How Will They End 1914 Teaching?

by EmptyInside 282 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Fisherman

  TD,

  I’ve expressed to you how I hold you in high esteem. I also follow your logic.

  I will have to read your reply about the Ransom . I’ll get back to to you. But getting back to the German brethren, how would it have been possible for them to have avoided being persecuted? What is your view?

  I think of the Israelites going to war against the uncircumcised and some obviously died. I think of the three Jews thrown into the furnace instead of choosing idolatry. Paul, the early Christians, the movie, The Crucible. I don’t think Germany offered alternative military service and if someone signed they renounced their faith, they would be lying. I don’t see a way around it. In weakness, I can understand how someone could compromise to the Reich but it was the wrong thing to do. Explain what JW leadership could have done to avoid persecution of the brethren without breaking God’s laws?
• 

  Jeffro

  Can you imagine if JWs did abandon 1914 though. Poor old dupes like ‘scholar’ would have to start saying 1914 and 607 BCE never actually made any sense. It would be hilarious.
• 

  Jeffro

  ‘scholar’:

  Not so for the Bible clearly indicates the Parousia beginning with the king's arrival must precede the Great Tribulation as shown by means of the successive events described in the Olivet Discourse.

  Poor deluded ‘scholar’. Just another example of the fact that JWs don’t really care what the Bible actually says where it disagrees with their doctrines.

  Matthew 24:21, 26–27, 29–30: for then there will be great tribulation such as has not occurred since the world’s beginning until now, no, nor will occur again. ... 26 Therefore, if people say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out; ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For just as the lightning comes out of the east and shines over to the west, so the presence of the Son of man will be. ... 29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will beat themselves in grief, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

  Mark 13:19, 24–26: for those days will be days of a tribulation such as has not occurred from the beginning of the creation that God created until that time, and will not occur again. ... 24 “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, 25 and the stars will be falling out of heaven, and the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken. 26 And then they will see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
• 

  scholar

  Jeffro

  Can you imagine if JWs did abandon 1914 though. Poor old dupes like ‘scholar’ would have to start saying 1914 and 607 BCE never actually made any sense. It would be hilarious.

  ---

  -- The jokes on you as you do not recognize the fact of the Jewish Exile of 70 years which falsifies your laughable 587 BCE for the Fall of Jerusalem

  scholar JW
  
  
• 

  waton

  Explain what JW leadership could have done to avoid persecution of the brethren without breaking God’s laws?

  organize a hidden exodus of the affected males, assign them to missionary work, a kind of gentile "kindertransport" , "climb every mountain" not to smuggle prints but to save lives.

  scripturally : "if they persecute you in one city, go to another"
  
  
• 

  Jeffro

  ‘scholar’:

  The jokes on you as you do not recognize the fact of the Jewish Exile of 70 years which falsifies your laughable 587 BCE for the Fall of Jerusalem

  😂 Yes, the “jokes” is ‘on me’ and the entire scholarly community because a minor Adventist sect insists on an alternative date for a historical event 🤦‍♂️. This is called delusion.

  And let’s not pretend that there is any source mentioning 70 years of exile. The Jews were exiled from early 597BCE and some returned in 538 BCE. Many never left Babylon at all.
• 

  Jeffro

  ‘scholar’:

  The problem with your opinion and charts comes down to Methodology and that has now been recognized by Chronologists such as Rodger Young who first introduced the term into scholarly journals in his advocacy of 587 BCE by means of the use of Decision Tables Analysis. But again Young fails to account for the Jewish Exile even though he has produced studies on the Jewish Sabbaths and Jubille.

  Irrelevant misdirection. Though Young’s method is sound, BM21946 definitively identifies the placement of the first siege relative to Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. Jeremiah 52:28-29 definitively identifies the placement of the final siege relative to the first siege.

  The period of 49 years from the destruction of Jerusalem until the Jews’ return does indeed fit very well with the concept of jubilee years and paying off sabbaths from Leviticus though.
• 

  Disillusioned JW

  Jeffro, those verses in Matthew 24 and Mark 13 and the reasoning (about the Son of man coming in the clouds after the great tribulation) you used upon them (or that which you implied) are the the same things I noticed about 23 years ago (or perhaps even earlier, in the year 1995) while I was a JW who had started doing independent study of the Bible. As a result and because I cared with what the Bible actually says where it disagrees with the WT doctrines, those observations were some of the main things which made stop accepting the WT as being authoritative on theology, and led to me becoming an independent minded Christian (several years before I later became an atheist after I found too many problems with the Bible).
  
• 

  TD

  Fisherman,
  

  But getting back to the German brethren, how would it have been possible for them to have avoided being persecuted? What is your view?

  Ordinary people tended to fall into three groups. Some truly believed the poisonous ideology. Some kept their heads down; said whatever the NSDAP wanted to hear and either did what they could or simply tried to survive. Others ended up wearing red triangles in prison camps.

  That war ended nearly 80 years ago and those people have all passed on. In JW theology, virtually everyone gets resurrected, (Mit Ausnahme von Leuten wie dem Schnurrbartmann...) as they have paid the price for their sins.

  Let's take an example closer to home. --A U.S. family in the early 1930's. As the children grow up, some of them become JW's and some don't. Those that become JW's identify as the "great multitude" They serve prison terms for refusing to do alternative service. Their children are expelled from school. They struggle to find work as a prison sentence was a huge stigma at the time. Life is difficult for them
  

  They endure these hardships because as Rutherford had said early on:

  “Both companies must at all times prove faithful to Jehovah and his kingdom if they would receive God’s ultimate approval.”

  JW's have been very explicit that there are two and only two Christian hopes. (There are many more quotes I could give, but I'm going to save them until "Scholar' has spoken his mind.)

  Unfortunately, the JW's went way out on a limb by tying one of those two hopes to the supposed proximity of the end.

  Things did not work out like they thought and those people are simply growing old and dying, just like everyone else throughout history. The hope they were taught to believe in did not materialize and that is not a trivial matter.

  Christians don't serve God specifically for a reward, but if you strip away their Christian hope, they become people most to be pitied. (Not my words...)
  

  So my question, which is essentially "What was the point of being a JW in the first place?" is a legitimate (And sincere) one.
  
• 

  Rattigan350

  Jeffro said "Can you imagine if JWs did abandon 1914 though. Poor old dupes like ‘scholar’ would have to start saying 1914 and 607 BCE never actually made any sense."

  1914 is not a JW originated doctrine.

  It started with a prophecy given by Nathan to David for his offspring to be king on Jehovah's throne forever leading to Jesus.

  That was put on pause when the kings in the line of David were made vassal to Babylon in 607 and at the destruction of Jerusalem in 587. Daniel was given a time table of 2520 years for that pausing and that ran from 607 to 1914 when Jesus was installed as king in Heavenly Jerusalem.

  It is known and written and can not be done away with. Jesus is king and nothing can change that.