"THIS GENERATION" — ANOTHER LINK BROKEN
(Investigator 145, 2012
September)
The
Weekend Australian
reported "the final link to the Great War is broken…The Last of the
Last of the War to end all Wars has finally gone." (2011, May 21-22)
110-year-old
Claude
Choules was on HMS Revenge and witnessed the surrender of the German
fleet at the end of World War I. He was Australia's last surviving
veteran of that war.
Starting
about 1950
Jehovah's Witnesses proclaimed that millions of people who witnessed
the outbreak of WWI in 1914, and were old enough to understand what was
happening, would live to experience Armageddon followed by paradise on
Earth.
In 1968, for example, they wrote:
Jesus
was
obviously speaking about those who were old enough to witness with
understanding what took place when the 'last days' began… Even if we
presume that youngsters 15 years of age would be perceptive enough to
realize the import of what happened in 1914, it would make the youngest
of 'this generation' nearly 70 years old today… Jesus said that the end
of this wicked system would come before that generation passed away in
death. (Awake! 1968 October 8 p13)
By the
1970s this
prophecy looked shaky but the JW leadership regularly bolstered it by
citing statistics of how many people born before 1914 were still alive.
The death of Australia's last WWI veteran is another blow against this
false religious belief.
But
why was the prophecy
clarified after 1950 and not earlier?
The cult's previous starting dates for the last generation were 1799,
the 1840s and 1878, and it was prudent to let old members die off so
that their disappointment didn't infect new 20th century converts.
The
phrase "this
generation" was rarely mentioned in the publications of the 1920s to
1940s, and when it was mentioned the 19th century starting-dates were
omitted. The cult's oldies could therefore assume that "this
generation" meant 1878 and newcomers could assume it meant 1914.
By
1950 most of the
oldies were dead which made it the right time to clarify the prophecy
and link it clearly to 1914.
The
newcomers of the
1940s-50s are in their turn now dying out and the interpretation of
"this
generation" is changing again.
BS
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