@djeggnog wrote:
Maybe what I'm about to say here will encourage you to take a few courses in math and geology (for starters).
@DagothUr wrote:
Djeggnog, if I was a stranger to science I would still be a dub (Borg, JW, zergling, dubbie) like you.
I intended to include the word "science," so that my statement would have read --
Maybe what I'm about to say here will encourage you to take a few courses in math, science and geology (for starters).
-- but I omitted to do so.
@DagothUr:
Djeggnog, you said the JW consider a creation day to be longer that 7000 years. How about 1.900.000.000? This is certainly longer and closer to the age of the Universe as measured by scientists...if Satan has not tampered with their gadgets....
@djeggnog wrote:
"The age of the Universe"? Ok. I'll humor you here.... Geologists have estimated the age of the universe to be some 13.7 billion years old, so were I to divide the age of the universe by seven, I'd get a number like 1,957,142,857 years for each creative day. Now your number -- 1.9 billion -- seems to me to be based on the universe being 13.3 billion years old, which is fine.
@DagothUr wrote:
No, the age of the Universe is estimated by astronomers and physicists, rather than by geologists. Geo-logos is more about Earth. But an academic character of your stature surely knows that.
You're right; I typoed. I was, after all, just humoring you after you had erroneously stated how I had considered the creative days to be longer than 7,000 years, suggesting that perhaps 1.9 billion years was a number "closer to the age of the Universe." Here's what I had intended to write:
Geologists have estimated the age of the universe to be some 13.7 billion years old, so were I to divide the age of the universe by seven, I'd get a number like 1,957,142,857 years for each creative day. Now your number -- 1.9 billion -- seems to me to be based on the universe being 13.3 billion years old, which is fine. However, the seven creative days have nothing at all to do with when the earth was created, for according to Genesis 1:2, "the earth proved to be formless and waste," meaning that it was already in existence when the first of these creative days began. You're at a different ballpark (Yankee Stadium), and we really need to get in the right ballpark (Dodger Stadium), ok?
Geologists have calculated the age of the earth to be some 4.5682 billion years old, so were I to divide the age of the earth by seven, I'd get a number like 652,600,000 for each creative day, but the Cambrian Period, which is estimated to have been somewhere from 490 to 540 million years ago, is the Period which paleontologists have concluded that all life first exploded on the scene, so instead of 653 million years, let's go with the lower number and say that each creative day is 540 million years. Why not? We're just being silly, aren't we? This being the case, then plant life, such as grass, vegetation and fruit trees, which the Bible says came into existence on the third creative day, all had to have come into existence before the fourth creative day began.
Moving on....
Contrary to what you are attributing to me as my belief, I have said that if anyone prefers to believe man to have been around for 9-, 10,000 years, 50-, 100,000 years or longer, they are free to believe this, but Jehovah's Witnesses aren't sure how long each of the creative days or "epochs" were, for it's possible that each of them were 10,000 years in length or longer. We had only speculated that they may have been 7,000 years in length, but the Bible is silent as to what the length of these creative days were. So if you are going to tell me what it is I believe, then please get it right: I believe that each of the seven creative days is at least 7,000 years in length. You are free to believe what you wish to believe, but if you wish to state what it is I believe, then write this down: I believe that each of the seven creative days is at least 7,000 years in length, ok?
What paleontologists? Those who live in your head? That is the era when complex animals appeared. Not "all life"! Complex animals! Those who left a wide range of fossils.
Because I referred in that paragraph to the Cambrian Period, when paleontologists reveal an explosion of "plant life, such as grass, vegetation and fruit trees" in the fossils that they were able to unearth, I had hoped to convey adequately the point I was making. But evidently you wanted to criticize my use of the words "all life" when I believe that the Bible clearly indicates that "plant life, such as grass, vegetation and fruit trees ... came into existence on the third creative day. I trust that you now understand the thought I sought to convey to you.
