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Armageddon
by 2000 AD:
A Prophecy
by God to Spur JWs to Act
(Investigator 67, 1999
July)
<>
Prophecy
Spurs JWs
Prophecies are
to
Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs)
what spurs are to horses – they motivate!
Charles Taze
Russell the
first president
of the Watchtower Society (WTS) – the corporation which manages JW
legal
and financial matters – wrote:
Seeing this,
our
natural
weakness, the
Lord has provided time-prophecies as a spur to quicken
and awaken
us fully, and keep us active in his service. (Russell. C T 1889
The
Time Is At Hand p.
365)
One of many
"spurs"
in The Time Is
At Hand stated:
...in
subsequent
chapters we present proofs
that the setting up of the Kingdom of God is already begun, that it is
pointed
out in prophecy as due to begin the exercise of power in A. D. 1878,
and
that the "battle of the great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14.), which
will end in AD, 1915, with the complete overthrow of earth's present
rulership,
is already commenced. (p. 101)
Concerning C
T
Russell, it was claimed:
Truly there
lived
among
us in these last
days a Prophet of the Lord... (The Watch Tower 1917 June 1 p. 163)
Prophecies
Still Spur JWs
Now
The article Armageddon
by 2000 AD says
Jehovah in Investigator 51 showed that Jehovah's
Witnesses used
to teach that Armageddon would occur in the 1970s and [that they] still
believe in Armageddon by 2000 AD.
The Investigator
article
gave at least
six plain quotes from WTS literature including:
Shortly,
within our
twentieth century the
"battle in the day of Jehovah" will begin against the modern antitype
of
Jerusalem, Christendom.
(The Nations
Shall
Know That I Am Jehovah – How?
1971, p. 216)
As in C T
Russell's
time the idea behind
such prophecy was still to spur or to motivate:
Let it be
emphasized
that our paying attention
to the prophetic word should not just be for the purpose of gaining
knowledge.
Far from it! That word should stimulate us to act on that knowledge,
causing
us to do God's will, and especially now, "in the final part of the
days."
(The Watchtower 1983 November 15 p. 21)
The
following 1969
statement, aimed at
making teenagers quit school, illustrates the idea:
If you are a
young
person, you also need
to face the fact that you will never grow old in this present system of
things. Why not? Because all the evidence in fulfillment of Bible
prophecy
indicates that this corrupt system is due to end in a few years. Of the
generation that observed the beginning of the "last days" in 1914,
Jesus
foretold: "This generation will by no means pass away until all these
things
occur." – Matt. 24:34.
Therefore,
as a
young
person, you will never
fulfill any career that this system offers. If you are in highschool
and
thinking about a college education, it means at least four, perhaps
even
six or eight more years to graduate into a specialized career. But
where
will this system of things be by that time? It will be well on the way
toward its finish, if not actually gone! (Awake! 1969 May 22 p. 15)
JWs Teenagers in 1969 were spurred with: "you will never fulfill any career that this system offers."
The
Jehovah's
Witnesses have actually
made false predictions for almost thirty dates! See the list in Investigator
No. 56. For example in 1913:
From the
leisurely
manner in which some
are going about matters it would seem that they expect about fifty more
years of harvest. We expect that harvest will be ended in about a year
from now. (IBSA Convention Report 1913 page 320)
That the
"spur" was
effective back then
before 1914 is seen from a letter published in The Brooklyn Daily
Eagle:
Very many have
gone so
far as to sell their
homes over here, expecting to die before 1914 (at the latest), and many
others have so arranged their affairs as to last till that date only.
(1911
December 26)
That the
"spur" was
also effective in
the 1970s – when Armageddon was scheduled for the mid 1970s – is seen
from
the American edition of the meeting guide titled The Kingdom
Ministry:
Reports are
heard of
brothers selling their
homes and property and planning to finish out the rest of their days in
this old system in the pioneer service. Certainly this is a fine way to
spend the short time remaining before the wicked world's end.
(1974 May,
p. 3.
Reproduced in Investigator No. 45)
Two
Sorts of Prophets Distinguished
Awake! 1993
March
22 pp. 3-4 drew
a distinction between a "prophet who speaks in the name of Jehovah"
and
"others...voicing expectations based on their own interpretation of
some
scripture text..."
