Hello,
I would like to share this with you:
WITNESSES REVISE END-TIME EXPECTATIONS
(News Brief 13, Saturday, January 6, 1996)
Okay, you start a movement based on the expectation that Jesus will be returning to Earth any minute. In fact, you are so sure Christ is ready to return that you predict the exact day of His appearance and gather your followers atop a hill to await His triumphant return. When He fails to show up the first time, you come up with another date, and then another -- FOUR DIFFERENT DATES IN ALL, all of which fail to produce the Messiah. If you are an average end-time organization your credibility is shot and you probably go up in flames. If, on the other hand, you happen to be THE JEHOVAH WITNESSES, then you take it on the chin, and adapt; you dig in for the long haul and stop trying to predict when Christ will return.
In the early days of the movement, most Witnesses weren't particularly interested in saving money, starting careers, or making burial plans. They believed that Christ would come in their lifetime and acted accordingly. But now that the Witnesses have publicly declared in their flagship magazine, THE WATCHTOWER, that "no one knows the day and the hour" of Christ's return, they are beginning to concentrate on making their time here on Earth more productive -- and comfortable. Case in point: The church recently completed building a 670-acre educational center in rural New York state that includes 624 apartments, garages for up to 800 cars, and a dining facility that accommodates 1,600 people in one sitting.
So far, the radical about-face shift in philosophical orientation has produced no noticeable decline in the organization, which numbers 5.1 million world wide. But outsiders may not know what kind of trouble the new shift has produced inside the church, because the Witnesses rarely air their differences with outsiders (DS)
http://www.nhne.com/newsbriefs/nhnenbbo.html
Agape J.C. MacHislopp