@The Finger:
If you were a JW in the 70's you know as well as I that it was not what I thought or didn't. If [you] were listening, which I hope you were, at the meetings and assemblies you know that Armageddon was expected by the autumn of 1975.
I was and I do remember things about this time that perhaps you do not. I suspect you don't remember what things I remember because of where we each of us were at that time. I have to tell you something here with before I go on to respond to the rest of this post (and your other post):
One of the things that Jehovah's organization learned from what occurred in 1975 is that we must all of us pay more attention to ourselves and to what things we teach others. Regrettably, the failure of some to "pay constant attention" (1 Timothy 4:16) to what they were hearing at meetings or reading in our publications led to some drawing conclusions that were unreasonable and to their teaching others things that were not scripturally sound. And let me be even more frank: Not everyone that was appointed to take the lead in the congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses in those days were as careful as they should have been in what things they may have said from the platform. Not everyone in our ranks are high school or college graduates and so it is possible that one reads something or one hears something and before too long something that was neither read or heard is repeated to the extent that it becomes a rumor that spreads through an entire circuit and even to neighboring circuits.
In the congregations in my circuit, we would encourage the friends to make pointed statements as to the possibility of what 1975 portended, but would caution those that were heard doing so against promising things that we do not know, telling others how if the "great tribulation" should begin, that our hearing the words "Peace and security!" would mean sudden destruction -- Armageddon -- would pronounce the end of this system of things, and the beginning of the Millennial Reign of Christ. No one was teaching what some were teaching as to the certainty of what 1975 meant to Jehovah's Witnesses, but we would say, ' probably we would be concealed from Jehovah's anger on that fateful day.' (Matthew 24:21; 1 Thessalonians 5:3; Zephaniah 2:3)
When New Year's Eve of 1975 came, some considered the fall of Babylon, and the festive mood of Belshazzar and the Babylonian people on October 5, 539 BC, when the Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus and his armies (Daniel 5:22-30), some imagining this day as being a foregleam, a pictorial of Jesus and his powerful angelic forces bringing destruction upon the world of mankind, and many did wonder if that New Year's Eve would be the day that we would get to see "the sign of the Son of man" in the skies above on that day or that night of December 31, 1975, as the end of this system of things came to their time zone. (Matthew 24:30)
While not all Jehovah's Witnesses know their Bibles as well as some of the rest of us might, we are all of us taught what things the Bible says, and if anyone should not hear what things God had revealed in His word for our benefit and should be discovered going beyond the things that are written in what they are teaching, we should not be timid about telling that pioneer, that elder, that Bethelite, that circuit overseer what things we have learned that the Bible does say, be willing to ask the question, where in the Bible is the point being made based by the brother or the sister based. Had this been done by the year 1974 when all of the anticipation about what 1975 would bring was at an all-time high, the enthusiasm would have waned even though the anxiety about what might occur in that year might not.
Many left. They were stumbled away from Christ.
Stumbling by whom though? Did the statements of the few somehow trump what things we had all learned from the Bible?
This idea of a 7th creative day with Armageddon in 1975 was taught to them by JW
Yes, but taught by whom? How could any of Jehovah's Witnesses be persuaded to be something that ran counter to all that they had learned would precede Armageddon, namely, the great tribulation? Many of us remember 1975 intimately because many of us were thinking how wonderful it would be if Armageddon came in that year. Muhammad Ali scored a technical knockout over Joe Frazier in the so-called "Thrilla in Manila" that took place in Manila, The Philippines, with Ali retaining his undisputed heavyweight championship when Frazier failed to answer the bell for the 15th round. While I now live in California, on September 30, 1975, I was living much closer to Brooklyn, NY, able to take the Amtrak from New Jersey to Manhattan's Penn Station, to see this Don King event at Madison Square Garden (a value where NY Knicks Basketball and World Wide Federation Wrestling were also hosted) "live" via closed-circuit tv at 7:45 pm, EST, which was actually October 1, 1975, 10:45 am, Manila time. (Don't judge me.)
