Are JWs counting time on this. Geez
Do JWs still believe in 1914?
by Iamallcool 125 Replies latest members private
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The Finger
DJeggnog,
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.
It was my understanding that the Elders in the congregation and the District Overseers and Circuit Overseers were considered the mature men in the circuit as they were appointed to do a job in the congregation. You may be right that such men are not mature.
In 1969 I was a boy I honestly don't think they would have listened to me. As you know Elders are supposed to be teaching. They were teaching these things and the fact that they were not corrected by the other Elders in the congregation shows they were supported by them. I think many Elders correct the matter later by denying that these things were taught and trying to blame the publishers for listening to the false teachings and acting upon them. It always seemed some are reluctant to stand up for what they believe or know is true . Sometimes this is evident in small ways, at their place of work when birthdays come along and to save face they participate rather than seize the opportunity to spread their life saving message. As an example. No doubt human weakness plays a part.
I agree with you listening to the JW doesnt benefit you not in the long term. I am not so eager and ready to listen to JW now. Knowing not only that they will no doubt change things in the future but also deny what was taught and blame those who listened. Like I think you are doing.
You must follow Christ and not men.
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The Finger
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?
DJeggnog the FDS were telling us that it was 4026 that the 7th creative day began.
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nugget
In answer to your query JWs are comfortable quoting how 1914 fulfilled prophecy that nation rose against nation and that pestilence and other signs got more frequent since then. However how the 1914 date is arrived at is more problematic. The complex maths and starting point are not easy to explain and without benefit of the literature JWS struggle. If challenged thay have no answer because they are forced to use JW literature and their chronology has no validity in secular sources. An indepth scrutiny of JW literature also causes the dating structure to fall appart. As a result they have not studied this in a while and have difficulty bringing details to mind.
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DagothUr
At least Djeggnog does make efforts to read the posts and answer...His answers are still quite naive (i'm euphemising), but we should have patience. One day, when he will grow up, he will leave the Chocolate Factory for good and join our Atheist Party on this God-blessed forum.
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The Finger
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?
1914 is not a date that is found in the bible anymore than 4026.
We were taught "the nonsense" at the hall and through the WT publications. We were taught that we could use the bible to count back to Adam's creation and that naming the animals wouldn't have taken long as it didn't take Noah long to get the animals into the Ark. The publications stated 4026 as the start of the creative day.
If you have the start of a 7000 year creative day and you know you are almost 6000 years into it and there is a thousand years left for Christ to reign. There seems little point to be teaching this if you do not expect people to draw some sort of conclusion from it.
Many years ago as a small boy I stood on the doorstep of a house while my father had a long discussion with the lady who lived there about the "truth" including the "this generation" She said it was how you are interpreting the bible he insisted it wasn't.
Many years later the generation teaching has been changed. Maybe the woman could have helped the FDS to a better understanding.
Djeggnog said
"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 ends meet."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
because no one with a brain would do what those that sought to do both did in those days,
These ones were just following the direction from the spirit directed organization.
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shepherd
"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"
I agree with DJeggnog's quote above. But since this is exactly what the GB and the DC and CO and elders taught/incinuated then of course all of them are indeed ignorant men.
"With the appearance of the book Life Everlasting-in Freedom of the Sons of God, and its comments as to how appropriate it would be for the millennial reign of Christ to parallel the seventh millennium of man's existence, considerable expectation was aroused regarding the year 1975. ... Unfortunately, however, along with such cautionary information, there were other statements published that implied that such realization of hopes by that year was more of a probability than a mere possibility. Watchtower 1980 March 15 p.17
Even the Watchtower quoted above admitted that some statements inferred a 'probability'. Today, DJeggnog and some others backpeddle on all this and have the disrespect to say all expectations were the making of greedy ones who later left the organisation. I say it again and again and again...that is a lie!
