by Sea Breeze 5 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Oh yes! I was 12 years old in 1975. How old were you then? All JW's were counting the years till Armageddon. Towing the line was the only thing that would get you through it.
A lot of the newbies don't know about this history. It really wasn't all that long ago.
Here's some former district overseers and others high up who tell it like it is... lest we forget.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVkxmqE0qZk
So many JWs running ahead of Jehovah's chariot...
I wonder how that happened, given that all JWs are supposed to believe the same things...
SEA BREEZE:
I just watched this YouTube. I’m a little older than you and wasn’t yet in the Witness religion in 1975.. I was in blissful ignorance about everything.
In watching the video and hearing former JWs give their eye-witness account of what happened, I’m not surprised they left the religion. When I came in the late ‘70s nobody talked about this.. I might have had second thoughts about getting involved with the religion if I knew about this and earlier failed prophecies.
The sad part is this failure was kept hidden from newer JWs in the following years! This explains why a lot of newbies don’t know this history.
Problem is history repeated itself to some degree in the last two decades with some JWs making similar mistakes of selling homes, leaving the workforce before their actual retirement age to go ‘where the need is great’, etc. They were sure Armageddon was coming soon!.. Then the money runs out and rumor has it they are contacting JW friends to send them money!
This adds yet more needy people to Witness congregations - which is why I’m Glad to be nowhere near this mess! As another poster says: ‘The chickens have come home to roost’.
Thanks for posting, I certainly remember those events very well (including the denials which followed afterwards).The only thing I don’t recall is the countdown to “Armageddon”, as described in that video. Not in the congregations I was in, anyway!(Others may remember this being the case, perhaps?)
For sure, the world will end one day - some four billion years from now, when the sun runs out of nuclear fuel.
As I recall, it was pretty much hysteria level stuff. If you were a kid at that time, you might as well have lived in a cellar during WW II.
I was the youngest of 3 boys. After it was over, everyone, including my brothers just acted like nothing happened. I don't recall the subject ever being brought up again in our home. It was like everyone was under some sort of spell. In 1976 or 1977 at age 19, they made my oldest brother and elder (enforcer), which he remains as such to this day.
A lot of the youth checked out during this time. Anyone remember the disco craze that started shortly after this in the late 1970's? A lot of JW teens ended up dancing away their lost faith.
In the 1 November 1995 Watchtower, Jehovah's Witnesses abandoned their decades-long belief that Christ's words "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (Matthew 24:34) was a reference to the people living in 1914 (p. 17).
Withing a week or two, the Watchtower dropped all reference to 1914 from their Awake! magazine's "Why Awake! Is Published" masthead:
"Most important, this magazine builds confidence in the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away" (22 October 1995).
This was on every Awake magazine for decades. But the next week, the new version read:
"Most important, this magazine builds confidence in the Creator's promise of a peaceful and secure new world that is about to replace the present wicked lawless system of things" (8 November p. 4).
Here they tacitly blame the Creator for the failed prophecy ! Nice. They hate God for making them look stupid.
This is when I left. Never stepped foot in a KH since.
@Rivergang:
The only thing I don’t recall is the countdown to “Armageddon”
I think every congregation was a little different. I do remember prominent well liked elders stepping down after this - apparently "for no reason". I now know the reason.
When we walked on the moon in 1969, at age 6, (that's how I remember the date) I remember counting on my little fingers how long I had left to live.
I calcualted 6 more years. I decided that I would straighten up and not get into any trouble in about 5 more years at age 11. That way I could conserve my energy for the final push to be good enough to survive Aramgeddon.
In the years 1970-1975 I certainly was not counting down the years till Armageddon. I was focused in dong well in my grade school courses and in doing my hobbies. In 1974-1975 I knew that the WT was not saying that Armageddon would definitely happen in the year 1975 or even by that year. I also knew that the Bible does not say the hour it will happen, nor the day, nor the year, nor the decade, nor the century.
To me at no time in my life did the New World under Christ, nor Armageddon, nor the Great Tribulation appear to be within two years. I never perceived any evidence that it was ever that close. As a result, up through the year 1975 I gave nearly no thought to the timing of Armageddon except when reading WT literature about it (and I primarily read the literature because the WT said I must or should). When I was in 1975 and thus a young child in grade school, the JW religion (in regards to praying to Jehovah God, studying the Bible and other WT literature, and attending the kingdom hall meetings and going out in field service) was pure drudgery to me. I wanted to do what was fun and/or interesting to me, and worship (other than practicing good morals) was neither to me.
Regarding disco music I greatly like the sound of the popular disco music I heard on the radio and on the TV called "Solid Gold" and I still love those disco songs, including numerous ones by Donna Summer. In the early 1980s I was thus offended by WT literature saying all disco music is bad (and thus even the hits in the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack) and must be avoided and that JWs should never go to disco clubs discotheques). I continue to love those hit disco songs and after I moved out of my mom's house I purchased record albums, cassette tape albums, and much more recently a few CD albums of those great songs.
