A 1914 generation question

by Pwned 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  jwbot

  this is very interesting to me. I just do not rememeber a doctrinal change and in my idea, the generation that saw 1914 would not die before armageddon came...I left in about 2001. It was so subtle! (The change, that is). I want to ask my parents about this and see what they say.
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  jeanniebeanz

  Don't feel bad, JW Bot. If you ask the rank and file witness who their mediator is with God Jehovah, they will say Jesus Christ. However, according to the WT, their mediator is the WTBTS and has been for years.

  They have eyes but they do not see, and ears but they do not hear.... And they have my family...

  J
• 

  IP_SEC

  Do a wtlib search for "1914" and "generation".

  Before 1995 you get dozens of hits per year. It was part of the forward in each awake for over a decade. This was a major change. The articles pass it off as an adjustment, when it is a complete reversal. 180 0 change. Now I look around my hall and about 70% of the people there have come in since 1995. If you ask them about the 1914 generation they will look at you with glazed over eyes. Soon there will be few people who even remember it was taught. Then a few years down the road, the Society will stop putting the pre 1995 magazines on the CDROM, and the 1914 generation teaching will become as arcane and forgotten as the kingdom being set up in 1874 teaching is today.

  Apostates will then try to show dubs that the society use to teach the 1914/generation doctrine and the dubs will say "No way, thats apostate, they never taught that" and will run away with their eyes closed and fingers in their ears.
• 

  Neo

  Do a wtlib search for "1914"

  The result:

  

  

  (Based upon the 2001 Watchtower Library CD-ROM)
• 

  Neo

  Jehovah's Witnesses Decide the End is Fluid

  Newsweek/December 18, 1995
  By Kenneth L. Woodward

  The Third Millennium is just four years away, and you'd think that Jehovah's Witnesses would be ecstatic. Ever since the movement's inception in the 1870's, the Witnesses have insisted that the world as we know it is about to end. According to their unique Biblical calculations, the countdown to Armaggedon commenced in 1914 - the first world war was a major sign - and Christ would establish his millennial kingdom on earth "before the generation who saw the events of 1914 passes away." For countless Witnesses, this prediction was good reason not to save money, start a career or make burial plans. As one of their leaders famously preached in 1918: "Millions now living will never die."
  

  Now, it seems, all millennial bets are off. In last month's issue of the Watchtower, the sect's leaders quietly acknowledged that Jesus was right in the first place, when he said that "no one knows the day or the hour." All previous references to timetables for Armageddon, the magazine now suggests, were speculation rather than settled doctrine. The year 1914 still marks the beginning of the last days. But those who hoped to witness the battle of Armageddon and the establishment of God's kingdom on earth will have go wait. Henceforth, any generation that experiences such calamities as war and plagues like AIDS could be the one to witness the end times. In short, the increasingly middle-class Witnesses would do well to buy life insurance.

  If this serious revision of expectations takes the edge off the Witnesses apocalyptic profile, it also buys them time. The generation that was alive in 1914 is rapidly disappearing, and the sect's current leadership shows every sign of digging in for the long haul. In recent years the Witnesses have been on a building spree: they just completed a 670-acre educational center in rural New York state that includes 624 apartments, garages for up to 800 cars and a dining facility that accommodated 1,600 people at one sitting. Officials of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the Witnesses' official title) deny that the leadership felt a generational pressure to change. "The end is still close," says Witnesses spokesman Bob Pevy. "We just can't put numbers on Jesus' words."