People thought the Cincinnati Reds would win the World Series in Game 6 with its 3-2 advantage over the Boston Red Sox, when a three-run homer tying the game led to a Boston home run in the 12th inning, forcing the Reds to have to return to Fenway Park for a Game 7 at Fenway Park where it prevailed over the Red Sox upon closing out the nail-biter 4-3, both score-wise and series-wise. Actually, the fact that 1975 wasn't "the end" was actually good for baseball fans like myself for I was able to witness an even more thrilling World Series contest two years later between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1977, when Reggie Jackson hit five home runs, three of them in the fourth inning of the decisive Game 6, which began a rally by the Yankees that led to their winning the series 4-2. My worldly aunt liked the Dodgers over the Yankees that year and I think gambling was just her way of giving me money that she didn't really need since she laid 3-1 odds against my $10 that the Dodgers would win the series, and I thought it was great having a favorite aunt with whom I could invest $10 and get a $30 return on my investment the following week when the World Series was over. (Don't judge me; she was family and I don't think she was a particularly bad influence on me, except maybe two or three more times more after that incident.)
I recall Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's joining the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975, and I recall that what happened to the Philadelphia 76ers once the Lakers acquired Earvin "Magic" Johnson and went to win the 1980 NBA Finals turned out to be the beginning of what basketball fans like myself called "Showtime" because of Magic's amazing floor presence and passing ability. I'm sorry, but I do not begrudge what happened in 1975 as you do because there are lots of entertaining things that make the wonderful human experience what it is, and I'm looking forward to more such experiences in God's new order under the Kingdom. By 1975, I had already completed college, but after 1975 some Witnesses decided to either attend college for the first time or they returned to school in order to take a few courses they needed to obtain better jobs, while some others moved to smaller homes or apartments and/or returned or sold cars and other possessions that they really didn't need or couldn't afford them.
The Godfather II won an Academy Award in 1975, a woman attempted to assassinate President Ford, Cher filed for divorce twice in the same year and a few devastating earthquakes occurred, and Daylight Savings Time came early in 1975, Congress urged turning the clock up in the month of February, but there was "no sign of the Son of man" in 1975, no peace in the Middle East in 1975 and no "great tribulation" in 1975, so no one who was in association with Jehovah's Witnesses back in 1975 had any evidence on which you conclude that the end of this system of things was going to arrive in 1975 in the absence of any of these aforementioned Bible prophecies that Jehovah's Witnesses taught then and still teach having undergone fulfillment.
Quite frankly, @The Finger, anyone that thought the world would come to an end in 1975 would have to have been, in my opinion, ignorant of what the Bible taught as to what things would foretold to occur before the arrival of Armageddon, none of which things occurred, putting their faith in a date the significance of which only resonated with 6,000 years of human history from Adam's creation until then, but if the Bible is silent as to when Eve was created, how do we know when the six\th creative day ended and the seventh creative day began? What if Eve's creation was 50 years removed from when Adam's was created?
Earlier in this thread, I carped about how each of these creative days might have been 10,000 years in length, but that was just hyperbole on my part, because what I was really trying to emphasize is the fact that there are things that we just don't know, things that the Bible does tell us, things like when Eve was created. If Eve was created 50 years after Adam's creation, which would mark the real end of the sixth creative day, then 6,000 years from the end of Eve's creation would be the year 2025. What we didn't know in 1975 and still don't know today is when the sixth creative day ended and the seventh creative day began, and this isn't just speculation on my part: This is a fact!
