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
The 1914 date is critical to the Watchtower’s claim that its leadership is the “faithful and discreet slave” spoken of by Jesus in Matthew 24:45.
If Jesus didn’t return invisibly in 1914, then he didn’t inspect the world’s religions in 1918-1919, name the Watchtower organization as his “faithful and discreet slave” and give it worldwide authority as the only true religion.
But since the number “1914” doesn’t appear in the Bible, did the Watchtower just pull that date out of thin air? Continue reading
Many—perhaps most—Jehovah’s Witnesses have no idea that passageway measurements of the Great Pyramid of Egypt had anything to do with the Watchtower’s end times predictions.
But it did.
In fact, there were three contradictory stages in Watchtower pyramidology. Continue reading
In the early 19th century, Adventists began speculating about when Christ would return.
Baptist preacher William Miller believed the return would occur between 1843 and 1844. A “great disappointment” came on October 22, 1844 when Jesus failed to appear. Miller’s followers split into several groups and the Adventist movement began.
Millerite Nelson H. Barbour did his own study and concluded that Christ would return in 1873, which he later changed to 1874.
When Jesus failed to appear, he concluded that the date was correct but that they had been expecting the wrong thing. Jesus did return in 1874—invisibly—and would soon become visible to judge the world. He started a magazine, Herald of the Morning, to publicize his views.
This is where Charles Taze Russell entered the picture. Continue reading
When I wrote “The False Prophecies Approach” chapter of my book, I faced a quandary.
The stated objective of the approach is “to show Jehovah’s Witnesses that the Watchtower organization is not the reliable guide it claims to be in that it has made numerous false prophecies.”
The challenge I faced was this: How much evidence should I recommend that you present to the Witnesses? Clearly, one or two examples will probably not be enough. They can always be shrugged off as an aberration or as not representative of Watchtower literature as a whole.
After all, “nobody’s perfect.”
But there’s the opposite problem of overkill which destroys everything we’re trying to accomplish. You don’t want to drive them further into the Watchtower organization by triggering their persecution complex.
In other words, less can sometimes be better. Continue reading
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