5In last week’s post, I looked at the harm the Watchtower’s false prophecies has done to Jehovah’s Witnesses who, in faith, oriented their lives around those failed end times predictions.
But what has it done to its own credibility and to that of Jehovah’s Witnesses who work tirelessly to spread the Watchtower’s message door-to-door? Continue reading
Contrary to the Watchtower’s prophetic pronouncements:
The Watchtower leaders could have admitted their ignorance and stopped prophesying.
Instead, they charged ahead, proclaiming boldly that the resurrection of the Old Testament patriarchs would occur in 1925 and that “millions now living will never die.” Continue reading
The next president of the Watchtower, Joseph “Judge” Rutherford, eventually rejected many of his predecessor’s teachings, but he couldn’t do so right away because Charles Taze Russell was revered by his followers.
When Russell died in the fall of 1916, the Watchtower leaders moved quickly to bridge to the future.
In 1917, they published The Finished Mystery. It was presented as Volume 7 of Studies in the Scriptures, the posthumous book of Russell.
In fact, it was written by other men.
The Watchtower now claims that in 1918-1919, Jesus Christ personally inspected all the world’s religions. He found the Watchtower organization to be spiritually cleansed from past errors and faithfully dispensing spiritual food. Accordingly, he designated it to be the “faithful and discreet slave” of Matthew 24:45 and gave it dominion over all of his affairs on earth.
In effect, it became Jehovah’s one true religious organization on earth, authorized to speak and act on his behalf.
Given that The Finished Mystery was the last book it published and promoted before Jesus’ claimed inspection, I want to take some time to discuss it. Continue reading
In an earlier post entitled “When Prophetic Speculation Flops,” I noted that when someone’s “end of the world” prophecies fail, their disappointed followers demand an explanation and threaten to leave.
When that happens, they have a number of options. Continue reading
In last week’s post, I showed how the Watchtower arrives at its 1914 date for the end of the Gentile Times.
As I noted, its calculations are dependent on its claim that Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians in 607 B.C.E.
If that date is wrong, then the 1914 date is also wrong. Continue reading
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