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ballistic
Well I can't claim to have read this whole thread because I have attention span problems, but anyway I just wanted to say that the early leadership of the Watchtower were obsessed with finding hidden meaning in the Bible and I have here a copy of "the divine plan of the ages" with a fantastic pull out section mapping out god's will down through time... of course it's all bolognaise now. Interestingly many other groups also started around the turn of the century looking for hidden codes in the Bible. The witnesses plunked on a whoile series of dates until finally something BIG happened on one of them, it didn't take much luck really - it was bound to happen sooner or later. However, I totally agree with the premise of this thread that the arrival of 2014 will be almost an embarrasment, and can just see the Watchtower now... 1914 - 2014 A Century of Waiting... LOL
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watersprout
Djeggnog must have got in his pioneer hours on this thread alone!
I love how the dubs put the GB above the Christ... Amazing!
You can't reason with a dub, i think this thread alone proves that.
Peace
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djeggnog
@djeggnog wrote:
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 Finger wrote:
It was my understanding that the Elders in the congregation and the District Overseers and Circuit Overseers were considered the mature men in the circuit as they were appointed to do a job in the congregation.
Ok.
You may be right that such men are not mature.
What I am saying here is that anyone that made statements that began with "because the faithful and discreet slave have had that Armageddon is coming in 1975..." or "considering the faithful slave has strenuously pointed out that because Armageddon will be here within the next few months...," or words to this effect, with predicates like "why not continue driving your clunker since there are only a few months left" and "why not forego replacing that old carpet when you know that only a little time remains" and "why would you be working overtime when it would be more prudent to be spending the next few months in the full-time service," may have been guilty of "adulterating the word of God" (2 Corinthians 4:2), even slander, in projecting beyond what they knew the faithful slave to have actually said, and so these elders might also have been guilty of "lying against the truth" (James 3:14) since the faithful slave has never suggested more than that the year 1975 marks 6,000 years of human history.
But my point to you, @The Finger, is that you were in a position to know when it was that these elders had overstepped their authority in the good news (1 Corinthians 9:18), for, according to you, they were "teaching things they ought not" to have been teaching (Titus 1:11). There was no reason, as I can see, for you to have put faith in what they were saying, and it would have helped had you spoken up upon hearing these things to let each one of them know that you wanted to know when it was that the faithful slave have ever indicated that Armageddon would be arriving in the year 1975.
In 1969 I was a boy I honestly don't think they would have listened to me.
What? At Jeremiah 1:6, 7, after Jeremiah proffered his being "but a boy," what did Jehovah say to Jeremiah? "Do not say, 'I am but a boy,'" Jehovah told him. 'I have chosen you to speak on my behalf, I have chosen you to speak for me.' "But to all those to whom I shall send you, you should go; and everything that I shall command you, you should speak." Back in 647 BC, Jehovah told Jeremiah, as we read in the very next verse: "Do not be afraid because of their faces, for 'I am with you to deliver you,' is the utterance of Jehovah." (Jeremiah 1:8)
You may have been "but a boy," a young man like Jeremiah, but you could have told those in the congregation that had heard these elders say such strange things in their ears, "Do not listen to the words of [these elders] who are prophesying to you people. They are making you become vain. The vision of their own heart is what they speak-not from the mouth of Jehovah." (Jeremiah 23:16) "Do not listen to the words of [these elders] ... because falsehood is what they [have prophesied] to you." (Jeremiah 27:14)
As you know Elders are supposed to be teaching. They were teaching these things and the fact that they were not corrected by the other Elders in the congregation shows they were supported by them.
Yes, the elders are supposed to be teaching in accord with the word of God, and you heard all of this going on in your congregation, but said nothing.
I think many Elders correct the matter later by denying that these things were taught and trying to blame the publishers for listening to the false teachings and acting upon them. It always seemed some are reluctant to stand up for what they believe or know is true .
Yes, but you were just as reluctant as these particular elders to whom you refer in that you said nothing. I would call what you are doing here rationalization for what you could have done yourself, but, for whatever reason, failed to do.
I agree with you listening to the JW doesnt benefit you not in the long term.
