What if you had information about future events in the world before they happened? What if you knew that something big was going to happen in the year 1914? What could you do with that information? All my life growing up I knew that the Watchtower was a prophet of God because they predicted the cataclysmic events of 1914. Before the date they were giving specifics about what was going to happen and when something DID happen in 1914 they patted themselves on the back for a job well done. For even if they got the specifics totally wrong, they still predicted a world altering event as did others at that time which they shook hands with. For some reason there were people who seemed to have a faint awareness of the gravity of the events that would take place in that particular year. One could say that they had so much faith in that particular year that they made sure to find "confirmation" within the pages of our ancient texts.
Consider the occupation of the Firefighter. Their entire job market centers around the existence of random acts of terror. Suppose one day that someone discovered we can end all fires once and for all without ecological harm? Likely most of the firefighters would start looking to transform their lives as their livelihoods were being forecasted as nonexistent in the very near future. However, there would also be a small percentage of firefighters, sociopathic most likely, that would approach the problem very differently. Instead of understanding that a world without uncontrolled fire is good, they would instead see a threat to their very existence. They would take every means necessary to continue the existence of fires even to the point of undermining whatever it is that is challenging them in the first place.
To postpone the future indefinitely they would really have to be the first to discover that their livelihood was at risk. They would then have to cover up the foundational pieces of information that lead to that discovery. Then they would have to develop a highly sophisticated lie that they could then sell to the public. It would even serve their purposes to develop propaganda that would demonize anything that could possibly lead in the direction of the truth which includes their figurative death. Eventually this lie would become impossible to cover up and exposure would lead to the end of the structure holding back the truth that firefighters are not required.
When I postulate such a phenomenon with the Watchtower Society their actions seem to make more sense to me. Prophecy was something that was widely accepted in ancient times. Today the way we look at prophets is very different and you could easily say that prophecy in general is passing away.
Can you imagine the satisfaction of life knowing that there are people who can tell the future for you? It could literally smite any worry you had about the world which is exactly how Watchtower adherents live their lives. "Got cancer? That's prophesied to be gone! It's almost like NOT HAVING CANCER!"
If you think about this explanation it works very well for an ancient population. You were given comfort as a parent because your child had a conceivably less chance of being subject to the same woes you faced. You wouldn't even consider that a lie because thousands of years later we are not facing the same woes, so in a way they were right all those years ago. Which is much like putting out emotional fires in times of deep despair. Their sages peered into the future with high intuition and were able to grasp to the hope they were incapable of logically putting together. What that did was give them the motivation to teach their messages of hope which are always in the midst of social and military collapse.
In our day in age we have Science which offers many, if not all, of the benefits of the ancient prophet. Instead of a mish mash of skills as the ancient Prophet's had, now we have skilled specialists. We have meteorologists, psychologists, economists, physics, mathematicians and many other variant specialized scientific fields all challenge the might of the ancient prophet. What this effectively does is snuffs out the modern day prophet by putting them in a game over their own existence. Which is why religions that rely on Prophets have fared so badly since the era of the Great Disappointment.
What we have today is a shadow of the majesty that was organized religion. Today the field is largely run by criminals and the pathologically insane. These are the ones that grasp onto their own selfishness until their bitter end, an end that should not be pitied. Most people have the sense to leave what is passing away before them, whereas others just seem to harden into wickedness and go down with the ship.
-Sab