The following is the talk of the assembly followed by my 15 minutes commentary.i have included part of my notes below which I used for the commentary
WHAT IS THE HAILSTONE MESSAGE?
IS IT LITERAL OR SYMBOLIC?
For years now the Watchtower has been promoting the idea that Jehovah’s Witnesses all over the world go from door to door in fulfillment of Matthew 24:14: “ And the good news of the Kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth and then the end will come”.This message consists from a “message of good will” preached to the world up to the time of the the Great Tribulation and a message of “judgement”during the Great Tribulation .The talk you’ve just seen was a talk about this message of judgement which apparently has been prophesied in the book of Revelation as a “hailstone message” but as always is this the case?
So this is the verse in question(read rev. 16:21)
The Watchtower has for years now portrayed the verse in Revelation 16:21 as a symbolism ,referring to it a hard hitting message of judgement upon the world .But is this explanation solidly based based on the Bible? Let’s find out :
W84 3/15 p.19 par 17
One of the basic rule of Bible interpretation is to consider a verse in the light of its immediate context.Every Bible scholar on this planet will tell you that ripping verses out of their immediate context and then applying interpretation is the worst most dangerous way to interpret the Bible.So what does the immediate context has to say in Revelation 16? Are these literal hailstones falling of the sky OR a symbolic “haistone message?” Let’s read the immediate context from verse 17:
There is absolutely nothing in the immediate context about a symbolic hailstone message .All we have is physical phenomena like hailstones and earthquakes and physical bodies like cities islands and mountains .This has nothing to do with a witnessing and everything to do with physical disasters plagues upon the humankind.
In actual fact the cross references that the NWT itself provides for this verse point to physical disasters and nothing symbolic
In many ways the end of the world will be similar to the end of the kingdom of Egypt back in the days of Moses.In the same way Jehovah destroyed the nation of Egypt with the use of 10 plagues God will incorporate similar plagues to accomplish his judgement upon mankind but this time in a worldwide scale. In fact the Watchtower having seen the obvious of this interpretation half admits its validity in the book Revelation-Its Grand Climax at Hand! The now out of print commentary of the last book of the Bible
re chap. 32 p. 234 pars. 38-39