I've made no such statement. Why I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses and I would wish that you would listen to me. To the contrary, listening to what things Jehovah's Witnesses teach could prove to be beneficial to you in the long term.
I am not so eager and ready to listen to JW now.
Ok.
Knowing not only that they will no doubt change things in the future but also deny what was taught and blame those who listened.
We will always make adjustments in what things we teach when it becomes apparent that something that we formerly believed to be true isn't. Tell me this: If you had four (4) $20 dollar bills stacked on your dining room table when I had come to your home for a visit, and then after I left you found only three of these bills on the table, one of them being missing, would you not conclude that I had taken one of them?
Now all day long you would think me to be a thief, wouldn't you, and you would likely tell four or five people on the phone what you suspected me to have done after having I had been invited into your home as a guest, although I had not stolen anything from you, until, say, your son comes home that same evening, extending a $20 bill toward you, saying, "I borrowed $20 from the dining room table." Despite what you now know to be true, would you yet think unkindly about me, believing me to be a thief when I've done nothing wrong toward you? Or would you not make an adjustment in your thinking and immediately make a few phone calls in an attempt to undo the slander heaped upon my name because of your wrong conclusion?
This is essentially what Jehovah's Witnesses do; we don't hold on to falsehood, for when we realize that we are wrong in something we once believed to be true, we immediately stop teaching it, and 'make a few phone calls,' so to speak, in order to undo our unintentional untruth against the truth. We are those that stand up for the truth and it is only the truth that we want to be found teaching others, not un untruth.
Like I think you are doing.
Ok.
You must follow Christ and not men.
Ok.
@djeggnog wrote:
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 sixth creative day ended and the seventh creative day began? What if Eve's creation was 50 years removed from when Adam's was created?
@The Finger:
DJeggnog the FDS were telling us that it was 4026 that the 7th creative day began.
Is this what the faithful and discreet slave had said or is this what you had understood the slave to have said? What is the context of this statement to which you refer here regarding the year 4026 BC, if I might ask? Counting from the year 4026 BC when Adam was created to the year 1975 gets us to 6,000 years of human history, but what it doesn't give us is the year when Eve was created, for the sixth creative day came to an end after her creation. So I ask you the question: When was Eve created? The year when Eve was created would mark the end of the sixth creative day and the beginning of the seventh creative day, on which Jehovah God rested "from all his work that he had made." (Genesis 2:2) I don't know the year, @The Finger. Do you know?
@nugget:
In answer to your query JWs are comfortable quoting how 1914 fulfilled prophecy that nation rose against nation and that pestilence and other signs got more frequent since then. However how the 1914 date is arrived at is more problematic. The complex [math] and starting point are not easy to explain and without benefit of the literature JWS struggle.
Here essentially is the "complex math" regarding how Jehovah's Witnesses arrive at the year 1914. You might want to get a calculator:
Counting from the year 607 BC, the year when Jerusalem was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, we can see that 607 BC to 1 BC=606 years; that 1 BC to 1 AD=1 year; and that 1 AD to 1914 AD=1,913 years, and when these number are all added together (606+1+1913=2520), it is clear that Messiah's second coming would occur in the year 1914 AD.
Now more specifically, as to the "starting point," I'll now use the scriptures to explain how it is that Jehovah's Witnesses arrive at the year 1914 using just the Bible and a little math from the "starting point" of 607 BC.
At Luke 21:24, Jesus indicated that Jerusalem, which city represented the typical kingdom of God through its theocratic rulership on earth, would be "trodden down," or trampled upon, by the Gentile nations "until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."
This "trampling" began in 607 BC when God permitted the kingly representative of His theocratic kingdom on earth, King Zedekiah, to be dethroned as king of Jerusalem by another king, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, thus interrupting theocratic rulership of the Davidic dynasty of kings as was symbolized by Jerusalem.
