 70 years of age. The same generation today is over 100 years old ... statistically passed ... except for some old farts in Russia or India who never seem to die!

  The quote you made is very insightful ... because I believe that this is what is already taking place among the JWs now ... they are forgetting, or in the case of younger JWs, never learning about the heavy-handed 1914 doctrine of the Society ... which was still being pushed in a series of articles by the mid to late 1980s.

  What a difference a decade makes.
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  one

  eh? one step ahead of Ray's book.

  the writting has been visible on the wall for a long time

  hold it. lets give the wt some credit. 1914, 1925, 1975 Thy just want to true to the proverb "history repeat itself", (strange, cant find it on NWT.)
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  Room 215

  Alan, Amazing, Larc, Gopher, et al....

  What's astonishing is that it's not uncommon among Bethel hgher-ups in proivate conversation among trusted friends to say something like: ``1914? We may well be right; I hope we are; but we're not servng a date, we're serving Jehovah.'' Knorr for one frequently made statements to that effect, and I've heard similar comments many times.

  Yet officially is one of the touchstones of JW dogma for which one can get Dfd if he/she expresses doubts or admits to disbelief.

  Still, it's apparent that the old JW exercise-by-rote of 607 + 2520 +no zero year = 1914 which was a major part of the JW preaching arsenal in the 40s, 50s and 60s is seldom trotted out these days, either verbally or in the magazines. I seriously doubt whether the JW youngsters who comprise the larger part of those getting baptised these days can do the drill.
  One can't help but wonder whether there's a conscious effort by Bethel to distance themselves from it by gradually avoiding refernece to it and hoping it fades, a la the 7,000-year creative day hypothesis which, though never officially repudiated, died a death by neglect.
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  Gozz

  Room 215,

  I agree that the 1914 calculation drill is somewhat being downplayed, but the Society never misses a chance to say over and over again that Jerusalem fell in 607 BCE, and that 1914 was the year Jesus returned in current publications. Could it be that the Society wants to retain those doctrines, while at the same time desire that JWs not bother with how those dates were arrived at?
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  yrs2long

  Does anyone know the spin they used concerning the 1914 generation? Was it a 'some have gotten carried away in thinking this to be literal' thing again?
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  AlanF

  No, yrs2long, they actually gave no reason for the change. They just presented a pile of "updated understandings". But everyone with a brain more capable than an average JW's understands that the reason for it was the failure ot the notion, 1914 + 80 years = 1994. As 1994 approached without incident, and in fact, with the demise of the "King of the North", it was painfully obvious that something needed to change. People on the Net were laughing at the Society over this. So at the summer assemblies in 1993, they presented a preliminary to this updated understanding of "the generation" and confused the hell out of the few JWs intelligent enough to actually think about it. A lot of us knew that this was only the first of a series of changes, since what remained of the various end-times doctrines was painfully inconsistent, and we made many predictions on the Net that there would be bigger changes coming. So in 1995 the Society finally changed the basic notion of what "the generation of 1914" was supposed to mean to JWs.

  The new understanding boils down to this ridiculous notion: the generation of 1914 is whatever "generation" is living when "the end" comes. Of course, thinking people realize that this definition has nothing whatsoever to do with 1914. If "the end" comes in the year 3000, what connection is there between "the end" and 1914? Obviously, none. But the Society has no other choice, except to abandon 1914 altogether. But that would kill off a huge number of JWs who have been hingeing their lives on the 1914 date.

  So today, the Society is retaining the date, but gradually moving away from attaching any real events to it. Today, the 607 - 1914 calculation is still on the books, but is not talked about much. The newer generation of JWs is not getting brainwashed into the unthinking state about 1914 that the older generations have been. Eventually, the Society will abandon the date, but by then it will have become a relic of history anyway, and the abandonment will be a mere footnote, much as was the jettisoning of 1874 in the 1940s.

  AlanF