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ALL aspects of 1914 doctrine are now problematic from a Scriptural point of view


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Even before C.T.Russell was born, commentaries on Bible prophecy included  dozens of potential dates. Nearly 200 years ago, a couple of them even included 1914 as potentially significant time period.

WAITING… AND FIGHTING ARchiv@L, I appreciate your advice. Very laconic, but appropriate. Only to develop a little further my attitude, let me mention David example in, perhaps, the most difficult pa

(Luke 12:47, 48) . . .Then that slave who understood the will of his master but did not get ready or do what he asked will be beaten with many strokes. But the one who did not understand and yet did t

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4 hours ago, JW Insider said:

However, the generation problem is just one more problem now which we can add onto the list of all the other points that make up the 1914 doctrine. Here are several points related to 1914 that appear problematic from a Scriptural point of view:

Lately I've been too busy to post anything. But these last ideas put forward by JWI fit so well with what I've been thinking for years that I wish to express my totally agree. I hope that those on charge, have the humility to recognize their mistakes and the courage to explain it openly, no matter what happens and whoever falls, however sad it may be. The truth can not, it should not be covered more time. The servant must be prudent, true, but first he must be faithful.

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27 minutes ago, Anna said:

"So.....what we gonna do"?? 

(Vultures from jungle book- in case someone is not familiar with the scene)

(Luke 12:47, 48) . . .Then that slave who understood the will of his master but did not get ready or do what he asked will be beaten with many strokes. But the one who did not understand and yet did things deserving of strokes will be beaten with few. Indeed, everyone to whom much was given, much will be demanded of him, and the one who was put in charge of much will have more than usual demanded of him.
 

Anna, everyone of us know who has the responsability to fix the situation: "his master on coming" (Lu 12:43)

So, what can we do? Wait, be busy in the work and making fine things, and pray.

  • Pray for these brothers in th GB, that they have the wisdom and courage to act.
  • Pray for the humble ones, that Jehovah grant them faith to wait without stumbling
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19 hours ago, JW Insider said:

All evidence shows the 1914 date

If this is a reference to 607 (it is not JWI's fault if I do not do my homework), I think of the expression 'it is the victors that write history.' It is a political statement regarding world powers, but it applies to everything. Certainly, science is fraught with accounts of one view coming into vogue, and then crushing the opposition for as long as possible.

My understanding is that some scholarly type has written a defense of 607. That's all you need. Not one Witness teaching is the majority view today; should we insist this one must be? For all the hype about 'critical thinking' today, the pattern remains what it has always been; in fact, it intensifies: choose your belief (largely based on 'heart') then go find some 'experts' to back you up.

Will 1914 fall? If it does, it does. But I am far from burying it just yet. Nor do I feel I should encourage the GB to have the wisdom and courage to do whatever is right. If I drop dead tomorrow, they will do just fine.

 I have grown used to explaining that 'if the greatest war in history, the ONLY time until then that the entire world went to war at the same time (China & region excepted, as it was isolated at the time), AND if the greatest pestilence in history does not constitute fulfillment of Matt 24:7 and Luke 21:10, 11, what does? Vs 8 of Matt indicates it starts off with a bang, but continues for some time.

Will I have to change my tune on this?

On the vs 8 'you ain't seen nothin' yet' front, terrorist knife or vehicle attacks, unheard of not long ago, are now just 'one of those things.' The gay revolution took decades; whereas the transgendered revolution has taken mere months, and a 9 year old girl can be, on National Geographic, not just transgendered, but a transgendered activist. 'Fake news,' absolutely unheard of just 3 years ago, is now a staple of life, one more of many pitfalls to mess with us.

Perhaps 1914 will suffice to get us through to the end. Maybe that won't be so far off after all.

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3 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

If this is a reference to 607 (it is not JWI's fault if I do not do my homework), I think of the expression 'it is the victors that write history.' It is a political statement regarding world powers, but it applies to everything.

