EPIPHANY! - was the "wicked generation" meant to be a 'stop-gap' definition?

by still_in74 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  still_in74

  what i mean is, did the GB implement this defintion knowing full well it was not going to last?

  I mean, 12 years? but why would the GB not want to do that?

  Think about it, they went from the Generation=144k, to Gen=1914

  In 1994 the clock ran out and Franz was dead. Time to drop the embarassment.

  Could they possibly have suggested that they should go back to the Gen=144k? How would that have looked???

  The President of the WTS dies and the GB drops his teaching of 50 years(+/-) only to go right back to the teaching the dead president dropped?

  This thought came to me the other day out of the blue. The gen=wicked definition was so empty, no meat, no real though into it. it just was what it was. Didnt really change much in the eyes of JW's, things just rolled right along.
  
  a small part of me thinks this was inentional to save face and not make the 1914 generation fiasco appear to be the biggest and most obvious blunder of the WTS and its fabricator Freddie Franz
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  OnTheWayOut

  The 1995 definition did not offer much meat. It was barely understood by the JW's.
  They could get the previous definition easily. This new one from 1995, the most of
  the members only understood that it left the outside date more open and unknown.

  I think the GB was going for an open unknown date so they wouldn't have to keep
  tweeking the understanding. I think they discovered that their members didn't
  understand it. They also noticed the growth shrinking. (They really are losing members
  left and right) IMO, they instituted a new understanding that allows them to put
  the urgency back into the doctrine. Sure it doesn't look like it yet, but they just started.
  
  Give them time, and they will manipulate the number of the anointed. They will get
  severe in their view of people who partake "unworthily" trying to shame them into no
  longer partaking and claiming anointed status. If that doesn't work, they will just tell
  the elders HOW to count the "actual" anointed ones by their works. They will drive the
  numbers down, but not too fast. This will reinstall some urgency.

  They might actually be letting the number be inflated for a couple of years before they
  institute that action. Forcing it down from 10,000 is easier to do at a slow pace than
  forcing it down from 8,000 at a slow pace. The forcing down has to last at least until
  the next generation of GB shows up, then it's their problem.
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  BluesBrother

  A lot of dubs are unclear in their minds as to what the significance of the scripture is. If they are clear that it is not a literal generation from 1914 then the other explanations either run together in their minds, or they do not care too much.

  I do not hear too many conversations about things like this.
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  Fadeout

  I really doubt the GB has anything planned out 12 years in advance. They're flying by the seats of their Depends-filled pants.

  It sounded good at the time; they've come to realize that the new doctrine sounds better. It's ineptitude, not cleverness.
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  sir82

  Yeah maybe.

  Or option B: The GB consisted of different people in 1995. They got a 2/3 majority on "wicked generation" back then, but by the time 2008 rolled around, most of the old codgers had died, and the new group had a different idea for "generation". This time the newer idea got the 2/3 majority.
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  Narkissos

  I doubt it, because the '95 interpretation had comparatively better scriptural support than both the previous and next ones: leaving aside the basic problem of having another generation besides that of Jesus and/or the Jewish War (which is common to all WT interpretations so far as I have gathered), it did capture the basic sense of the recurrent phrase "this (wicked) generation" in Synoptic usage quite well, and the "prooftexts" from contextually similar passages were quite convincing. (What was not convincing at all, of course, was the inference from this particular connotation of the phrase to the absence of temporal indication.) It is unlikely imo that the WT would have set up a relatively convincing demonstration of this "new light" if they were already thinking of dropping it a few years later, because that would make the next step more difficult, not easier.
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  JimmyPage

  One of the most interesting things about the '95 definition is the way it is being used now. I heard a speaker at the last district convention ask the question: "What was our previous understanding of the Matthew 24 generation?" He then answered using the '95 definition. Then he followed it up with the current belief. I turned to my wife and said, "What about the 1914 generation that they talked about for 80 years?" She agreed that it was odd that it didn't even get mentioned. It was like they were trying to sweep it under the rug like they did with 1975.
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  still_in74

  I heard a speaker at the last district convention ask the question: "What was our previous understanding of the Matthew 24 generation?" He then answered using the '95 definition. Then he followed it up with the current belief. I turned to my wife and said, "What about the 1914 generation that they talked about for 80 years?" She agreed that it was odd that it didn't even get mentioned. It was like they were trying to sweep it under the rug like they did with 1975.

  yes i remember that! I caught that too...........
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  OnTheWayOut

  I really doubt the GB has anything planned out 12 years in advance. They're flying by the seats of their Depends-filled pants.

  It sounded good at the time; they've come to realize that the new doctrine sounds better. It's ineptitude, not cleverness.

  While I generally agree with that, you never know if they dug up some cleverness from people outside of the room. It could even have come from reading these websites in their infancy back around 1994 or books by former JW's.
  
  NAH, they were just flying by the seat of their pants and had a different 2/3rds majority last year. I bet new
  votes are taken all the time on stuff. When that one passed, some were as surprised as we were.
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  Homerovah the Almighty

  Its the GB duty and responsibility to spin doctrines to serve their needs and create support for themselves.

  Expect more spins in the future when the old ones become unusable.

  Call it specified righteous bullshit.

  Playing god is fun isn't it ?