This weeks WT study got me thinking as to if there was anything major that pre 1914 Bible Students believed that would be accepted by modern day Witness.
As far as I can tell, they throught:
1 - The last days had started in 1799
2 - Christ's presence had stated in 1874
3 - The end of the world was coming in 1914
4 - Christmas was OK
5 - Birthdays were OK
6 - Smoking was OK
7 - No view on the generation
8 - No idea of the great crowd and therefore no distinction between two classes of people
9 - No acceptance of an earthly paradise
10 - Door to door work not pushed
11 - Revelation view completely different
12 - Daniel image view completely different
13 - Acceptance of pyramidology in the working out of bible prophecy
They had no view on blood transfusions as (I assume) it was not a known/common practice.
OK, sexual immorality would be and still is a no no but that's not a unique teaching. I guess they had the same view on hellfire, the trinity and immortality of the soul as a modern day witness. Having said that I think (happy to be corrected) that was similar to the Adventists.
I don't know what they thought about 6 day creation - but my guess is that they probably thought it was a literal 6 day event.
So... if I am correct on these things AND not much changed to 1918 then pretty much nothing of prophetic significance is common. If I went back to his teachings at the time Christ apparently OKed the WT as the F&DS then I would be DF'ed as an apostate. By my reckoning I would have to have go to somewhere around the mid 40's before all the above items come close to resembling what a modern day witness would accept and even then there are differences.
Am I even close to being correct?