Yes. Partly 607, and partly the inconsistent views and inconsistencies in translation and explanations surrounding the 70 years desolation and captivities, the 70 years of Babylonian hegemony. Each of these bullet points could probably be expanded into 10 more bullet points, and a lot more scriptures than the ones listed. I'll give just a few examples which would all be included in the first bullet point:

  1. The NWT has a fairly obvious mistranslation in Jeremiah 29:10. It has been discussed ad nauseum, but the general view from Hebrew scholars is that we have chosen the word "at" instead of "for" because the more obvious translation would lead people to notice that the verse is directly about Babylon and only indirectly about Judah. Our current doctrine requires the opposite.
  2. There was a time when the entire NWT was only translated into a dozen additional languages, and in order to say that these were actual "Bible translations" and not just translations from the English into another language, brothers in a couple countries with Biblical language skills translated directly from Hebrew. Two of these translations came out with the dreaded "for" instead of "at" and had to be changed back to match the NWT English.
  3. After many consistent denials of the validity of "for" here, the Isaiah's Prophecy book made use of the exact same point about Babylonian hegemony in the discussion of Tyre.
  4. The Insight Book admits that Zechariah 1:12 and 7:4 must have been written almost 90 years after 607 BCE, which would be 90 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, if it had happened in 607. Ten different independent "witnesses" and literally thousands of dated contract documents all combine to provide evidence that it was only 70 years earlier that Jerusalem was destroyed, not 90. Yet, Zechariah 7:4 also indicates that it was only 70 years earlier, showing that Bible history is confirmed by archaeology. This is something that we would normally get excited about, whenever archaeology confirms the Bible record. But in this case we don't say anything because we have a doctrine that has forced us to add 20 years to every date prior to 539, all the way back to the creation of Adam.
  5. [edited to add:] Also I had included the reference to Ezra 3 in that initial bullet point because it says that the sound of those who must have been 70-plus-year-olds (per Zechariah) wept with such a loud voice that some people couldn't distinguish the shouts of joy from the weeping. This is far from definitive, but in the Watchtower's theory of events, this would have referred to the sound of the 90-plus-year-olds. If we accept the history from Zechariah 1 & 7, they would have been within the range of the expected life-span, 70-plus.

    (Psalm 90:10) . . .The span of our life is 70 years, Or 80 if one is especially strong.. . .

    (Ezra 3:12,13) Many of the priests, the Levites, and the heads of the paternal houses—the old men who had seen the former house—wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, while many others shouted joyfully at the top of their voice. 13 So the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shouts from the sound of the weeping, for the people were shouting so loudly that the sound was heard from a great distance.
     

 

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4 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I think of the expression 'it is the victors that write history.' It is a political statement regarding world powers, but it applies to everything.

I haven't invoked the part of this story that involves the "political" powers that have played no small part in keeping the 1914 doctrine written into our own history. But as you already admit that it applies to everything, I will oblige. Not that this has anything to do with real evidence for anything, but for me, it at least counters the common idea that if something is believed by non-Witnesses or ex-Witnesses it must be wrong. In this case, the same evidence I have already presented was also believed by several members of our own Governing Body, and even more members of our own Writing Department, plus at least one Gilead Instructor and at least two respected members of the Service Department. One is a current Governing Body Helper, and another still works in Writing and both still give convention talks, etc.

As a New Yorker you are not living too far away from some of those who were close friends of many of the people I mention, and you might have an opportunity to validate any part of what I'll mention below:

Daniel Sydlik of the Governing Body once said to me "off the record" that he thought we should just scrap the entire chronology and "start from scratch." I had heard that he had said this to several brothers prior to 1974, and I wanted to know (in 1978) if he still felt that way now that he was on the Governing Body. At the time I was only willing to question the 1918 and 1919 doctrines, and I went to him because I had been told by several people that he dismissed them as fantasy. Ewart Chitty, Ray Franz and Lyman Swingle had also made similar comments even about 1914, not just 1919. I had only heard Lyman Swingle say it personally, but I knew people who said that Chitty and R.Franz had also no longer believed that 1914 was a doctrine we should promote in the way we were doing it. The people who told me this were two of my best friends in Writing and one more very good friend in the Service Department. When Brother Schroeder complained to me about people willing to dismiss 1914, he inadvertently gave me 3 more names in the Writing Department when he said that it included everyone currently in Writing who worked on the Aid Book. The brother who gave my wedding talk, Brother Rusk, was a hard-line loyalist to anything that Fred Franz believed, and he also warned me against my friendship with 3 brothers in Writing, two of whom worked on the Aid Book.

