Thirdwitness wrote:
All we know is the Gentile times came to an end in October, 1914 and Jesus as the newly empowered king of God's kingdom began to cast him out at that time. Ever since then the world has steadily gotten worse. Woe for the earth. Your argument is really pointless.
How uninformed JWs are! In the generation BEFORE 1914 --
- Racial prejudice fostered segregation, separate drinking fountains and lynch mobs.
- Wife-beating was a commonly accepted practice. Child abuse and spousal abuse went mostly unreported, unnoticed, and unpunished.
- Most people were compelled to work from childhood to adulthood, dawn till dusk, just to earn enough money to continue living.
- Many people were treated as little more than "wage-slaves," being abused by factory owners during the industrial revolution, or by farmer land barons, in which case, the system itself was guilty of perpetrating countless "criminal" actions on vast numbers of people, "stealing" their lives and labor, returning "next to nothing" in exchange. From today's perspective, such a situation equals "crime" on a tremendous and pitiless scale.
- Women and people of color were barred from various professions.
- Women and people of color were paid far less than their due in any work situation. Women and children worked in sweatshops and mills 12 hours and more a day with only one day off per week for nickels and dimes, without health insurance, unemployment compensation, safety in the workplace, and with a status a notch above slavery. Children labored in factories, mines, and fields.
- Less than a generation before 1914, genocide was practiced on Indian tribes.
- Less than a generation before 1914, the American Civil War set "brother against brother" in one of the bloodiest periods of human history.
- The Wild West flaunted its lack of law and order.
- Even up to the turn of the century New York and other big cities had annual increases in crime that exceeded today's.
- Very, very few people knew what a bathtub, telephone or automobile are.
- There were very few paved roads.
- Poor families could not afford an education for their children.
- The child mortality rate was exceedingly high.
- The average lifespan was between thirty to forty years shorter than today.
- There were very few hospitals. Pneumonia, tuberculosis, polio, diarrhea were among the leading causes of death.
- Medicines often did more harm than good. Heroin was sold over the counter as a sedative for coughs, and cocaine was sold as a toothache remedy for children.
- Amputations and other operations were performed without effective pain-killers.
- Etc., etc.
JWs ought to pay attention to Ecclesiastes 7:10: "Do not say: 'Why has it happened that the former days proved to be better than these?' for it is not due to wisdom that you have asked about this."
If JWs are right and the Devil is responsible for the way things now are, our vastly improved way of life since 1914 indicates that he can't be so bad, after all!
Frank
