Noumenon,
Thanks for your comment. I have put together these quotes. Maybe I am wrong but I always got the sense the Watchtower has always tried to play up the unexpectedness of World War 1, trying to bolster their claim that a real change ocurred because Satan was cast down. The portions below show the Watchtower's selective quotes. I can't vouch for their accuracy, some are very vague as to their source and I don't know if they are in context. Even if early 1914 was a period of hope and peace the preceeding years were not. The prior 50 years had seen plenty of unrest, problems and war in Europe as massive political changes were happening :
Today, a small percentage of mankind can still recall the dramatic events of 1914. Will that elderly generation pass away before God saves the earth from ruin? Not according to Bible prophecy. "When you see all these things," Jesus promised, "know that he is near at the doors. Truly I say to you that this generation will by no means pass away until all these things occur."?Matthew 24:33, 34.
Suddenly, in August
"The spring and summer of 1914 were marked in
by an exceptional tranquillity," wrote British statesman Winston Churchill. People were generally optimistic about the future. "The world of 1914 was full of hope and promise," said Louis Snyder in his book World War I.
True, for many years there had been intense rivalry between
and
. Nevertheless, as historian G. P. Gooch explains in his book Under Six Reigns: "A European conflict appeared less likely in 1914 than in 1911, 1912 or 1913 . . . The relations of the two governments were better than they had been for years." According to Winston Churchill, a member of
?s 1914 cabinet: "
seemed with us, to be set on peace."
W5/1/92 p4
For over three decades before 1914, Jehovah?s Witnesses called attention to the significance of this date. Interestingly, however, the book International Crisis, by Eugenia Nomikos and Robert C. North (1976), says that there was "little or no evidence of a steady rise or a ?snowballing? of conflicts and tensions leading directly to the outbreak of war." On the contrary, "by late 1913 and early 1914 . . . relations among the major powers appeared to be more settled than they had been for many years." Yet today, seven decades later, historians do indeed say that 1914 was a turning point in human history. The German reference work Meyers Enzyklopädisches Lexikon, for example, says that "the effects of World War I were literally revolutionary and struck deep in the lives of almost all peoples, economically as well as socially and politically."
W
p6
7
In the later 1870?s the first president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society was calling attention to the year 1914 as a marked date in Bible prophecy. But was this to mark the start of an era of blessing for the world? That is what world leaders had been hoping for, even up to the "last year of normalcy" in human history, 1913. However, in 1914, there came instead?World War I! Concerning this the
World of
, commented: "The terrific war outbreak in
has fulfilled an extraordinary prophecy. For a quarter of a century past, through preachers and through press, [Jehovah?s witnesses] have been proclaiming to the world that the Day of Wrath prophesied in the Bible would dawn in 1914. . . . And in 1914 comes war, the war which everybody dreaded but which everyone thought could not really happen." Whose forecasts proved to be truth?those of world leaders, or those of the Bible-based witnesses of Jehovah? (I like this highlighted piece)
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p560
2
In ancient times, customs changed little from generation to generation, so that for hundreds, even thousands of years, the sons lived much like the fathers. But beginning about the time of the so-called Reformation, each successive generation wanted to build, to go beyond what had already been done, so that real progress resulted from that time forward until 1914. But from 1914 everything started to go into reverse, so much so that one news editor was forced to admit: "The last completely ?normal? year in history was 1913, the year before World War I began." Not that great strides have not been made scientifically. But the progress in development of social relations on individual as well as international levels exploded in 1914 into the worst war the world had yet known and has degenerated since then to what is commonly viewed as near anarchy at the present time.
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p112
