In a recent post about the Watchtower’s claim that all animals were created as vegetarians, one commenter said that Watchtower could no longer sustain this belief so they simply stopped talking about it. I began thinking about other wacky doctrines and statements by the Borg that have faded away. I’ll offer two of them below, but the complete list must be longer than your arm.
7000 year-long creative days: Watchtower once taught that each of the creative days was 7,000 years in duration, hence the hype leading up to 1975. They believed that year marked 6,000 years since Adam’s creation, and oh how nicely the 1,000-year reign would fit as the last piece of the puzzle, thus completing the final “day”. Watchtower usually ignores scientific and geologic evidence that doesn’t support their claims but in this case, they backed off. In recent years, the creative days have been described in Watchtower literature as periods of time of unknown length.
“This generation”: While it was still feasible for any of Watchtower’s tortured "generation” formulas to work in connection with 1914, it was a hot topic in their literature. When it became obvious that the formula no longer worked, Watchtower came up with the most wackadoodle doctrine in memory, the “overlapping generations”. When he presented this in a video, David Splane seemed smug and self-satisfied with the teaching, and obviously the GB believed the R&F would swallow whole this transparent form of misdirection. I remember one or two JW’s talking about it briefly after the video and the subsequent Watchtower study article, and I seem to remember them giving it the stock JW response to all new light, “Of course, now it makes perfect sense!” But since then, I don’t recall any JW speaking of overlapping generations, or attempting to teach it from the stage or on a bible study. Discussion of the all-important generation doctrine has all but disappeared.
For an organization that prides itself in accepting “new light” when it is revealed to them, dropping once key doctrines without an apology or explanation seems like the height of cowardice. Will you add your own outcast doctrines to the list?