Were Russell's Bible Students the only ones predicting 1914?

by jwfacts 14 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  rassillon

  If you keep predicting dates you will eventually be right, unless you die first.....
  
  I predict the year 7347 according to the Ademic calendar. Of course you have to take into effect the year for a day rule, the prophetic 360 day year, the hebrew to aramaic conversion rule, the hebrews had no zero rule, the post flood played spades in the ark diferentation rule, the 10 commandments, the law of love, the binary subtraction rule, and the i before e except after c rule.
  
  Taking that into consideration and recognizing that 7347 is converted to (7)(3+4=7)(7)=777 we can see that this really is God's date and not mans. So tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye and remember I told you first or zero non accession year.
  
  -r
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  drew sagan

  I think that this is one of the more important things to point out regarding the 1914 date. So may people get caught up in the examination of the 607 date that less is said about where the date came from and how it has been used.
  It was part of the sensationalism of the time. The early 'Bible Students' where one in a long list of end of days procalimers.
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  Nathan Natas

  Atlantis, could you please post the rest of the gentile Times book?

  I'm too cheap to buy my own copy -- I mean -- I believe information should be free.

  Polly wanna cracker?
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  stev

  What distinguishes Russell from the others is his belief that Christ had returned invisibly in 1874. If there was a fundamental mistake that Russell made, it was this.
  Russell's chronological views were a combination of Millerism and Dispensationalism - that Christ would return in stages, that Christ would come invisibly to rapture the saints, followed by the tribulation and the end of the Gentile Times, and Christ's visible return to earth. Different stages was not an expectation of Millerism. Barbour modified Miller's time proofs, and added the current prophetic dispensationalist views. There is a good explanation of this combination in the book Countdown to Armageddon , which explains the changes in the WT chronology from Russell to Rutherford. The then contemporary views of Dispensationalism can be read in all its minute detail in the book The Theocratic Kingdom by Peters, a friend of Russell's.
  Russell made the invisible 1874 date a fundamental premise on which he based many conclusions.
  Barbour picked the wrong date for the destruction of Jerusalem as 606 B.C. and was off about 20 years. Yet according to Jonsson's chart, there were a few others that ended the Gentile Times around the same year of 1914 - 1915 or 1917, but based it upon a different starting event. Russell was informed that the 606 dating was incorrect, but he was not persuaded.
  Why not? Possibly because his other dates, especially 1874, would be thrown off by 20 years. The JWs could keep 607 B.C. and the 1914 date if they changed the starting event, but this would show that they were wrong all along.
  There were others who also expected the Gentile Times to end around 1914, or expected Armageddon with the World War. But they have long ago abandoned these notions. But the JWs/Bible Students still cling to the date, so the consequences for them are much greater.
  A modern day parallel to Russell's chronological views is Harold Camping.
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  heathen

  Yah the WTBTS motto should be -- If at first you don't succeed , lie again ..... LOL