It's a way of kicking the can down the road another hundred years or so when the whole issue will be someone else's problem.
Anyone explain the generation idea!
by Witness 007 27 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Ding
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HereIam60
In reading the scriptures I never got the idea that Jesus used the term 'generation' as any type of time marker. He seems to use it as a general reference to whatever group he was speaking to at the time. To faithful disciples - they were a generation that would not pass away until all his words were fufilled. To oppsers - they were a 'wicked and adulterous generation' that kept seeking a sign .. Both groups contemparary in that time.
When the 'generation overlap' idea was introduced (in print) I thought I understood it. I thought of people in attendance at a typical Kingdom Hall. There are older and younger ones. Obviously the younger were born during the lifetime of the older. In that sense their generations overlap. I took this to mean they were saying that some younger persons recieved annointing during the lifetime of those annointed prior to 1914.
When Splane's chart video was played at the meeting however it ceased to make any sense to me especially the use of Fred Franz as a typical example. Others at the hall acted as though everything was suddenly clear.
I guess I've been wary of "chart and pointer' explanations ever since years ago a brother went off his meds and in doing a 5 minute ministry school part took a whiteboard and easel on stage with him and drew 3 intersecting circles and rambled on incomprehensibly (not on trinity though) for so long that brothers had to gently interrupt him and help him from the stage..
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TonusOH
Witness 007: How does that even work.
About as well as any of the other crap they teach. They decided that Jesus's comment about the temple's destruction within the lifetime of those listening to his speech also applied centuries later, to the people who were alive in 1914. It's nonsense. They came up with it to use it as a way to create a sense of urgency. Remember that they kept tinkering with the explanation: first, it was people who were in their teen years in 1914. Then, it was toddlers. Then, it was those who were born that year.
The idea was to make it seem as if the end was imminent. By 1995, they had stretched the explanation so thin that it was clear that it was becoming a problem, as the generation born in 1914 would be 80 years old. So they quietly dropped it, which is how that particular mess should have ended. Why they decided to try to revive it with the "overlapping generations" disaster is anyone's guess, but I am thinking that Tony Morris must have purchased extra booze before that meeting.
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Sea Breeze
Watchtower false predictions will NEVER end, because people apparently like being lied to:
Predictions (by date of publication) include:
- 1877: Christ's kingdom would hold full sway over the earth in 1914; the Jews, as a people, would be restored to God's favor; the "saints" would be carried to heaven.[204]
- 1891: 1914 would be "the farthest limit of the rule of imperfect men".[205]
- 1904: "World-wide anarchy" would follow the end of the Gentile Times in 1914.[206]
- 1916: World War I would terminate in Armageddon and the rapture of the "saints".[207]
- 1917: In 1918, Christendom would go down as a system to oblivion and be succeeded by revolutionary governments. God would "destroy the churches wholesale and the church members by the millions". Church members would "perish by the sword of war, revolution and anarchy". The dead would lie unburied. In 1920 all earthly governments would disappear, with worldwide anarchy prevailing.[208]
- 1920: Messiah's kingdom would be established in 1925 and bring worldwide peace. God would begin restoring the earth. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful patriarchs would be resurrected to perfect human life and be made princes and rulers, the visible representatives of the New Order on earth. Those who showed themselves obedient to God would never die.[209]
- 1922: The anti-typical "jubilee" that would mark God's intervention in earthly affairs would take place "probably the fall" of 1925.[210]
- 1925: God's restoration of Earth would begin "shortly after" October 1, 1925. Jerusalem would be made the world's capital. Resurrected "princes" such as Abel, Noah, Moses and John the Baptist would give instructions to their subjects around the world by radio, and airplanes would transport people to and from Jerusalem from all parts of the globe in just "a few hours".[211]
- 1938: Armageddon was too close for marriage or child bearing.[212]
- 1941: There were only "months" remaining until Armageddon.[213]
- 1942: Armageddon was "immediately before us".[214]
- 1952: Most people who had also been alive in 1914 would not have the chance to live out their natural lives; "the lives of the majority of them will be cut short by Armageddon".[215]
- 1957: Armageddon was so near that "most of the boys and girls today will not have the opportunity to waste their youth and prime of life ... According to God's timing the calamity of the universal war of Armageddon will strike them down while yet in their youth and prime of life."[216]
- 1961: Awake! magazine stated that Armageddon "will come in the twentieth century.... This generation will see its fulfillment."[217]
- 1966: It would be 6000 years since man's creation in the fall of 1975 and it would be "appropriate" for Christ's thousand-year reign to begin at that time.[218] Time was "running out, no question about that".[219] The "immediate future" was "certain to be filled with climactic events ... within a few years at most", the final parts of Bible prophecy relating to the "last days" would undergo fulfillment as Christ's reign began.
- 1967: The end-time period (beginning in 1914) was claimed to be so far advanced that the time remaining could "be compared, not just to the last day of a week, but rather, to the last part of that day".[220]
- 1968: No one could say "with certainty" that the battle of Armageddon would begin in 1975, but time was "running out rapidly" with "earthshaking events" soon to take place.[221] In March 1968 there was a "short period of time left", with "only about ninety months left before 6000 years of man's existence on earth is completed".[222]
- 1969: The existing world order would not last long enough for young people to grow old; the world system would end "in a few years". Young Witnesses were told not to bother pursuing tertiary education for this reason.[223][224]
- 1971: The "battle in the day of Jehovah" was described as beginning "[s]hortly, within our twentieth century".[225]
- 1974: There was just a "short time remaining before the wicked world's end" and Witnesses were commended for selling their homes and property to "finish out the rest of their days in this old system in the pioneer service" (i.e., fulltime evangelism).[226]
- 1980: Watchtower magazine described the notion that "the wicked system of this world" would last "until the turn of the century" as "highly improbable in view of world trends and the fulfillment of Bible prophecy".[227]
- 1984: There were "many indications" that "the end" was closer than the end of the 20th century.[228]
- 1989: The Watchtower asserted that Christian missionary work begun in the first century would "be completed in our 20th century".[229] When the magazine was republished in bound volumes, the phrase "in our 20th century" was replaced with the less specific "in our day".
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Ron.W.
👍👍👍👍👍
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jwleaks
aqwsed12345
I enjoyed your analysis. In paragraph 5 you wrote:
“To spin “generation” as a floating window, gluing together anyone whose lives overlap with any surviving member of the 1914 cohort, is pure revisionism—an invention with no precedent in either secular or biblical usage.”
I would be more inclined to replace the word ‘revisionism’ with the word ‘negationism’.
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AbaddonProvesIt
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"Goatlike Personality" says: I will explain the "overlapping generation" teaching in an easy understandable way, using goats as an illustration.
Also it should be noted, if you do not understand the following presentation on video about "overlapping generation" [using goats], then you are the problem, you must have a bad attitude!
Now let's begin.
Jehovah's Witnesses believe Satan was thrown down to earth in 1914, and that the generation that saw this will still be on earth when Armageddon arrives. The 1914 generation is now over 110 years or older. But this is not a problem since the generation that Jesus was speaking of, is of the overlapping kind.
This video was released 5 years ago by Goatlike Personality on YouTube.
Here is the link to the hilarious, very funny video, so that you will really, really understand the "overlapping generation" teaching among Jehovah's Witnesses today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abcnryekW2c
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DesirousOfChange
Clearly, NO ONE can explain the [overlapping] generation bullshit.
Some things are just a matter of faith. . . . .
Doc
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Biahi
Even Splane can’t ’splain it. 🤷♀️😂
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blondie
I saw a problem right away, at least probably not a problem for the WTS, room for there to be more overlapping, to infinity.