The Watchtower Society has a long history of failed predictions and flip/flop teachings.
This is rather strange considering their bold claims of having this unique “direct line” to the Almighty.
There seem to be no end to what Jehovah reveals to the guys in Brooklyn. The Watchtower magazine never tires of reminding it’s readers of this remarkable connection.
In the beginning Russell had adopted a “chronology” involving dates like 1799, the beginning of the end, 1874, Jesus parousia or invisible return, 1914, the end of this “system”.
Of course all of this was no doubt “revealed” to him by Jehovah. Naturally not any of this happened and when the guy went ahead and died in 1916, it was pretty clear although not to his followers that the whole thing was just fantasy. After a power struggle over control of the ruins of the Watchtower Society, “Booze” Rutherford took over and he knew he had to get some new dates to rally interest and get the hot air machine going again, so he gave an assignment to two of his trusted men, one of them the complete lunatic Clayton J. Woodworth, to write the book, “The Finished Mystery” Woodworth was also the editor of the Golden Age magazine, Rutherford provided them with plenty of booze, which really explains a lot when you read the complete insane nonsense they came up with in the book.
The new dates were 1918, 1920 and 1925, all of course resounding failures.
Later all this has been smoothed over and falsified and in 1964 it sounded like this:
*w64 6/15 365 - 22 As Jehovah revealed his truths by means of the first-century Christian congregation so he does today by means of the present-day Christian congregation. Through this agency he is having carried out prophesying on an intensified and unparalleled scale. All this activity is not an accident. Jehovah is the one behind all of it.
*w64 6/15 365 - 23 The holy spirit of Jehovah is working mightily today! How thankful we should be for the provision God has made of this slave class, the modern spiritual remnant, as they faithfully dispense the revealed truths of Jehovah!
After the “Millions now living” campaign that hinged upon the date 1925 had to be chalked up as another resounding failure, Rutherford went ahead and made an overhaul of Russell’s failed dates. He was able to recycle 1914, which was the end point in Russell’s fantasy chronology as it became the beginning point instead. The year 1914 now replaced both 1799 and 1874. But the main purpose was that it bought the Watchtower Society plenty of time, but alas time that is now completely spent and leaves Brooklyn in a kind of limbo.
After Brooklyn was forced by time itself to finally let the famous “1914 generation” die, they have been without any date to focus on and that’s really a great problem for a thoroughly apocalyptic sect as the Watchtower Society are.
It seems as though the new leaders are now so immersed in internal power struggles and intrigues that there is no strong central leader who has the power to come out with a new date to become a rally point that can bring some “fire” into the publishers again. After having stretched the 1914 generation to its ultimate limit there suddenly was nothing and now they are left with the same old worn out “time is short” crap that has been peddled for a couple of thousand years by all the “end time” idiots.
So now the world class bunglers in Brooklyn staggers on burdened with a history and a legacy that demonstrates very clearly that whatever God there might be has never revealed anything whatsoever to these sorry clowns. Yet they still enjoy a following of several million more or less voluntarily ignorant people who promotes an perpetuates the idiocy.
Norm