Now I attended college so that I have the credentials to do whatever it is I want to do in this world. My parents didn't direct me to put my life in suspense as so many of Jehovah's Witnesses were doing in those days, advising their own children against pursuing a career in an ever-changing world when no one interested in pursuing family life and full-time service as a pioneer can reasonably expect to be able to take out a loan in order to buy a home and afford to raise children without their first 'calculating the expense' associated with raising a family. (Luke 14:28-30)
In this world, if one wishes to pursue full-time service and raise a family, one needs a benefactor, for without a benefactor, one needs to earn enough to buy a home and support a family, which often means obtaining an education, even earning a degree, which is exactly what 'calculating the expense' means. The obstacle of someone trying to do both without a benefactor to pick up the costs associated with raising one or more children as they grow up is obvious to one's parents, but many of Jehovah's Witnesses pre-1975 that for whatever reason thought that they could do both must have been trying to impress the elders or impress those that weren't providing to them any material support toward their endeavors to pursue full-time service and family life, because no one with a brain would do what those that sought to do both did in those days, which led to some horrible decisions being made by some of them post-1975 in their endeavor to try to make ends meet.
The clothing worn by their children were clean and neat, but typically oversized or unseemly. The pressures brought to bear upon such families that were totally unprepared to raise a family forced some to leave full-time service, and some even left the truth (why?) because they had put much of their faith in a date, rather than in Jehovah God and in His son, and what faith they did have in God and Christ just petered out.
You may opine that they were "stumbled away from Christ," but by whom? The Scriptures are quite clear on what things would occur when the end was near and anyone associating with Jehovah's Witnesses in 1975 for at least six months' time had to have been informed of what things would occur before Armageddon's arrival. No one forced me to make the stupid decisions that these people made; my parents were instrumental in helping me make good decisions for life while the elders were instrumental in helping me to become spiritually mature in pursuing sanctification in connection with Jesus Christ.
If you believe that you were "stumbled away from Christ," there is nothing really that I can say here to dissuade you of this belief, but making the truth your own means that one needs to take responsibility for all of the things that one does and doesn't do, which I have done. But who really can separate any of us from the love of the Christ, that is, if we truly love Jesus? "Will tribulation or distress or persecution or hunger or nakedness or danger or sword?" (Romans 8:35) Not one of these things can cause us to 'stumble away from Christ,' can it? "For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor governments nor things now here nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other creation will be able to separate us from God's love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39) If something Jesus said caused you to stumble, then that's on him, but if you allowed something that someone else said to you to cause you to stumble, then that's on you.
@djeggnog wrote:
When you were all accusatory about what you recall being taught by Jehovah's Witnesses back in the 1970s, you indicated that it was your belief that "right up until the spring of 1975, there was surely time for these events to occur." So you would seem to be saying that you are of the opinion that if no one wasn't declaring "Peace and security!" then that's just too bad.
@The Finger wrote:
No.
We were being taught we are almost at the start of the Great Tribulation and Armageddon in the spring of 1975.
I believe that this is what you believe you were being taught in the spring of 1975. I'm not here questioning what your comprehension was as to those things that you believe you were being taught back in 1975 either. However, what things you should have been taught, such as, how the Bible is silent as to when it was Eve was created (since the sixth creative day would only have come to an end after Eve's creation), which is an unknown that impacts big time on the 6,000 years of human history that we are only able to calculate from Adam's creation only, or how the "day of Jehovah" -- Armageddon -- wasn't coming until after the great tribulation when "the man of lawlessness gets revealed" in declaring "Peace and security!" for the apostle Paul warned us "not to be quickly shaken from your reason nor to be excited either through an inspired expression or through a verbal message or through a letter" knowing "quite well that Jehovah's day would be coming exactly as a thief in the night." (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3, 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 3) everyone associated with Jehovah's Witnesses were taught.
Now if you read Paul's words for yourself in your copy of the Bible, but then allowed anyone to 'shake you from your reason, so that you got excited by something that was either said or written' that contradicted what you read in your copy of the Bible, then who ought to be held responsible for your actions in accord with what you believe you were being taught during the spring of 1975 that totally contradicted God's words?
Your belief in 1914 is only because of what you have been taught by the JW.
This is true.
If it changed, as it has in the past, so would you.
This statement of yours assumes that the beliefs of Jehovah's as to the year 1914 could change, but 1914 is a pivotal date to which the fulfillment of "the appointed times of the nations" points when considering the "seven times" in Daniel's prophecy start in the year 607 BC, for counting 2,520 years forward we will always arrive at the year 1914. Consequently, I don't believe our beliefs regarding the year 1914 will change.
