TV.JW.ORG (September 2015) - Generation explained again

by Designer Stubble 210 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Israel Ricky Gonzales

  I'm sure Sanderson started partaking 10 minutes before FWF died.
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  baldeagle

  
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  berrygerry

  Watchtower articles used to refer to the original Greek, and then to various commentaries on a particular word or phrase.

  How about this time?

  Biblehub and 2 commentaries below:

  http://biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/24-34.htm

  Barnes' Notes on the Bible
  
  This generation ... - This age; this race of people. A generation is about 30 or 40 years. The destruction of Jerusalem took place about forty years after this was spoken. See the notes at Matthew 16:28.
  
  
  
  Bengel's Gnomen
  
  From the date of this prediction to the destruction of Jerusalem was a space of forty years, and from the true year of our Lord’s nativity to that event was a space of about seventy-five years. The Jews, however (as, for example, in Seder Olam), reckon seventy-five years as one generation, and the words, οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ, “shall not pass away,” intimate that the greater part of that generation, but not the whole of it, should have passed away before all the events indicated should have come to pass. The prediction is true with respect to either the forty or the seventy-five years. So accurately did the Evangelist describe it many years before the event took place.
  
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  crazyhorse

  So they're trying to say they were in Jesus head when he said the generation thing and only they can know what he meant. How crappy.
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  fukitol

  I LOVE this 'overlapping generation' teaching and the more they try to explain it the better.

  Why?

  Because it's so palpably absurd and ludicrous, apart from being totally unscriptural, that only the completely apathetic or thoroughly Watchtarded and brainwashed can abide it.

  Any other dude with a modicum of intellectual honesty simply cannot abide this shit.

  It's circular reasoning, ego-centric, religio-centric, cultish balderdash gone mad. It's proof positive they are a FALSE religion, and even more embarrassingly so than most others.

  Even the SDA's have the sense to keep their laughably silly 1874 chronology hush-hush and in the background, but the GB are so stupid they are going on TV to try to explain and publicise the most embarrassingly silly and nitwit teaching they have had since WW2.
  
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  WingCommander

  ^^^ I'd like to point out that even the Seventh Day Adventists have largely pushed off the old E.G. White prophetic nonsense and dates (1874), in favour of modernization and have tried to stick to a more laid-back approach. At least that's what I'm seeing. Yes, they still use WT'esq type doomsday literature (creepy and weird, just like WT literature), but at least you can celebrate holidays and your birthday. Sometimes I wish my parents had been recruited into SDA's instead of JW's. At least then I'd have been encouraged to go to college and eat healthy.
  
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  Vidiot

  fukitol - "I LOVE this 'overlapping generation' teaching..."

  They've actually displayed that very degree of enthusiasm for other new teachings recently.
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  Vidiot

  @ WingCommander...

  So, the SDAs are, like, "JW-Lite"?

  I wonder why Ray Franz never headed their way after he got the boot.
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  avaddohn94

  And to think that for over a decade, we were told to believe quite the opposite. The "Generation" teaching is a clear example of a doctrine that shifts back and forth with most people just shrugging their shoulders and accepting whatever crap they're told.

  This is from the Watchtower article, "Questions From Our Readers" dated June 1, 1997, pg. 28:

  Questions From Our Readers

  “The Watchtower" of November 1, 1995, focused on what Jesus said about "this generation" as we read Matthew 24:34. Does this mean that there is some question about whether God's kingdom was set up in heaven in 1914?
  

  [...]
  

  With similar sincere intentions, God’s servants in modern times have tried to derive from what Jesus said about “generation” some clear time element calculated from 1914. For instance, one line of reasoning has been that a generation can be 70 or 80 years, made up of people old enough to grasp the significance of the first world war and other developments; thus we can calculate more or less how near the end is.

  However well-meaning such thinking was, did it comply with the advice Jesus went on to give? Jesus said: “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father. . . . Keep on the watch, therefore, because you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”—Matthew 24:36-42.
  

  So the recent information in The Watchtower about “this generation” did not change our understanding of what occurred in 1914. But it did give us a clearer grasp of Jesus’ use of the term “generation,” helping us to see that his usage was no basis for calculating—counting from 1914—how close to the end we are."

  Back in the 90's besides this kind of more balanced teaching, we also had the 'higher education' policy softened a little bit. I believe Barbara Anderson has explained something regarding the liberals vs. the hard-liners but I often wonder who the liberals were (and if any remain maybe not as part of the GB but within the "helpers" group).
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  Vidiot

  Jaracz pretty much used 9-11 to purge the moderates and liberals.