Though heralded as “new light,” the changes simply moved Watch Tower teachings closer to understandings presented long ago by those the organization disdains as “Christendom’s scholars.”
In September 1994, the eighth printing of Crisis of Conscience discussed this February 15, 1994 issue of the Watchtower and its moving the application of portions of Matthew 24 forward to the start of the “great tribulation.” In that discussion I included the following thoughts:
As stated, that information in Crisis of Conscience was printed in September 1994. Just thirteen months later articles appeared in the November 1, 1995 Watchtower which did almost precisely what had been pointed to in that 1994 edition of Crisis of Conscience. As indicated, they now unlinked the phrase “this generation” (Matthew 24:34) from the date of 1914, but still retained the date as Biblically significant.
This was accomplished by a new definition of the sense of “generation” in this text. About 70 years ago, The Golden Age magazine of October 20, 1926, connected Jesus’ words about “this generation” to the date of 1914 (as did subsequent Watchtower magazines). Some 25 years later, the June 1, 1951, Watchtower, page 335, in connection with 1914, stated, “Hence our generation is the generation that will see the start and finish of all these things, including Armageddon.” In the July 1,1951, issue, page 404, “this generation” was again linked to 1914. Of Matthew 24:34, it said:
The actual meaning of these words is, beyond question that which takes a “generation” in the ordinary sense, as at Mark 8:12 and Acts 13:36, or for those who are living at the given period.
It then added:
This therefore means that from 1914 a generation shall not pass till all is fulfilled, and amidst a great time of trouble.
For over forty years thereafter Watch Tower publications continued to assign a temporal sense to the “generation” of Matthew 24:34. The aging of the 1914-generation was pointed to again and again as clear evidence of the shortness of the remaining time.
In the revised 1995 definition, however, rather than having parameters of time limitations or any set starting point, the “generation” is instead said to be identified, not temporally, but qualitatively, by its characteristics, as in the reference to an “evil and adulterous generation” in Jesus’ time. “This generation” is now said to be “the peoples of earth who see the sign of Christ’s presence but fail to mend their ways.”
1914 is not discarded, however, something the organization could not do without dismantling the major theological structure and distinctive tenets of the religion. 1914 remains as the claimed date of Christ’s enthronement in heaven, the beginning of his second, invisible, presence, as also the start of the “last days.” And it still figures, though obliquely, in the new definition of “this generation,” since the “sign of Christ’s presence”—which the doomed ones see and reject or ignore—supposedly began to be visible worldwide from and after 1914.
What then is the significant difference? It is that now, to qualify as part of “this generation,” a person need no longer have been alive in 1914 to form part of “this generation.” Anyone can see the supposed “sign of Christ’s presence” at any time—even if for the first time in the 1990s, or for that matter in the third millennium—and still qualify as part of “this generation.” This allows the phrase to float free of any starting date and reduces considerably the need to explain the embarrassing length of time that has elapsed since 1914, and the rapidly diminishing ranks of persons who were alive at that date.
Perhaps the most graphic evidence of this change is seen in the masthead of the Awake! magazine. Up until October 22, 1995, it read:
The statement that “this magazine builds confidence in the Creator’s promise of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation that saw the events of 1914 passes away,” appeared year after year from 1982 until October 22, 1995. With the November 8, 1995 issue, the statement was altered to read:
All reference to 1914 is now deleted, presenting graphic evidence of this crucial change—as well as, in effect, indicating that “the Creator” had somehow reneged on his “promise” tied to the 1914-generation.
It remains to be seen what the ultimate effect of this change will be. I would think that those feeling its effects most acutely would be those older, longtime members who had embraced the hope of not dying before the realization of their expectations regarding the complete fulfillment of God’s promises. Proverbs 13:12 says that “hope deferred [expectation postponed, NW] makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (NRSV) Any feelings of heartsickness these may now experience are not the responsibility of the Creator but of the men who implanted and nourished in them false expectations tied to a date.
Those younger or more recently affiliated will not likely feel as severely the impact of the change. It is, after all, clothed in language that makes no acknowledgment of error on the organization’s part, but which shrouds the change in terms of ‘progressive understanding’ and ‘advancing light.’ The May 1, 1999 Watchtower (page13) says; “Our progress in understanding the prophecy in Matthew chapters 24 and 25 has been thrilling,” this, while contemporaneously discarding one interpretation after another taught for years as divine truth! The many newer ones may not be aware of the intense insistence with which, for decades, the “1914-generation” concept was advanced, how positively it was presented as a certain indicator of the “nearness of the end.” They may not realize how adamantly the “1914-generation” teaching was presented as being, not of human origin, but of divine origin, not a timetable based on human promise, but based on “God’s promise.” This 40-year-long, implicit tying of God and his Word to a now-failed concept only adds to the heaviness of the responsibility. One is reminded of Jehovah’s words at Jeremiah 23:21:
I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.