At Daniel 4:25, God used the prophet Daniel to interpret a dream that God had given to Nebuchadnezzar (about an immerse tree that would be chopped down with its rootstock left in the earth until "seven times" had passed over it), and Daniel revealed to Nebuchadnezzar that he was the tree that would be chopped down until "seven times" had passed over it until he learned that it was only by God's permission that he ruled as king.
It was during Nebuchadnezzar's 20th regnal year (605 BC), or during his second year of his rulership over the Jewish exiles in Babylon (Daniel 2:1), that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream about a golden-headed image. It was following Jerusalem's destruction in 607 BC that Ezekiel during his 25th year of exile in Babylon (Ezekiel 40:1), in 593 BC, saw the visionary temple, and two years later, in 591 BC, was given a final prophesy concerning Babylon. (Ezekiel 29:19, 20) It was three years later that the 12-year Babylonian siege ended when Tyre fell to Babylon in 588 BC and six years later, after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, that his son, Evil-merodach (Amel-Marduk), ascended to the throne in 582 BC, his first regnal year being 581 BC.
It was sometime between 605 BC and 588 BC that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream about a chopped-down tree and in fulfillment of this "tree" dream, Nebuchadnezzar became insane, so for the next seven years he was unable to rule as king (Daniel 4:33). However, even though Nebuchadnezzar had spent those seven years outdoors eating vegetation as if he were a bull, his body always drenched with the dew of the heavens, his hair growing as long as the feathers of eagles and his nails growing as long as the claws of birds claws until the seven years ended, he not only regained his sanity, but he was restored to his throne.
Through his own experience, Nebuchadnezzar was forced to learn that the Most High is ruler in the kingdom of mankind, and that it is God that grants the authority to rule over mankind to anyone He wishes, and that anyone that walks pridefully in the strength of their might and the dignity of their majesty, He is able to humiliate.
At Ezekiel 21:27, God used the prophet Ezekiel in advance of this trampling of Jerusalem to inform King Zedekiah that his crown would be lifted from him, telling him that the kingdom would become no one else's until the coming of the one having the legal right to it, and that it would only be at a time appointed by God that He would again give theocratic rulership to the one with the legal right to rule from God's throne.
So in the year 607 BC, when Zedekiah was removed from the throne of Jerusalem as king, God's kingdom was from that time forward no longer represented here on the earth. When Daniel revealed the timing for the first coming of Jesus Christ as Messiah the Liberator at Daniel 9:24-27, he also revealed the timing for the Messiah's second coming as well at Daniel 4:15-17, which involved the passing of the prophetic "seven times" or "seven years" as to which Nebuchadnezzar came to know literally.
These seven years spoken of in the Bible were lunar (moon) years. To keep pace with the solar (sun) year, the lunar year must be adjusted from time to time from a 12-month year of 355 days to a 13-month year of 383, 384 or 385 days. In a symbolic or prophetic year, however, the number of days is fixed at 360 days.
Now here's a bit of not-so-complex math: Revelation 12:6, 14, indicates that "a time and times and half a time" -- that is to say, 1 + 2 + 1/2, or 3-1/2 times -- represents a period of 1,260 days, meaning that each "time" would be equal to 360 days based on the 12 lunar months of the Jewish calendar, which average 30 days each.
Now multiplying the 3-1/2 times mentioned here in Revelation by two would give us "seven times," and these "seven times" when multiplied by 360, would therefore amount to 2,520 days, and by making the scriptural application of "a day for a year" found at Numbers 14:34 and at Ezekiel 4:6, each of these 2,520 days would then be years, that is, 2,520 years.
Thus, counting from the year 607 BC, the year when Jerusalem was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, we can see that 607 BC to 1 BC=606 years; 1 BC to 1 AD=1 year; 1 AD to 1914 AD=1,913 years, and when added together (606+1+1913=2520) it is clear that Messiah's second coming would occur in the year 1914 AD.
If challenged [they] have no answer because they are forced to use JW literature and their chronology has no validity in secular sources. An [in depth] scrutiny of JW literature also causes the dating structure to fall [apart]. As a result they have not studied this in a while and have difficulty bringing details to mind.
