n 1911 Russell wrote that October 1914 would witness the “full end” of Babylon, or nominal Christianity, “utterly destroyed as a system”. At first, the hopes for 1914 were stretched to “near the end of A.D. 1915.” A few months before his death in October 1916, Russell wrote: “We believe that the dates have proven to be quite right. We believe that Gentile Times have ended. … The Lord did not say that the Church would all be glorified by 1914. We merely inferred it, and, evidently, erred.” He interpreted the war in Europe to be the first of three phases of Armageddon and the destruction of Christendom to take place in 1918.
\n…
\n In 1918\u20131919, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, second president of the Watch Tower Society, inaugurated a worldwide lecture series entitled “Millions Now Living Will Never Die!”, later reproduced in booklet form. It provided a re-interpretation of the significance of the year 1914 (now seen as the beginning of the “last days”). It also included new predictions for 1925 including the resurrection of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and other Old Testament personages (referred to as “princes”). Their return would mark the beginning of a new order, from which time millions of people alive at that time would be able to live forever. Newspaper advertisements for the “Millions” lecture localized the claim, with a typical declaration in a Marion, Ohio newspaper reading: “It will be conclusively proved… that thousands now living in Marion and vicinity will never die.”
\n.
\nThe book stated that 1925 would be among the dates “stamped with God’s approval” and The Watch Tower described the evidence for the chronology surrounding 1925 as stronger than that for 1914, but acknowledged disappointments surrounding earlier predictions and cautioned that “all that some expect to see in 1925 may not transpire that year”, and that the expectations could be “a means of testing and sifting.”
\n.
\nThe teaching that the “great tribulation” had begun in 1914 and was “cut short” in 1918\u2014to be resumed at Armageddon\u2014was discarded in 1969.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Y2K was a big flop. Global warming too. Covid-19 is, so far, with the predictions being utterly wrong. They are similar to Jehovah’s Witness prediction that the Last Judgement would be in 1914. Of course, in none of these cases did the hoaxers admit that they were wrong. President ‘has four years to save Earth’US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":947,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797\/revisions\/947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rasmusen.org\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}