I remember that the 1949 talk was actually kind of anticlimactic, Russia just having suffered defeat at the Berlin airlift. The Cold War not becoming hot, and prosperity coming to Europe with the Marshal plan. WT panic mongering madness, even in a city bombed to bits, and oranges, bananas seen for the first time in decades. but
In the cosmological sense the statement is right. If you think what you see is happening now,--wrong, it all is already history, it is too late for you see the other's now. So, do not trust what you are thinking.