Posted by WotM [WitnessOnTheMoon] on November 01, 1999 at 10:07:28 {2gTL9dbN6kuLpSNP4x.I2J20GmR5TU}:
Hello Mr. GB-man,
I'm curious as to what our current official teaching regarding the second coming/return of Christ is. At the moment I feel somewhat left in the dark.
Our view used to be that Christ returned in 1914 and since then he has been present invisibly. However, during the past few years we received certain new light from the Society which changed the meaning of nearly every Biblical occurence of the word. It seems that we are in the process of moving the coming from 1914 to a future event that will start God's final judgement at Armageddon. I'm not sure what you guys are trying to accomplish with this. I think it would weaken the 1914 date and move focus to events expected to happen in the future.
As far as I can tell the only Biblical reference to the coming that is still refered to 1914 is the FDS parable, for obvious reasons, since a change of it could weaken the Society's authority. But this makes no sense any longer and I would expect it to be changed too. It contradicts the explanations of other occurences of the coming in the context of Matthew, chapter 24&25. Of course, the change creates another problem: It may be difficult to explain why Jesus is supposed to come in the future although he has already been (invisibly) present for a while. But then again, most JWs will probably not even notice the silliness of that idea because they are used to such nonsensical stuff.
Maybe you can enlighten us a bit on this matter.
Thank you very much for your efforts
Witness on the Moon