PAINTING THEMSELVES INTO A CORNER or WHY was the "GENERATION" teaching started in the 1st place? (page 3)

Terry

The Watchtower stole a page out of the Koran when it came to

justifying lying. JW's call it Theocratic War Strategy.

Islam calls it Tequila. (Well, it sounds like that word :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F4wBeshTsw

Finkelstein

So in other words what the Quran is saying that non Muslims are essentially bad associations and should be avoided, unless your interested or studying into joining the faith perhaps.

Yep that sounds like JWS and is it any wonder why the WTS instructs and influences its members to not associate with non-believers, even ones own family members if need be.

Good catch there Terry.

I'll bet--and I'm not being silly--the Watchtower could publish an article explain how a circle has pointy protuberances--and the Dubs would run out the next day and insist it is true.

When you stop and think about it, word tampering is the supreme art perfected by the Watchtower.

The GB redesigns "meaning."

All "Truth" has a shelf life.

Spare parts abound!

OnTheWayOut

Doomsday cults need a doomsday to gather followers.

Here's the real simple version of the complicated doctrine of when Jesus supposedly returned and the lastdays arrived/ended/started.

William Miller said that Jesus' Return would be in 1844. (See The Great Disappointment athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment ) People who believed what he said were known as "Millerites." It (Jesus' return) didn't happen. This return of Jesus was also known as his second advent, and believers came to be known as Adventists.
Adventist Jonas Wendell suffered in his faith at the Great Disappointment, but later carried the same type of "Millerites" talk in a sermon where Wendell had picked the new date of 1873 or 1874 for Jesus' 2nd return (after studying Bible chronology and being wrong about 1868). 18 year old C. T. Russell heard Wendell in 1870 speak of such a date. Wendell had already published The Present Truth, or Meat in Due Season highlighting such dates. So Wendell invented those terms that would haunt the WT organization and morph into New Light and food at the proper time.

Wendell died in August of 1873, probably confident that his 1873 to 1874 date was correct. When Jesus didn't appear as expected, Russell still believed it (or at least wanted to keep selling pamplets that explained it). He taught that Jesus must have returned invisibly, meaning that Jesus was ruling from Heaven starting in 1874. He taught that 40 years later, a literal application of how long a "generation" was, in 1914, Jesus would take power on the earth. That would mean an end to the Gentile Times in 1914 and an end to the last days- destruction and death and stuff.

Because World War One (coincidentally) started in 1914, Russell used that as a sign that he was correct in his complicated doctrines. He was already good at reinventing understanding rather than admitting he was wrong.

All the rest is just calculated backwards- the stuff about 607 BCE and the 2520 years and the Seven Times.
All of it was just made to fit that understanding. When things didn't work out as planned (again) the people in charge just reinvented the understandings and adjusted the math to fit whatever they wanted it to fit to sell more pamphlets/magazines/books. The end of the last days became the beginning of the last days. 1874 was forgotten. They just kept changing the end-date. They even made terrible errors and just changed the math to fit- they forgot there was no "Year Zero" and changed 606 BCE to 607 BCE.
They kept 1914 because it was so well-known to the followers and they already said "See, we were right" when World War One started. Everything about Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction/building of the temple was just made to fit the math. You can find anything if you work backwards. It's like writing a Sherlock Holmes story. Just work backwards from what a great detective would expect to find and make him look like a genius in discovering those things.

It is so unnecessary to understand the ridiculous theories of WT's present understanding when you can see what it was based on and how it changed to suit their need to get a following and sell pamphlets/magazines/books. It saddens me that I bothered to understand it at one time.

JW's were "painted in a corner" when their 1914 generation was close to expiring for the 1970's, but rather than adjust then, they let their shelf life expiration inspire them to shout even louder. They built a whole new Watchtower Printing Corporation on the backs of 1975 believers. They wound up with more new recruits retained after the disappointment about 1975 than they would have had if they never had a 1975 campaign.

They tried leaving the "imminent end" open for awhile, but doomsday cults need a doomsday. They went to that ridiculous overlap generation because it serves their purposes better than their "ongoing generation of the wicked" doctrine from 1995.

Finkelstein

" This generation of lying corrupt religoius charlatans perhaps "

Terry

Almost all of Miller's audience consisted of Mainstream church members. He was invited to speak by the pastors of those Baptist (mostly) and Methodist church groups.

Miller had worked on his presentation for 2 years. He had personal credibility as a war hero. (War of 1812.) He came from a family of Baptist ministers. Until after the war, Miller wasn't even much more than an agnostic.

So, for him to suddenly appear on the scene as a reluctant prophet was more conducive to his listeners. He didn't come off as anything but an honest, sincere, shy man filled with holy zeal.

But, his message was divisive!

Mostly, Pastors and church members rejected his thesis as flummery.

However--a small core of persuadable hysterics (yes, I'm using pejoratives) were willing to break away from their churches and separate themselves.These followers of Miller (Millerites) were apostate.

This is the important part: these people were RADICAL in their temperament. That is why when the GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT came along, they stubbornly clung to the idea they were not fooled! The Millerites and Adventist, and Age to Come separatists couldn't humble themselves and go back to their former churches and friends they had disdained! These radicals were obstinate.
One guess after another followed until a woman who claimed to be a Visionary, Ellen White, "channelled" the Truth at last! Each new "correction" was said to be "New Light" while the mistakes and errors were "Old Light."

Sound familiar?

Half banana

Terry thanks for the time you have taken to research the laughable inconsistencies of the Watchtower's teaching.

I think the fatal flaw of the Watchtower is in the two gross assumptions you quote in the Awake Sept 22 1962 p27:

Since Jesus was foretelling conditions prevailing now at the world's time of the end, the generation now living is the one to which he pointed forward in his prophecy of the last days.

This is true cult speak.The blindly held assumptions are 1/ that this present generation must be in a "time of the end" and 2/ it is what Jesus was referring to. This is presented to gullible audience without supplying evidence for the statements. Who says that there will be a time of the end in the first place? (The idea was stolen from pagans)

With fear of repetition; Jesus got it wrong in the first place. Kingdom power did not happen as he promised in the first century. His words were fallible, the Bible is human in origin and prophecy is something only the uneducated believe in.

No wonder the JW org only want unquestioning idiots in their ranks.

Terry

The "signs" Jesus gave are so general they could apply to ANY generation on any date in all of history.

I mean, really.

Vidiot

C.S. Lewis was quite astute when he conceded that one essentially had to accept the assumptions that were made regarding Christianity, otherwise one couldn't believe the entirety of the theology (paraphrasing, but that's the gist).

PAINTING THEMSELVES INTO A CORNER or WHY was the "GENERATION" teaching started in the 1st place?

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