  So far, the new interpretation has caused no noticeable decline in membership among the 5.1 million Witnesses worldwide. But then, they rarely air their differences with outsiders. "Believing the end was imminent gave a special urgency to being a Jehovah's Witness," says Ray Franz, a former member of the society's governing board in Brooklyn, N.Y., who left the church in 1981 Older members especially, heroically risked their lives and reputations by refusing blood transfusions, military service, allegiance to the flag and other acts prohibited by their faith - all with the expectation that they would soon live forever in the paradise of God's new kingdom on earth. Charles Kris, 73, a retired autoworker from Saginaw, Mich., served three years in prison with 400 other Witnesses for refusing to fight in World War II. "It was prison life, but I took advantage of the time to study the Bible and witness to other prisoners," he recalls. But for Kris and especially for those younger Witnesses who have no memory of the rough early days (the Nazis interred many Witnesses in concentration camps), preaching God's message is more important than witnessing the end of the world. "I'd like to live to see it happen," says Kris, who still hands out tracts door to door. "But if it doesn't in my lifetime, I won't be disappointed."
• 

  Pwned

  great article! I cant believe my parents can be so blind. my father is an extermely intelligent person (Phd Engineer), it is just unfathomable to me that how he can justify all this in his head. he has been an elder for 20 yrs so its not like he may not have noticed. i would love to ask him about the change in the Awake statement. It just drives me crazy, especially having to bite my tongue when they preach to me, but as I said on another post I'm too afraid of the negative repurcussions with bringing any of this up. i once asked my sister something pretty tame like dont you ever have doubts and my father was livid. thanks for all the replies
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  Big Dog

  I remember when I was growing up the 1914 stuff was being taught heavy, and it was not speculation, it was doctrine, it was fact. I can remember one brother going on and on from the platform about how a person would have to have been old enough to understand what was going on in 1914, it could not be an infant, etc. I remember elders discussing how old a person would have to be etc. I stopped going in the early 80's but a friend of mine pointed out the article in Newsweek to me which just blew me away, I was like how in the heck can they do this. It launched me on a new cycle of ranting at my family about what a whack job religion they belonged to. That was also the first time I heard about the light getting brighter. I was just dumbfounded, like you are buying the crap, the whole basis for your timeline and urgency and everything just went out the window. The looks on their faces were hard to describe, I can't really pinpoint what to call it.
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  Pwned

  i remember all those talks too, and the point being made about you had to have been old enough to understand, it was definitely not like the 1975 thing where they perhaps never actually put it in writing. not only did they put it in writing it was the mission statement of the freaking Awake, it was the thesis of their indoctrination book "Live Forever", it was the basis for recruitment and retention!!! when i was a kid and would say something like when i graduate hs, get married etc. my sister or other older people would laugh (genuinely i might add) and say the A will come long before you graduate. well i graduated 10 yrs ago. the miracle is that their wasnt a mass exodus, it goes to show how deep their scam runs i guess. i mean if you can change the cornerstone of your religion without the majority even blinking its not much of a leap to Jonestown is it?
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  GetBusyLiving

  I remember when the "clarification" of the generation fiasco was given at a district convention. I just rolled my eyes. I wasnt even born while that 1975 crap went down, and I was still flabergasted. Everyone was buzzing about how the "chariot keeps moving" or some crap after the assembly. Crazy. Its not even the same relgion now days as it was when even I was a kid. They are going down unless they dream up another prophecy.

  GBL
• 

  Gordy

  I was still a JW in 1995. The change on the "1914 generation" was in a talk given at the District Convention at Manchester that year.

  I remember the change in the "1914 generation" teaching because I and an Elder had to do the review of the District Convention at the KH the following week. He came round to my house to go through it. I remember him asking if I had picked up on it. I said I had, that in my opinion they had dropped an important teaching of the last 50 years as if it was nothing. He was quite shaken by it all.

  We did the review as if we were discussing the convention with each other. I was the one who had to raise the point "Did you hear the change about the "generation"? Then had to go into what the change was. I recall that from the congregation their was like a stunned silence witha couple of gasps.

  After the meeting a couple of them asked me about it. Went through it with them. One brother, younger than me, said they had never taught about the "1914 generation" passing away before Armageddon. I took to KH library and showed him a "Watchtower" from 1980's on the front cover was a picture of a group of elderly people with the title "The Generation That Will Not Pass Away" .

  Later in the year the Watchtower article came out on it, followed by the one about the change in the "sheep and goats"

  I do know a couple of JW's who left because of it.