There’s also the possibility that this is not meant to cover up for mistakes of the past as much as it is designed to make way for the rank and file to be prepared for a major change in doctrine.
When I left the Organization (as we then called it), the hymn (and I refuse to call it “Kingdom” song…To quote the recent rendition of Horton Hears a Who: “You know, sticking ‘Who’ in front of everything doesn’t make it hurt less!’”), I repeat, the hymn we used to sing a lot was one called: “Then They Will Know.” It was about how we were the “prophet” that would be exonerated once Armageddon broke out:
Then they will know you only are Jehovah Then they will know you only are our God; Then they will know throughout the whole creation All you have purposed you will surely do!
I don’t know if that is one of the present Who-Songs, I mean Kingdom Hymns, I mean—bleah (I just vomited a little in my mouth)!
From what I read now, the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses is nothing like it was when I was a part of it. When I was a part of it we were proud to teach that it was based on dates because that was a sign that we were in the Truth, i.e., being in the only religion that knew the “day” and “hour” because the time had come to reveal them since 1914. To have even considered that we would have been having this discussion in the year 2010 would have been considered blasphemy for there was no way in Hades that this system of things was going to make it past the end of the 20 th century! We were already pushing it with being several years from 1975 as it was.
I digress a bit, but this is not so much a means to repair the past since the Watchtower merely erases its past by letting books go out of date or resetting the type on a past edition of the Watchtower magazine before putting it in a bound volume (do you guys even have bound volumes every year still?).
No, I think this religion is finally done with its dates. The entire generation that saw the “predictions of 1914” have come and gone from their Governing Body. Their dead. Yes, dead is the generation that was not to pass away until all they prophesied was to come to pass. They are all very dead. Who’s left in the JW religion who knows how to even do the formulas borrowed from the Adventists of the 1800s?
While I don’t see them becoming too mainstream, per se, I do see them doing a “Worldwide Church of God” maneuver (major reconstruction of their religious belief system) but in a far more graceful manner. Why deny so adamantly that they never were a “prophet” when I can remember the Watchtower study articles, the weekly Bible study group, and the Society’s book on the prophecies of Ezekiel that we had to study week after week to get it pounded into our heads that we were the composite modern-day antitypical Ezekiel prophet class, at least the anointed were, and thus the great crowd was too by association? It’s not just something to deal with what apostates are challenging in the field. If I taught then what is being taught from the platform today, that no such “prophet” status exists among Jehovah’s Witnesses, then instead of disassociating myself I would have found myself disfellowshipped.
No, this is likely the foundation for a new way to finally convince their people that they are not now nor never were a religion that attempted to set dates for the end of the world, or something like that they can build on. They can’t be the true religion and at the same time these people who encouraged false hopes in dates. If it is the one true religion, then they can’t be associated with such rubbish because none of those predictions came true.
As a post script to illustrate this, take 1975 as an example. They basically blamed 1975 on the expectations of others, taking very little responsibility for themselves for the whole debacle. You now hear people say: “1975 was due to some brothers and sisters attaching significance to a date that they themselves—not the official religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses—had done come up with on their own.”
That’s impossible. How could the rank and file attach significance to a date on their own and be allowed to do it to the extent that entire articles in Watchtower literature, yes, in fact, entire publications regarding this date would highlight 1975? Has anyone besides the Governing Body or those assigned by them ever created their own dates and attached a significance to it to such an extent that when the day came and went there was a major fallout because of it?
No, the rank and file did not create or attach their own significance to the date. Though the “slave-class” had “warned” people to not say anything specific about 1975, they themselves went against their own warning by publishing articles, materials, and talk outlines that stirred up these expectations.
Believe me, all of us who were once part of this religion know I’m not making this up. Was there ever a time we were even allowed to think for ourselves to such an extent as to force the Writing Department to reflect this “other unauthorized” significance in such a manner? In fact, don’t people regularly get disfellowshipped for attaching their own interpretation to things that aren’t “Watchtower” approved?
Are we really meant to believe that from the year 1966 when they released the book Life Everlasting in the Sons of God, which is the publication that first highlighted 1975 in a chart in connection with their own eschatology, that they did nothing to stop such apostasy of independent thinking in its own ranks? Are we to believe that those in authority just sat back and watched as expectations among the brothers and sisters got so out of control, the year 1975 came and went which caused the debacle that people are still talking about today and did nothing to stop it? If we accept the “others attached their own significance to dates” excuse, yes, that’s the conclusion we also have to accept.
Let’s put the word “Kingdom” in front of it and see if it hurts less.
I may have allowed myself to accept this explanation for brief time before I left, but I don’t today. The Governing Body itself created the entire 1975 anticipation. They invented the connection between 1975 and the end of the world, they wrote the books, they wrote the magazines, they published them and they distributed them worldwide, and thus they alone were the authors of any expectations anyone had at the time. We hoped in what they taught us to hope for because we were not allowed to hope in ourselves.