This basic change can only have come as the result of a Governing Body decision. As shown, the essential issue involved came up for discussion as far back as the 1970s. One cannot but wonder as to the thoughts of the Governing Body members today, what sense of responsibility they feel. Every member of that body knew then and knows now what the organization’s record has been in the field of date-setting and predicting. Through the publications this is excused on the basis of “a fervent desire to realize the fulfillment of God’s promises in their own time,” as if one cannot have such fervent desire without presuming to set a timetable for God, or to make predictions and attribute them to God, as based on his Word. They know also that, despite mistake after mistake, the organization’s leaders kept on feeding its membership new predictions. They know that the leadership has consistently failed to shoulder full responsibility for the errors, to admit that it, the leadership, was simply and plainly wrong. They have sought to protect their image and their claim to authority by endeavoring to make it appear that the errors were those of the membership as a whole. In an article on “False Predictions or True Prophecy,” the June 22, 1995 Awake! (page 9) said:
The November 1, 1995, Watchtower magazine presenting the new teaching regarding “this generation” follows the same tactic, saying (page 17):
The leadership thus shrugs off the responsibility that rightfully rests with them, piously counseling the membership on their spiritual outlook as if it were their wrong spiritual viewpoint that produced the problem. They do not acknowledge that the membership originates nothing and that the membership embraced hopes as to various dates solely because the leaders of the organization fed them material clearly designed to stir up such hopes, that every date mentioned and all the ‘surmising,’ ‘conjectures’ and ‘speculations’ and ‘calculations’ connected to those dates, originated, not with the membership, but with the leaders. It is somewhat like a mother, whose children become ill with indigestion, saying of such children, “They weren’t careful about what they ate,” when in fact the children simply ate what the mother served them. And not only se
rved them but insisted that the food should be accepted as wholesome, part of a superior diet unobtainable elsewhere, so much so that any expression of dissatisfaction with what was fed them would bring threat of punishment.
The men now on the Governing Body all know that, for as long as any of the organization’s teachings connected with the 1914 date were in effect, any open questioning or disagreement regarding these could and did bring disfellowshipment. They know that the very “heart of wisdom” that the Watchtower article now urges—a heart that avoids speculation based on dates and which focuses instead on simply living each day of our lives as unto God—is the very same “heart” that some members of the Brooklyn headquarters staff sought to convey, and that it was their position in this exact regard that formed a principal part of the accusation on which they were judged as “apostate.” What the thoughts of the Governing Body members involved are today I do not know. I can only say that, had I been a party to the presentation now made and its failure to make an open and manly acknowledgment of responsibility for having seriously misled, and for having seriously misjudged other sincere Christians, I do not see how I could escape feeling some sense of moral cowardice.
It is difficult not to be impressed by the contrast between this course and that taken within another religion guilty of making similar time predictions, the Worldwide Church of God. After the death of its longtime leader, Herbert W. Armstrong, in the late 1980s, the new leadership published an article in the March/April issue of the religion’s main publication, The Plain Truth magazine. The article was titled “Forgive Us Our Trespasses,” and began by saying, “The Worldwide Church of God, sponsor of The Plain Truth magazine, has changed its position on numerous long-held beliefs and practices during the past few years.” In detailing these, it also said:
Such frank admission and acceptance of responsibility for harm are not found in Watch Tower publications. Knowing them personally, I am satisfied that many of the men on the Governing Body are sincere in the belief that they are serving God. Unfortunately, that belief is accompanied by a parallel belief that the organization they head is God’s channel of divine communication, superior to all other religious organizations on earth—a belief that gives evidence of a state of denial, in which they do not allow themselves to face the reality of the organization’s flawed course and record. Whatever their sincerity in their desire to serve God, it regrettably has not protected them from a remarkable insensitivity to the potential disillusioning effect of their failed apocalyptic predictions, the weakening effect this can have on people’s confidence in the reliability and worth of the Scriptures.
1See the Watchtower, October 1, 1978.
2Among the Governing Body members at the time discussed, only Fred Franz was out of his teenage years in 1914, being 21 years old then. As to the other members, Karl Klein and Carey Barber were 9, Lyman Swingle was 4, Albert Schroeder 3, and Jack Barr was 1 year old. Lloyd Barry, Dan Sydlik, Milton Henschel, and Ted Jaracz had not yet been born, their births coming after 1914, as is true of the seven latest members added since to the Body.
3The expression “present truth” was popular in the time of Russell and Rutherford and was based on a faulty translation of 2 Peter 1:12. The New World Translation there reads more accurately, “the truth that is present in you.”
4This does not seem to have been just a momentary thought on President Knorr’s part, for the same viewpoint was expressed in virtually the same words by one of his closer associates, George Couch. Knowing the two, it seems more likely that Couch acquired the view from Knorr than vice versa.