Since I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses, you were here challenging me, @nugget, but did it seem to you that I had any difficulty providing an answer to your question? Did I use any of our literature here or did I only use the Bible and math? Did the "dating structure" I used fall apart somewhere?
@djeggnog wrote:
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?
@The Finger:
1914 is not a date that is found in the bible anymore than 4026.
First of all, I told you that the year 1914 AD has no relationship to the year 4026 BC. Secondly, you cannot be telling me that were you to read the following --
Betty Davis was nominated for an Academy Award in the "Best Actress" category for her work in the movie "All About Eve," and her last Oscar nomination in this same category occurred 12 years later when she was nominated in the movie "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"
-- that would not be able to figure out when it was Davis received an Oscar nomination for "All Above Eve" and when it was that she received an Oscar nomination for "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" Is there enough information contain in this blurb that you could discover the dates when these two Oscar nominations were made? Or did I really need to write this blurb as follows:
Betty Davis was nominated back in 1950 for an Academy Award in the "Best Actress" category for her work in the movie "All About Eve," and her last Oscar nomination in this same category occurred 12 years later in 1962 when she was nominated in the movie "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"
We were taught "the nonsense" at the hall and through the WT publications. We were taught that we could use the bible to count back to Adam's creation and that naming the animals wouldn't have taken long as it didn't take Noah long to get the animals into the Ark. The publications stated 4026 as the start of the creative day.
You are here essentially claiming that it is "nonsense" that human beings are able to assign dates to the events about which the Bible speaks, such as to the year of Adam's creation (4026 BC), the year when the global deluge occurred (2370 BC), the year when Jerusalem was destroyed (607 BC) and the year when the Lord Jesus Christ was impaled (33 AD). Ok.
If you have the start of a 7000 year creative day and you know you are almost 6000 years into it and there is a thousand years left for Christ to reign. There seems little point to be teaching this if you do not expect people to draw some sort of conclusion from it.
And the year when Eve was created, which would have a bearing on when the sixth creative day ended and the seventh creative day began, you see as being totally irrelevant in calculating when the 6,000 years began, right? In all of our literature, Jehovah's Witnesses have been clear to point out that we had determined that the Bible teaches that by 1975 mankind had been in existence for 6,000 years counting from Adam's creation, but at no time have we ever taught that the sixth creative day ended with Adam's creation, for we are fully aware that Eve was created after Adam (1 Timothy 2:13), and that only after her creation did the sixth creative day come to an end. We do expect people to draw, not just any conclusion, not "some sort of conclusion," from the correct conclusion.
Many years ago as a small boy I stood on the doorstep of a house while my father had a long discussion with the lady who lived there about the "truth" including the "this generation" She said it was how you are interpreting the bible he insisted it wasn't.
Many years later the generation teaching has been changed. Maybe the woman could have helped the FDS to a better understanding.
Maybe.
@djeggnog wrote:
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 [..] 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 Finger wrote:
These ones were just following the direction from the spirit directed organization.
First, no one should have been dispensing such "advice" to anyone advising family heads to become irresponsible toward their family's needs in order to engage in full-time service.
Second, I would think that only someone retarded or someone completely unaware of how the world works (like a teenager) would have been persuaded to pay heed to such advice from anyone. I don't know why, but for some reason I've been assuming here that you were an adult in 1975.
Third, what direction were you "just following" exactly? I'm not clear on what you are telling me here.
Fourth, if you had been a member of the Peoples Temple and directed at that time by Jim Jones, the leader of a real cult, to drink the Kool-Aid, are you telling me that you and I wouldn't be here having this discussion right now (because you and your family would be dead going on 33 years this November)? BTW, is there enough information contained in this paragraph that you cannot tell me the exact year when the Jonestown Massacre occurred using simple math? Or did I really need to have written the year, too?
Fifth, had you already graduated high school back in 1975?
@djeggnog