Posted by Rick [Rick] on November 09, 1999 at 21:10:52 {4Hfg918T5g7ajbiu2wnkFMFBt36Xyc}:
...the end will come, says the latest AWAKE magazine covering the key events of the 20th century in a cover-to-cover timeline. We're assured that the end is very soon, and even reminds us that the Year 2000 doesn't start officially until January 1, 2001 (as if to say that we won't see the next century, but still have a year to go).
One interesting note at the start of the timeline is that 1914 is not marked as a date of Biblical significance in this issue's cover-to-cover pictorial timeline. It's mentioned in the article, but the timeline itself -- which covers the biggest events in the 20th century such as WWI and WWII -- does not (as typically done) mark Christ as enthroned that year in heaven (I recall this was done in the past).
One more interesting side note is that the Society assures us in this issue, that 1914 being a date of Christ coming to power, but not the absolute end of this world, was spoken about as early as in an 1870's Watch Tower magazine. It's as if they knew all along. No mention was made that the Watch Tower taught that the end of this system and the beginning of the thousand year reign of Christ would commence in 1914. Did any such teaching ever appear in any pre-1914 Watch Tower publication?
Could it actually be they never taught that, and those claiming they did are engaging in "apostate propaganda"? I recall an elder once brushing it off by saying that the Watch Tower publishing the end of the world happening in 1914 "is rumored to have happened, and I challenge anyone to show me anything ever published before then claiming 1914 was going to be Armageddon," then he finished with something like "that's a long time ago and neither here nor there at this late hour." :-o
I collected some of the older publications like volumes of Studies in the Scriptures but haven't found anything to substantiate that.
A penny for your thoughts? Will see see 2001? ;-)
Rick