I would never have had the nerve to ask why no member of the Governing Body had not stood up to Fred Franz and questioned the chronology doctrines outright. But several members of the Writing Department explained what they thought was happening. And their ideas were consistent: When serious doctrinal issues were being questioned (like chronology) there was very little that could be done prior to 1977 because it didn't matter what the Governing Body thought anyway, because Nathan Knorr and Fred Franz would override it in favor of "conservative" policies and doctrines. Also, neither Grant Suiter nor Milton Henschel ever cared much for scriptural discussions, which was obvious by the way they handled morning worship only as if it were "business reporting." So any scriptural matters were decided by the Oracle (Fred Franz). The Governing Body from 1971 to 1977 was not really a Governing Body yet anyway in the sense that they could actually bring up major doctrinal issues for questioning. Swingle could grumble about 1914, and R.Franz had already done the research for the Aid Book chronology article, but when R.Franz was added to the Governing Body in 1971, it was with Gangas, Greenlees, and Jackson -- and those three just mentioned were 100% supporters of Fred Franz. In 1974, when Sydlik and Schroeder were added and were known wild-cards, it was still at a time when the Governing Body had no authority to decide anything of any consequence. Also, of course, they were added at the same time as Ted Jaracz, Charles Fekel, Karl Klein, and Ewart Chitty were added. Those four were considered to be 100% Fred Franz supporters, even sycophants was the word used of most of them. Chitty admitted to a very close and respected friend of mine that he had grave reservations about 1914, but I have my doubts he would have pushed against the strength of Fred Franz on a doctrinal issue. (Of the last four, Jaracz, Fekel, Klein, and Chitty, I will not break down all the different rumors about each one, but I will say that it might have seemed obvious, based on their histories, that they would always vote with Fred Franz.) Barber, Barr and Poetzinger were added in 1977 and it was assumed by at least one friend in Writing that they filled out an even wider safety net to keep all votes for change from ever reaching 66.67%. I have to say that I knew almost nothing about any of these last three, and they never said anything during morning worship that gave a hint that they might have had preferred views or teachings that they felt were priorities.

By the time any dangerous questions could have been asked, Schroeder spearheaded a crack-down on such questions, starting in early 1980, and I even watched him try to position himself as the new "Oracle" in the event that "King Saul" died. (The expression, "That won't change until King Saul dies" was heard as a kind of joke many times in the Writing and Service Department, and it actually referred to someone else before Fred Franz.) Some people were very serious about it, however. At any rate, "King Saul" kept his power by minimizing the work Schroeder was doing throughout the 1980's and sometimes pushing for explanations that were exactly the opposite of what Schroeder proposed. (To be fair Schroeder proposed some fairly odd changes, which I won't get into here and now.) But one of the specific items that Schroeder had proposed was the idea that the "generation" should be seen as the generation of the "anointed." He even went to give talks in Europe promoting this new view. In response, Franz pushed for making it the generation of the "wicked" which actually made more sense in light of some scriptures. Schroeder also pushed one last time on trying to prove that the heart was not just a figurative, but a literal seat of emotion, love, hate, envy, etc. Franz responded with a long Gilead Graduation talk in excruciating detail about the meaning of the liver and fat, and why the fat was forbidden just as blood was forbidden. It seemed very serious, but Schroeder told me what he thought of it.

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52 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

 

So probably the only thing that we might consider to be different is the idea that the Gentile kings had their day and the times of these nations and their kings ended 103 years ago. 

If you move the day back 20 years, does that fit with any verses? Should it be expected to?

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