Make Lemonade – I take your point and accept that JWs have never claimed to be inspired, infallible prophets in the same sense as they regard the Biblical prophets, but they do claim to be “true messengers of Jehovah, who makes the messages He delivers through them come true” (Watchtower, May 1, 1977, page 8). And they have also said, “It is vital that we … respond to the directions of the ‘slave’ as we would to the voice of God” (Watchtower, June 15, 1957, page 371). Thus for all practical purposes, a JW must treat the FDS as if it were an inspired prophet – to argue otherwise is purely semantics, what’s the difference between a ‘true messenger’ and a ‘prophet’? And although (as you say) we can find quotes to support opposing positions on this, a JW can only take one position in practice.
wasblind – sorry, I see your point now. I agree with all you have said except one thing: Jehovah’s Witnesses did NOT suggest any dates and never have, it was the faithful and discrete slave that did. Whenever the Watchtower makes some pusillanimous admission that they got it wrong it always passes the blame onto JWs as a whole. JWs only accepted what the FDS said, the FDS did all the speculating, suggesting, prophesying etc, but they are too spineless to say ‘we got it wrong’, because that would damage their claim as being a ‘true messenger’, so they pass the blame onto JWs as a whole. There are dozens of examples of this, and we should not let them get away with it.
villagegirl – thanks for your post, but to me the real issue is, can we undermine the idea that the FDS is God’s true messenger. And if we start from the JWs position that it is, and that we must therefore follow what the FDS says (as if it were the word of God), then we reach a self-destroying spiral when we follow their words at the start of this thread ‘when exposed to unscriptural teachings, regardless of the source, we must decisively reject them” I don’t think we will ever convince a JW that their interpretation of a scripture is wrong, so no point batting scriptures back and forth, finding something that has no basis in scripture at all suits my purpose better, they have no verses to quote is such a situation.
ablebodiedman – I like that one.