The two "get out of jail cards" that the Society plays when explaining away failed predictions are:
The current congregation book study book "ISAIAH'S PROPHECY Light for All Mankind", certainly is the hardest and most tedious I have ever come across, and I remember studying such classics as the "Then is Finished the Mystery of God". Getting to the subject of this thread though, given the failed prophecies regarding 1874, 1925, 1975 and the "this generation", paragraph 26 of this week's study certainly looks like a case of the "pot calling the kettle black". |
26 In recent years some have tried to discern the future in more "scientific" ways [to foretell the future]. There is even a discipline called futurology, defined as "a study that deals with future possibilities based on current trends". For example, back in 1972 a group of academics and businessmen known as the Club of Rome predicted that by 1992 all the world's reserves of gold, mercury, zinc, and petroleum would be exhausted. Well, the world has faced horrendous problems since 1972, but that prediction was wrong on all counts. The earth still has reserves of gold, mercury, zinc, and petroleum. Indeed, man has worn himself out trying to predict the future, but his guesses are always unreliable. Truly, "the reasoning of the wise men are futile"! - 1 Corinthians 3:20. |
12-24-02 Book Study - Pot calling the Kettle Black
by eyeslice 19 Replies latest watchtower bible
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eyeslice
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Scully
26 In recent years some have tried to discern the future in more "scientific" ways [to foretell the future]. There is even a discipline called futurology, defined as "a study that deals with future possibilities based on current trends". For example, back in 1972 a group of academics and businessmen known as the Club of Rome predicted that by 1992 all the world's reserves of gold, mercury, zinc, and petroleum would be exhausted. Well, the world has faced horrendous problems since 1972, but that prediction was wrong on all counts. The earth still has reserves of gold, mercury, zinc, and petroleum. Indeed, man has worn himself out trying to predict the future, but his guesses are always unreliable. Truly, "the reasoning of the wise men are futile"! - 1 Corinthians 3:20.
If the predictions they make do not come true, is it a case of "overzealousness" as they claim it is? Or is it more likely that they are not spirit-directed at all, and just a bunch of gerontocratic stumble-bums playing on the gullibility of 6 million people who are scared to think that they are not really a faithful and discrete slave?
Love, Scully
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blondie
My husband and I laughed about this too. The WTS would pick an obscure example of a secular prediction and act as if that means all the other predictions failed. The margin of my book looks like this
1874
1878
1881
1914
1915
1918
1925
1975
1984
Blondie
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rocketman
Yes, and according to "The Nations Shall Know" book, you can add 'the end of this century' to the list.
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NameWithheld
Yep, and you forgot 1940 when good old booze Rutheford predicted the big A 'within a few short months'. I guess that one could still be true - lets see, 12 months to a year, 62 years since then, that makes .... <clickty clack> 744 'short months'. Yep, boozey may have been right on that one!
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jgnat
I was never duped by the JW prophecy mill, but I was a victim of this nugget:
...predicted that by 1992 all the world's reserves of ..... petroleum would be exhausted
Remember the panicked lineups at the gas pumps in the mid-seventies? Back then, I was an impressionable teenager on the debating club. I researched this very subject, and there was good reason for people to be concerned. The "scientific" data provided by the big oil companies confirmed the end of oil reserves. I didn't bother to get a driver's license. After all, by the time I was an adult, we would have switched back to horse-and-buggy anyways.
Nowadays, my daughter doesn't understand why I refuse to get excited about Global Warming or other media-driven panic messages. Perhaps that embarrassing episode in the seventies helped inoculate me to JW fear-mongering. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
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reporter
The problem is, however, PM Chretien has bull-headed through a ratification of that piece of anti-think-propaganda-junk-science called the Kyoto accord. Global warming my ass. My farts probably contribute more...there have always been forest fires, and climactic fluctuations. Point for Bush for not signing that dumb-ass treaty (although I hardly support him on any other topic...)
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BluesBrother
I knew I had heard of the Club of Rome somewhere :-
*** w75 1/1 12 Insight on the News ***
World and 1975 Nineteen-seventy-five finds mankind facing as never before the harsh fact that its problems are truly globaland that global problems demand global solutions, nothing less. "Science News" magazine says that the internationally known group of scientists and industrialists called the "Club of Rome" describes the situation as "unique." Why? Because past crises were usually local, but today only a global solution is now adequate, and whereas there was time to search out solutions to previous problems, only rapid action will now suffice.Insight on the News
The
In similar vein, editorial writer Anthony Lewis says: "The fear that something fundamental is changing in the relationship of man and nature, the concern that things are out of joint in the world, is not confined to the problem of food. The use of oil as a political and economic weapon, the pressure on other resources, the inflation raging across most of the worldall give rise to uneasiness." "Oil, food, prosperity, security, everything is connected to everything else."New York "Times," November 10, 1974.
Prominent economist Robert L. Heilbroner believes that the world will move toward a new social order to meet its problems.
The Bible foretells that the nations will arrive at some kind of global arrangement allowing them to claim they have found the way to "peace and security." But it shows that such will be short-lived and that only Gods promised new order will bring the desired relief from global distress.1 Thess. 5:1-3; 2 Pet. 3:13.
Who was the foremost scaremonger?
Is this their way of saying "We are sorry, never again"?????
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Realist
jgnat,
absolutely right!!!
the media groups (and ecology parties) come up with one scenario after the other.
in the 70ties they talked about that we live at the brink of a new ice age, then the oil crisis, i remember in the early 80ties as a small child i was scared that the human race would get extinct because of AIDS, and so on and so forth...its all bullshit!
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AMNESIAN
Nice catch, eyeslice. I used to sputter in disbelief as I'd come across such dissembling on the part of the writers. I often, and still do to some extent, wondered whether we were being mocked by someone on the writing staff as gullible idiots who'd swallow anything fed us by Brooklyn or whether there might be a mole inside trying to snap us out of it.
Anyway. One point you made I have to question.
The two "get out of jail cards" that the Society plays when explaining away failed predictions are:
- God's prophecies are never wrong, its just our interpretation, let's wait a while and when things are clearer we'll tell you in retrospect what the prophecy really was.
- We never actually said that, it was the rank and file, they got over excited.
I certainly agree to the substance of #2---that card got to be ragged they used it so frequently post-1975 and since--- , but I'm sure I have never seen such unequivocal admissions on the part of the Society as to the error of any of their "prophecies"/interpretations as you suggest in #1. Even their vague admissions are couched in fluffy language and are not proffered until at least a half century subsequent to the utter and complete failure of the prediction.
Doesn't it usually go much more like "...since [we] never spoke in God's name or claimed inspiration by God, [we] are not false prophets like these other guys"? The dishonesty was so brazen in such defenses, I just knew some 'undercover brother' had to be pulling my leg.
I know I am in the minority on this, but I simply do not believe that many, if not most, JWs who are sitting through this week's book study---especially the tired-out longtimers--- do not recognize the duplicity of this and so many statements like it. They continue on, each for his/her own reason. Faith nor confidence nor zeal nor hope nor any of the passions they once possessed, imo, any longer figures into the equation of why they stay.
I've been very much enjoying your posts, eyeslice.
AMNESIAN
Edited by - AMNESIAN on 26 December 2002 13:41:26