1874 a date the Lord chose?

by lovelylil 97 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Steam says:

    There are 45 chronological links in the Bible which Pastor Russell used to figure his dates. Plus one secular reference from Ptolemy's Canon; which brings chronology down to AD1. Then the 1874 years to finish the 6,000 years from Adam being evicted from the Garden.

    The Great Pyramid was there before we had the Bible and measurements taken in it substantiate the chronology that Russell gave.

    You are showing your ignorance of truth. Why not study these things before you make wild statements?

    ___________

    I (or we including LIL) am showing an ignorance of truth? So if there were so many great prophetical references, why didn't anything happen on any of the stated days?

    I think maybe somebody's RR is off its tracks, and that Steam may be blowing some.

    Let's get real here. Christ did not come, every eye did not see him, and the end of the world did not come. Not once out of dozens of attempted prophetic dates. Just pick any date for the last 200 years - it still did not happen.

    It is laughable to persons not deluded by this foolishness.

    James, plain an simple.

    PS - I was especially amused to see someone actually defend the "pyramid measurements" in the 21st century! I thought even the WTS gave up on that one decades ago.

    PSS - Lil, I did read a long article on Eschatology last night, as well as one on Puritanism. Still have not found a connection to the Millerites - but there was a plethora of Eschatology failures in the 1800s. Maybe of couple of posters here need to read up on this too.

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Back to the subject at hand...

    1874 a date the Lord chose - that was the subject of this thread in the first place.

    No, it was not.

    It was chosen by the Millerites and Others, and it failed to see anything come to pass.

    It was chosen by them way before any Russell or "faithful and discreet slave" of his pipe-dreaming WT articles existed.

    It was a figment of the imagination of religious fanatics over 100 years ago.

    I am baffled by why any such end-time enthusiasts still want to use it today.

    James

  • lovelylil
    lovelylil

    James,

    Thank you so much my dear for wieghing in on this topic. I am also perplexed that although NOT ONE of Russells predictions in connection with these dates has come true - there are many today in the Bible Student movement who still support his views. I am not surprised though as at one time many of us as JW's would have defended the WT's dates tooth and nail without any real proof of those either.

    I'm not expecting any proof from RR or Steam as I have gone through this with both of them in the past. They usually get upset and think I am persecuting them. I simply am not and I am only trying to prove a point about 1874. If RR and Steam wish to stand by their beliefs, it certainly is within their rights to do so. But who knows, maybe they will surprise me this time and give me an actual answer or reference. Either way, they are both generally good guys.

    The point of this thread was to see if the bible gives any support of Christ's invisible presence in 1874 or 1914 for that matter, or to see if it was just the opinion of the day in Russell's time and he was duped by it too. Since like James and others have already stated, not one thing in connection with these dates has come true - this idea was merely the opinion of men. Lilly

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Thanks, Lil - maybe I had not finished my coffee this morning...illogical things make my brain hurt real bad before about 10:00 a.m. They just give me a pain (somewhere else) after that until the cocktail hour, and then somehow become a humerous diversion.

    Are these guys then Bible Students of the Russellite persuasion?

    I had to read the whole thread sequence about six times before I could get any sense of purpose behind RR's first post starting with "you guys are so off base"! - I thought he was saying that I had sort of messed up the date sequence of how Miller and the 7th day influenced Russell.

    Then, after a few more read-throughs, I started to get it! They wanted to hang on to even the early Russell stuff (well, I guess maybe not the airbaths, miracle wheat, and young secretary girls).

    I guess what threw me off was RR correctly saying that "there are no dates in the Bible" and then going on to support dates!

    BTW, you seem to be a pretty clear thinker for an anti-Puritan witch-ess. Do you have a black cat? Mine is black+white (because I am a fair and balanced warlock guy), and it looks just like Fe3O2 girls avatar.

    Goint to forget this now and go back to looking into adventism history.

  • lovelylil
    lovelylil

    James,

    I sent you a pm. Lilly

  • Zico
    Zico

    I don't understand... how can you possibly get a date from looking at a pyramid? Which pyramids were these? Was Jesus meant to have inspired the builders to build in a way that would tell clever people he was gonna return in 1874? How did Russell know to look in pyramids, if they were never mentioned in the bible?

  • lovelylil
    lovelylil

    Zico,

    Those are all really good questions and I have been asking many who believe this to give me an answer to these questions for several years now. So far none have taken me up on it. Lilly

  • james_woods
    james_woods

    Here is a fascinating link I just found about the large number of persons who had to be admitted to Insane Asylums in New England due to the failed prophecy of 1874: It is telling to note that many of them were admitted prior to the prophecy failures in 1873 and 1874 - just from the excitement of expecting the end of the world. Think what happened when it did not come!

    http://www.ellenwhite.org/egw64.htm

    It might be of interest to know that William Miller himself (a former Baptist preacher) publicly apologized for the failure of the 1844 date but kept right on looking for the coming of the Lord until his death in 1859. Some of his followesrs who could not let go of this stuff went on the form the SDA church, and some of these offshoots (notably Nelson Homer Barbour) got this kind of thinking going for C.T.Russell.

    There is a clear pattern here of setting a date, having it fail, calling it "invisible" or "heavenly", and then setting another date.

    Did you know that Miller himself thought it was going to be 1873 until that passed, and then set it for Oct. 22, 1874?

    You can also Wickipedia for Millerite movement or "the Great Dissapointment" to read more, then follow the links on through Barbour and Russell. I still find no Puritan connection unless you take the view that the Puritans influenced Baptists, but I kind of think old Miller dreamed this up pretty much on his own.

    Of course, all this has been posted before, but I think it is great that Lil took the time to bring it back up again for new posters/lurkers.

    James

  • M.J.
    M.J.

    RR. Can you clarify something for me? I sometimes come upon conflicting reports that Russell derived some of the chronology, as in 1874, from Jonas Wendell. Here is one such reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Wendell

    If I'm not mistaken, I think I remember the book, "A People For His Name" by Timothy White also attributed 1874 to Jonas Wendell.

    My own reading however suggests to me that it came wholly from Nelson Barbour as you state. Where do these reports about Wendell come from?

  • MeneMene
    MeneMene

    Thank you all for this discussion. My father told me not long ago that the WTS had the chronology worked out and it was all correct. Of course at the time I did not know about JWD. James, it confused me when you said "It might be of interest to know that William Miller himself (a former Baptist preacher) publicly apologized for the failure of the 1844 date but kept right on looking for the coming of the Lord until his death in 1859. ........... Did you know that Miller himself thought it was going to be 1873 until that passed, and then set it for Oct. 22, 1874?" If Miller died in 1859 did you mean Barbour or someone else in that last sentence? Thanks

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