Whilst it remains you must uphold it, like I stayed with the teaching of [Armageddon] by the autumn of 1975.
I'm sorry, but my reasons for upholding the year 1914 are sound ones, whereas your reasons for believing that "the Great Tribulation and Armageddon" were going to arrive "by the spring of 1975" are not very sound ones in my opinion.
In 1969 at the circuit assembly we attended as a family the District Overseer gave a talk in which he spoke about materialism. In the talk he mentioned about working overtime to get things for the home. He asked, brothers do you think your going to take that new car that new carpet through Armageddon? The idea was that the end was so close it made little sense to be working extra to obtain these things when you could make do with what you have and spend more time in preaching before the end came. (My carpets are good but not that good)
If you thought that your circumstances would allow you to get by without working overtime, or to continue driving that clunker, or to not replace that old carpet on your floor at home, then why should you work overtime, buy a new car or buy new carpet? This makes sense to me, but did you really think that this district overseer knew when Armageddon was going to arrive? Did this district overseer even aware of your particular circumstances back in 1969 so that he was competent to tell you how much time you could spend preaching? I mean come on now! How could you have concluded that from the podium from which he spoke that this district overseer could make an assessment of your family's unique circumstances?
In 1971 in the congregation which we were part of as a family some of the elders felt there was a problem developing with the attitude of some with regard to 1975.
A meeting of Elders and Servants was called. My father and older brother were in attendance.
The meeting wasn't to talk about too much being said or being made about 1975. It was to talk about some who seemed to have the attitude that Armageddon would not occur by 1975 and how this attitude needed to be altered.
In 1974 the Field Service overseer opened the service meeting where we were attending by stating we only had months left before Armageddon. The Circuit Overseer told a friend who was starting regular pioneering in 1974, "you may get a few months in"
These experiences were with Kingdom Halls in 3 different locations. These brothers were the mature ones, appointed in the congregation because of there teaching abilities.
How do you know if any of these men were mature? The very fact that you made conclusions that were totally unreasonable as to the subject being discussed about Armageddon and 1975 and said nothing at all to these appointed ones to set them straight on the impropriety of their making such statements about Armageddon that you knew they couldn't prove speaks volumes about you, @The Finger.
The teaching about 1975 was due to the biblical chronology of JW concerning the 7th creative day and the teaching of 1914 and the generation.
The teaching about 1975 has been jettisoned along with the teaching about the 7000 year creative days, along with the teaching we had about the generation.
Ok. BTW, are any of the elders to whom you refer here still in the truth? If not, how does it make you feel that you actually listened to what they were saying instead of paying heed to what you knew God's own word to say? This is a rhetorical question.
@djeggnog wrote:
One can discern from reading 1 Thessalonians 5:3 that the great tribulation must occur before Armageddon, but maybe in 1975, you didn't discern this. You expect Bible prophecy to be ignored, skipped over, and this is why you have asked me the question:
Are you suggesting there needed to be a set amount of time?
My answer to your question is "yes."
@The Finger wrote:
These spiritually mature men like yourself who are appointed in the congregations were the ones you need to talk to Djeggnog. Maybe they skipped over or ignored Bible prophecy. But I don't think so.
Why don't you "think so"? You should know so. You should know that they were not teaching what you had learned from the Bible, and for this reason you should have approached and resisted each one of them face to face the same way as did the apostle Paul when the apostle Peter had put on a pretense with the Jewish Christians as if he didn't eat with Gentile Christians. You should have let them know that they weren't "walking straight according to the truth of the good news." (Galatians 2:11-14) Brothers do from time to time need to man up.
I think they were just listening to the Faithful Slave, maybe it was them who skipped over Bible prophecy and spoke too soon causing some to lose faith.
And maybe it was you that wanted to believe the nonsense that you had heard because you certainly knew that what was being said wasn't at all what you had read in your own copy of the Bible, right?
@djeggnog