5The Writing Committee membership was then composed of Lloyd Barry, Fred Franz, Raymond Franz, Karl Klein and Lyman Swingle.
6Contrary to what is alleged by some, the Governing Body itself never gave importance to the date of 1984 and, as I recall, this occasion was the only time that date was even mentioned, and that only in connection with rumors.
7Matthew 24:29.
11
POINT OF DECISION
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.
— Philippians 3:7-8 New International Version.
BY THE end of 1979 I had arrived at my personal crossroads. I had spent nearly forty years as a full-time representative, serving at every level of the organizational structure. The last fifteen years I had spent at the international headquarters and the final nine of those as a member of the worldwide Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
It was those final years that were the crucial period for me. Illusion there met up with reality. I have since come to appreciate the rightness of a quotation I recently read, one made by a statesman, now dead, who said:
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
I now began to realize how large a measure of what I had based my entire adult life course on was just that, a myth—“persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” It was not that my view toward the Bible had changed. If anything, my appreciation of it was enhanced by what I experienced. It alone gave sense and meaning to what I saw happening, the attitudes I saw displayed, the reasoning I heard advanced, the tension and pressure I felt. The change that did come was from the realization that my way of looking at the Scriptures had been from such an essentially sectarian viewpoint, a trap that I thought I had been protected against. Letting the Scriptures speak for themselves—without being first funneled through some fallible human agency as a “channel”—I found they became immensely more meaningful. I was frankly astonished at how much of their import I had been missing.
The question was, what should I now do? My years on the Governing Body, the things I heard said in and out of sessions, the basic spirit I saw displayed, steadily brought me to the awareness that, as regards the organization, the ‘wineskin had grown old,’ had lost whatever flexibility it might have had, and that it was stiffening its resistance to any Scriptural correction either as to doctrinal beliefs or its methods of dealing with those who looked to it for guidance.1 I felt, and still feel, that there were many good men on the Governing Body. In a long-distance phone call, a former Witness said to me, “We have been followers of followers.” Another said, “We have been victims of victims.” I think both statements are true. Charles Taze Russell followed the views of certain men of his time, was victimized by some of the myths they propagated as “revealed truth.” Each successive part of the organizational leadership has followed along, at times contributing additional myth in support of, or in elaboration of, the original myth. In place of rancor, I feel only compassion for those men I know, for I too was such a “victim of victims,” a “follower of followers.”
Though each year on the Governing Body, particularly from 1976 onward, became increasingly difficult and more stressful for me, I clung to the hope that things would improve. In time I was obliged to recognize that was a hope which the evidence did not support.
I was not opposed to authority. I was opposed to the extremes to which it was carried. I could not believe that God ever purposed for men to exercise such all-pervading authoritarian control over the lives of fellow members of the Christian congregation. My understanding was that Christ grants authority in his congregation only to serve, never to dominate.2
Similarly, I did not object to “organization” in the sense of an orderly arrangement, for I understood the Christian congregation itself to involve such an orderly arrangement.3 But I believed that, whatever the arrangement, its purpose and function, its very existence, was only as an aid for the brothers; it was there to serve their interests, not the other way around. Whatever the arrangement, it was to build men and women up so that they would not be spiritual babes, dependent on men or on an institutionalized system, but able to act as full-grown, mature Christians. It wa
s not to train them to be simply conformists to a set of organizational rules and regulations, but to help them to become persons “having their perceptive powers trained to distinguish both right and wrong.”4 Whatever arrangement there was, it must contribute toward a genuine sense of brotherhood, with the freeness of speech and mutual confidence true brotherhood brings—not a society composed of the few who are the governors and the many who are the governed. And finally, whatever the arrangement, the way to ‘take the lead’ therein must be by example, by holding firmly to the Word of God, passing on and inculcating the instructions of the Master the way he gave them, not “adjusting” these to fit what seemed to be in the interests of a humanly created organization, not by ‘making people feel the weight of one’s authority’ in the way the great men of the world do.5 It must result in the exaltation of Christ Jesus as the Head, never in the exaltation of an earthly authority structure and its officers. As it was, I felt that the role of Christ Jesus as active Head was overshadowed and virtually eclipsed by the authoritarian conduct and constant self-commendation and self-praise of the organization.
Furthermore, I did not deny the value and need for teaching. But I could not accept that organizational interpretations, based on shifting human reasoning, could ever be made equal in authority to the actual statements found in God’s unchangeable Word. The great importance given to traditional views, the bending and slanting of God’s Word to accommodate it to those views, and the inconsistencies that resulted in double standards were a source of serious emotional upset to me. What I found unacceptable was, not teaching, but dogmatism.
Crisis of Conscience Page 27