Another example of how Watchtower are rewriting their own history.

by skin 15 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  skin

  From today's daily WT text.

  Friday, December 31 2021.
  
  Let your Kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also on earth.​—Matt. 6:10.
  
  Christendom generally does not teach the Scriptural truth that one day obedient humans will live forever on earth. (2 Cor. 4:3, 4) Today, most religions in Christendom teach that all good people go to heaven when they die. It was different, however, with the small group of Bible Students who were publishing the Watch Tower in the late 1800’s. They understood that God would restore Paradise on earth and that millions of obedient humans would live here on earth​—not in heaven. However, it took time for them to discern clearly who these obedient humans would be. "

  Here is the real WT origin of the earthly class.

  This doctrine of an earthly "hope" was first introduced by the president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Joseph F. Rutherford, on Friday, 31st May 1935, to an audience of Jehovah's Witnesses in Washington, DC, America. It was then published in a two-part article entitled "The Great Multitude" in The Watchtower, 1st and 15th August of that same year. The information presented was a change to the previous teachings of Jehovah's Witnesses. Their founding president, Charles T. Russell, had taught that the "great crowd" (or "great multitude") had a heavenly hope. That was the accepted teaching for over fifty years. When Rutherford became the president of the Watch Tower Society in early 1917, at first he continued to preach a heavenly hope for the "great crowd". This new doctrine, therefore, was not just "a different gospel" to the ear of a Christian; it was also different for all Jehovah's Witnesses.
  
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  waton

  millions will never die. 1918-1925.
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  carla

  How do jw's get around Rev 21?- Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”[a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away

  I have forgotten, I suppose it is just 'symbolic' for them? I have yet to find a scripture where jw's will help the Almighty God clean up the earth of our dead burnt up hotdog carcasses -cause everybody knows God needs help with this sort of thing.
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  Fisherman

  millions will never die. 1918-1925.

  They are all dead more or less.

  But the Bible says that at some point in time people will survive a destruction and live forever. Hopefully this is true and will happen to us.
  
  
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  Ding

  I think Rutherford described the change as, "Light flashed up..."
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  waton

  But the Bible says that at some point in time people will survive a destruction and live forever

  fm, where does it say that?

  Math 25 says that the sheep (not the other sheep) will go of into everlasting life, but that can be heavenly too!

  Rev 7 reports the great crowd (possibly the 12 tribes that wt says are the non-anointed) as saying: "We owe salvation), but their save place is mentioned to be heavenly, at least "spiritually" in front of the throne, the temple.

  caria, wt mentioned it will take 7 years just to mark the carcasses,the skeletons for later burial, so we are talking decades. think the effort that Russia, germany went through,with a 10% loss, at the great A, only 1/ 1000 of the population will survive, according to wt statistics.
  
  
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  Fisherman

  m, where does it say that?

  So, elite humanity goes to heaven, bad guys go to the other place, universe is just there and earth is inhabited by plants and animals. No more humans?
  
  
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  Drearyweather

  skin,

  The day text is correct.

  The Bible students in Russell's time believed in 3 classes: First made up of the 144,000, followed by a secondary heavenly class of the 'great multitude', and an earthly class of obedient humans who will live forever on earth.

  In 1935, Rutherford revised it to 2 classes: A heavenly class of 144,000 and an earthly class of the 'great multitude' with other resurrected ones.
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  Sea Breeze

  

  That WT article is very misleading. Christians have always believed in the paradise earth..... they just didn't call it that. They call it the Millennium Reign. This one hundred year old chart from a Baptist pastor illustrates.
  
  After Augustine, the Roman Church allegorized the Millennium reign. But aside from that, Christ's Millennium Reign on earth for 1000 years has been bedrock Christian doctrine since the beginning.
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  vienne

  Russell and Watch Tower adherents were Restiutionists. They believed in a restored paradise earth. This was derived from the Literalist/Age to Come movement and is traceable to the first century. What Rutherford did was 'clarify' who the great multitude of Revelation were supposed to be. He did not introduce the thought of an earthly inheritance.

  Note that the Watchtower wrote: "Christendom generally does not teach the Scriptural truth that one day obedient humans will live forever on earth."

  This quietly acknowledges that some churches do teach that. Among these are the Abrahamic Faith bodies. The largest of these is The Church of God General Conference (Atlanta). Russell was connected to this group in his early days, some of them calling him "brother."