For a hundred years or so The WTS has been drumming into it's readers that these are "Critical times" and the "Last days" are marked by warfare , destruction & bloodshed. A typical quote might be this :
Wt 1996 4/1 p 19
That an age of turmoil dawned early in the 20th century has been acknowledged by many. For example, in the foreword of the book Pandaemonium, by U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published in 1993, a comment on “the catastrophe of 1914” reads: “War came and the world changed—utterly. There are today just eight states on earth which both existed in 1914 and have not had their form of government changed by violence since then. . . . Of the remaining 170 or so contemporary states, some are too recently created to have known much recent turmoil.” Truly, the era since 1914 has witnessed catastrophe upon catastrophe!
Also published in 1993 was the book Out of Control—Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century. The author is Zbigniew Brzezinski, former head of the U.S. National Security Council. He writes: “The onset of the twentieth century was hailed in many commentaries as the real beginning of the Age of Reason. . . . Contrary to its promise, the twentieth century became mankind’s most bloody and hateful century, a century of hallucinatory politics and of monstrous killings. Cruelty was institutionalized to an unprecedented degree, lethality was organized on a mass production basis. The contrast between the scientific potential for good and the political evil that was actually unleashed is shocking. Never before in history was killing so globally pervasive, never before did it consume so many lives, never before was human annihilation pursued with such concentration of sustained effort on behalf of such arrogantly irrational goals.” How true that is!
Surprisingly the latest study issue takes a different tone. The first article describes how the spread of early Christianity was aided by the Pax Romana and the stability of the Roman Empire. Then this article says this about our present times.
WT 15/2 2015 "Jehovah Guides Our Global Preaching Work"
"7 The conclusion of World War II did not bring total peace. According to one count, there were 331 episodes of armed conflict between 1946 and 2013. Millions died. During those years, however, many countries enjoyed relative peace, and Jehovah’s people took advantage of that situation to proclaim the good news. What has been the result? In 1944, there were fewer than 110,000 Kingdom publishers worldwide. Today, there are some 8,000,000! (Read Isaiah 60:22.) Are we not thankful when we can preach the good news under peaceful conditions"
NB A study review Question is "How have we made use of peaceful conditions and convenient transportation"
Surely this is a U turn of the highest order? So our days are peaceful....great but does that not contradict their message? ......I have little doubt that this will prove to be a one-off (like an article once that said that earthquakes had not increased) and that another article or public edition will go back to the claims about the fact that "Peace has been taken away from the Earth"
But it is interesting , isn't it?