Deconstructing Splanes 'Generation' explanation
by Splash 43 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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William Penwell
They are reaching on this one just to make the 1914 date still relevant when we know it was all made up dates anyway. -
William Penwell
I remember that talk given by Freddy Franz in 1966 that said, "1914 is now more than 50 years in the past" then went on to say about the urgency of the times. -
Mephis
So, 2025/26 is 6000 years after Adam using their current timeline. Cue rumours and excitement for the poor souls still inside - if you're reading this a decade from now, yes, they've done the subtle hinting before and they'll blame everyone but themselves for misunderstanding when it doesn't happen. 2034 is a Noah-like warning after 1914 which some seem to have already latched onto. And 2074 will be 200 years since JWs first said Christ had arrived. It's less a generation, more a relay. -
defender of truth
A costly mistake
When JW Broadcasting was first announced 11 months ago I said at the time it was great news. The worst thing the Governing Body could possibly do was reveal themselves to their doting followers.
It is far easier to respect and admire your leaders when you can’t see or hear them. Having them thrusted at your TV screen or computer monitor in all their bumbling, arrogant, senile, jewelry-flashing glory changes the whole dynamic...
Increasingly it became obvious that Watchtower’s self-imposed time limit on Armageddon had expired, because too much time had passed since 1914 for there to be any survivors among Jehovah’s Witnesses old enough to have memories of the outbreak of World War I.
In fact, at the time of writing in September 2015, only 50 individuals older than 110 years old are known to still be alive.
The first “group” of “this generation” would witness and understand the events of 1914, and the second group would be those who were born before the last individuals in the first group died (hence an “overlapping” generation).
If you don’t understand this, it is not due to any failure on your part. It is because it doesn’t make sense.
The teaching rides roughshod over the English language, redefining what “generation” means, and relying on the audience to willfully bypass their logical thinking skills by asserting the incomprehensible as indisputable truth.
After all, if you can arbitrarily insist that a generation can be composed of two groups, why not have three, four, five – on into infinity? The word “generation” quickly loses all meaning.
You can read the whole article here:
http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/david-splane-explains-the-overlapping-generation-teaching-without-actually-explaining-it
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Vidiot
LisaRose - "You can read the whole article here: http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/david-splane-explains-the-overlapping-generation-teaching-without-actually-explaining-it"
Say what you will about the guy, but Lloyd Evans is a hell of a writer.
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pronomono
My COBE reached out to me today saying that he needs to talk to me as soon as we can. I'm assuming because of this, and this was the subject of our last conversation together. I'm sure he thinks he's going to bring me new information to reactivate me. I just watched it for the first time and can say I'm not impressed. The whole time I was thinking there's a big difference between being part of a generation and living during a generation. My grandma who grew up in the 1920s lived during my generation, but she definitely was not a part of it. Her generation had a completely different mindset than we do now. While I loved her dearly and welcomed her in my life, we were two completely separate generations of people. -
Half banana
Reference Splane's exSplaneation I'd just like to introduce a word to the forum (it may have appeared before?) it is "casuistry" and I am using it in its non-philosophical but perjorative sense. It perfectly describes the reaction by the JW org to the 'outing' of their 1914 generation doctrine.
What could they do? If they apologised they would look like charlatans for deceiving millions of people for so long and that would not do the org's image any favours. So they turn to casuistry or clever fudging with partly plausible but misleading explanations over the use of one word. They claim to be teachers (and therefore more reprehensible) and hold millions in their thrall through relentless propaganda through the columns of the Watchtower.
In the Bible the expression "This generation" is unequivocal, it was Jesus' generation. In the NEB, Matthew 24,33 Jesus said "The present generation will live to see it all"... It did not happen... Jesus got it wrong in the first century and that is that. From this failed prophecy of kingdom glory nothing further can be construed. All else is casuistry and most especially is the concept of overlapping generations applied to a future parallel fulfillment of the same event. It is ignorance on wheels.
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rosyray
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Terry
No word has 'meaning' without context.
Anybody who has been married knows this. When your wife says it is "cold" while you are sitting on the edge of the bed sweating, the sudden fickleness of subjectivity smacks you upside the head!
A word like 'generation' needs co-ordinates. It needs brackets.
The Watchtower's greatest (cough cough) THINKERS have been jiggering with this explanation a long, long time to no permanent avail.
Should any of us expect a prophecy about END TIMES to actually have a real meaning, we are already off to a bad start!Why do I say that?
Let's ask some really basic questions.
1. Why would God set a date for the End of his patience ahead of time?
Having forbearance is a matter of self-control.
If you are on an airplane and a baby is crying, you exercise self-control and patience. When will your patience end? Can you predict accurately and set the moment with chronographic precision?
2. Is Jesus actually speaking to his thick-headed companions with a complicated scheme of ponderable data to be unravelled, understood, and carried forward for thousands of years? Or, is it more likely Jesus was simply speaking in the kind of fuzzy generalities politicians and fortune tellers use when they are impressing you with heavy portents of great and momentous gravitas?
3. With the outrageous number of WRONG GUESSES made for the last two millennia by some of the greatest theologians known to history, all of whom were working with the same scriptures the Watchtower uses, isn't it demonstrable to anyone with half a brain functioning: there is no secret understandable key to working out an actual event?
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The End Times fundamentalists, evangelicals, and biblical inerrantists, take themselves (and the Bible) waaaaaaay tooooo seriously.
If there was a real Jesus. . .
and if the oral tradition was fairly accurate . . .
and the hundreds of generations of copyists didn't corrupt or demolish his words . . .
and if we are to understand what this mystical messiah was intending us to harken to. . .
HOW ARE ANY OF US better off spending our time working it out rather than merely
living each day as if it was our last?
JW's, Mormons, 7th Day Adventists, and the hundreds of other knuckle-head religious groups who wallow in the gloom of doom have only poisoned the well when it comes to arousing the public at large to ANY CREDIBLE acceptance of a prediction from now on!
It is time to GIVE IT UP and move on!What does "this generation" really mean?
It means you've been invited on a Snipe hunt. So, dress warm and bring a bag big enough to hold your critter when you find it!
So, hide and watch as the JW's lead new converts around in the dark again and again with newer and newer Light.
None of it means a damned thing!