The latter, the
article
says, "should not
be viewed as false prophets..."
It's clear that
the WTS
leaders wished to
put themselves in the second group but they did so without citing any
of
the their own failed predictions involving almost 30 dates.
JW
Prophets Speak In The
Name of Jehovah
The
Watchtower of
1943 claimed that
"Jehovah God" does all the interpreting and:
"He merely
uses the
‘servant class' to
publish the interpretation..." (July p. 202)
The WTS also
teaches
that:
No man's
opinion is
expressed in The Watchtower... (1931 November p.
327)
It's also
claimed
that
JWs:
...base
everything
they
teach in their
evangelizing work upon the Bible. (The Watchtower 1992 September 1 p.
19)
And:
The religion
that is
approved by God must
agree in all its details with the Bible. (The Truth that leads to
Eternal
Life 1968 p. 14)
JWs publicly
claim
the
Bible is infallible
and inspired by God. If then JWs "agree with" the Bible "in all its
details"
and "base everything ... upon the Bible" then it follows that the WTS
prophecies
are "inspired of God". This conclusion is so obvious that JWs
themselves
call certain prophecies "the Creator's promise".
From 1982 to
1995, for
example, the statement
of purpose on page 2 or 4 of Awake! referred to:
...the
Creator's
promise
of a peaceful
and secure new order before the generation that saw the events of 1914
C.E. passes away.
Clearly the
WTS
leaders are of the first
sort of the two sorts of prophets they distinguished. The WTS leaders –
the
Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses and the successive presidents of
the organization – are "prophets who speak in the name of Jehovah".
(Deuteronomy
18:20)
Their prophecies, it follows, allegedly come from God!
Like
The Inspired Prophet
Ezekiel
The book "The Nations
Shall Know That
I am Jehovah – How?" (1971) claims that the 7th
century
BC prophet Ezekiel was:
...a true
inspired
prophet of Jehovah.
(p. 277)
Ezekiel's
appointment
to prophesy the
destruction of Jerusalem supposedly has a modern counterpart in JWs
prophesying
the destruction of Christendom:
Who is
Ezekiel's
present-day counterpart,
whose message and conduct corresponds with that of that ancient prophet
of Jehovah? Of whom today was he a "sign" or "portent"? Not some
individual
man, but of a group of people. (p. 58)
The "group
of
people"
is claimed to be
the "remnant" (about 10,000 people) still alive of the 144,000 who in
JW
theology will go Heaven.
They were, says
the
book:
...commissioned
to
serve
as the mouthpiece
and active agent of Jehovah. (p. 59)
They were
"commissioned" in 1919 (p.
61) and:
...Jehovah
commissioned
this dedicated,
baptized anointed class of servants to speak to all the nations in His
Name. (p. 66)
They are:
...true
spokesman for
Jehovah the Sovereign
Lord. (p. 291)
In practice it's not
the entire "remnant"
who invent the prophecies and theology of JWs. Rather, at present it's
the "governing body" and until 1970 it was almost exclusively the
president
and officers of the WTS.
If JW leaders
are the
"counterpart" of "a
true inspired prophet of Jehovah" and serve as "the mouthpiece...of
Jehovah...to
speak to all nations in his name" as a "true spokesman for Jehovah" we
would expect their message to be inspired and infallible.
To believe such
things
would truly "spur"
and "stimulate" the believers.
Occasionally,
however,
the
JW leaders deny
being "inspired" or "infallible". In view of the above evidence such
denials
are simply self-contradictions.
WTS
Prophecy To Fail Again
Should we
therefore be
intimidated and "spurred"
into joining JWs and "stimulated" to trek door to door with The
Watchtower?
The article Armageddon
by 2000 AD Says "Jehovah" concluded:
JW prophecies are
known to have failed for
many other dates. These include 1878, 1881, 1906/1907, 1912, 1914,
1915,
1918, 1920, 1924, 1925, 1928, 1930s, 1935/1936, 1942, 1940s, 1970s.
Generalizing
from this trend of failure, the prophecy of "within our twentieth
century"
should prove to be false. (Investigator No.
51
p. 45)
B S
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