For Centuries...

by jakes 1 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  jakes

  For centuries man has been pre-occupied with predicting the end of the world.Throughout history their have been so-called visionaries and prophets that have claimed to have been given divine authority to predict the end.Calculating precisely when the world will end has preoccupied a long line of forecasters.From Sibyl who predicted the return of Nero as the antichrist in 195,to William Miller who in the nineteenth century predicted the end to come in 1843. The list of projected ends generated by these doomsdayers is impressive.Amongst them the dates 195,500,948,1000,1260,1420,1588,1666,1763,1785,1819,1843,1866,1903,1914 and 1975 rank tops. These dates have been fervently anticipated and then bitterly mourned.
  
  The Jehovah's Witnesses is one sect that has preached and has been most obsessed with end time prophecy.The Witnesses original mathematical groundwork was laid down by Charles Taze Russell. Russell originally predicted the end to come in 1914 according to his mystical and mathematical calculations of Daniels prophecy. He died in 1916 a disappointed and dejected man.
  
  For centuries now we have been living at the end of the world.

  jakes
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  PrimateDave

  I have a quote for you from the 'zine Harbinger.5, "The End of the World." No it was not written by Jehovah's Witnesses or even religious fundamentalists.
  
  

  The world is coming to an end. Make no mistake about
  it, the days are numbered. Where you are, you can’t even
  imagine what it will be like when the bottom hits.
  
  Or, to put it differently, the world is always ending.
  What comes next is up to us. Every morning we wake
  up and sweat and bleed to put an exact duplicate of the
  previous day’s world in its place. We need not do this,
  but we do, out of fear, or despair, or psychotically deluded
  petty ambition, or sheer stubborn lack of imagination.
  At any moment we could all stop paying rent
  and going to work—nothing could stop us if we all deserted
  together—and rebuild society from scratch without
  landlords or loan payments. Heaven knows we’ve
  all had that daydream at least once. It’s not police or
  politicians that keep the wheels turning and the bodies
  burning, it’s our own compliance and complacency, not
  to mention lack of faith in each another.

  So, is it any wonder that humans have for centuries been hoping that some super-human power would do it for them, that is bring about the end of the world, liberate them from their oppressors, and bring in something better?
  
  Dave (primate anarchy lives!)