Daily news sites: Failed Prophesy| Find Breaking World News
Latest Updates
Home » Failed Prophesy
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Failed Prophesy. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label Failed Prophesy. Tampilkan semua postingan

This generation definition changed by Jehovahs witnesses

This generation definition changed by Jehovahs witnesses

Jehovah's Witnesses in "Generation of 1914" doctrinal Crisis: Will the JW transform from Cult to Church in the post-2014 era? June 29, 2011 By john thomas Didymus


Dawson writes with reference to the failure of 1975 date previously set for Armageddon by the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses:

Singelenberg’s detailed analysis of the nature and consequences of the 1975 prophetic disconfirmation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses presents an interesting test case of the role of leadership, one that falls between the extremes examined so far. The leaders of the church responded quite strongly, though not too quickly, to the failure of 1975. They chose, however, more or less to repudiate the prophecy, even though they had promoted it. They hid behind the vagueness of the prophecy’s terms of reference, terms that may well have been kept vague as a safe guard against the possibility of failure. This definite yet compromised response prevented a full scale disaster, but it cost the church many members in
the short run.






The Governing body of the Jehovah's Witnesses has for decades taught that the beginning of World War I, in 1914, marked the commencement of Jesus' invisible Parousia in heaven, and that the generation of 1914 which saw the commencement of Jesus' Invisible presence (will not "pass away" (Matthew 24:34) before the occurrence of a catastrophic Armageddon which will destroy all "enemies of Jehovah" (read: all none Jehovah's Witnesses). With repeated attempts at setting the length of a generation having failed, the governing body of the Jehovah's Witnesses (which calls itself the "faithful and discrete slave class"–remnant of the 144,000 described in Revelations 7:2-4) introduced, in 1995, a new doctrine of the length of a generation now termed the "two overlapping generations doctrine."
Recent comments by former Witnesses, on Jehovahs-Witnesses.net , on this new doctrinal innovation by the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses, suggests that the group may well have commenced a post-2014 era of transformation from "cult" to mainstream leaning organization in which expectation of doomsday is postponed sufficiently to allow time for the original "generation of 1914" cult belief gradually and quietly dropped and finally openly repudiated.
The governing body of the Jehovah' Witnesses explains its new "overlapping generations" teaching in a study edition of the Watchtower Magazine, April 15th, 2010 (pg. 27-29), as follows:
Although we cannot measure the exact length of “this generation,” we do well to keep in mind several things about the word “generation”: It usually refers to people of varying ages whose lives overlap during a particular time period; it is not excessively long; and it has an end. (Ex. 1:6) How, then, are we to understand Jesus’ words about “this generation”? He evidently meant that the lives of the anointed who were on hand when the sign began to become evident in 1914 would overlap with the lives of other anointed ones who would see the start of the great tribulation.
Leon Festingers et al after conducting what is now widely acknowledged as a classic study of a UFO cult in 1954. He published the result of their study in "When Prophecy Fails." The study noted the tendency of doomsday cults, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, to adjust to failure of prophecy by rationalizing in a manner which makes it unnecessary to give up the basic assumptions and beliefs underlying their world-view. In terms of the theory of cognitive dissonance, Festinger et al, explained that groups generally adjust their beliefs in conformity with their behavior. Thus, the more committed an individual is, in his behavior, to an outcome ( an imminent Armageddon, for instance) the greater the compulsion to reduce the tension created by circumstances which challenges the validity of the belief by adjusting one's set of beliefs.

Jehovah's Witnesses in House-to-House Preaching
The cognitive dissonance theory explains the resilience of groups termed "cults" in the face of a consistent pattern of failed prophecies. Consonance seeking behavior by rationalization would appear most pronounced in doomsday or millenarian cults, and the Jehovah's Witnesses have long been recognized by scholars and experts in the field as the best example in western culture of groups seeking reestablishment of consonance by spiritualizing rationalization of failure of prophecy. The rationalization process is intimately involved in the adaptive changes by which doomsday millenarian "cults" survive, thrive and even transform fringe "cult" identify to mainstream "church" identity in the era of their life histories following failure of cult establishing end-time prophecy.
The best example of a process of spiritualizing rationalization in transition from cult to church in recent American history is provided by the Millerites who, after a series of disappointments culminating in the "great disappointment" of 1844 (with regard to their highly publicized date-setting predictions of the second-coming), managed to adjust their belief systems by spiritualizing the "great disappointment" in their "Investigative Judgment" doctrine, and have survived today in the form of the mainstream Church, The Seventh Day Adventists.
According to Dawson in his, When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists: A Theoretical Overview, rationalization of failure may sometimes also involve attribution of failure of prophecy to human error, an approach which appears to be the main strategy of the Jehovah's Witnesses governing body in the recent cognitive consonance seeking doctrinal reviews(spiritualizing rationalization having been the basis of establishment of 1914 as date of "invisible coming" or parousia of Christ, following the failure of Armageddon date setting at 1914).
Dawson writes with reference to the failure of 1975 date previously set for Armageddon by the leadership of the Jehovah's Witnesses:
Singelenberg’s detailed analysis of the nature and consequences of the 1975 prophetic disconfirmation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses presents an interesting test case of the role of leadership, one that falls between the extremes examined so far. The leaders of the church responded quite strongly, though not too quickly, to the failure of 1975. They chose, however, more or less to repudiate the prophecy, even though they had promoted it. They hid behind the vagueness of the prophecy’s terms of reference, terms that may well have been kept vague as a safe guard against the possibility of failure. This definite yet compromised response prevented a full scale disaster, but it cost the church many members in
the short run.
In his When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists, Dawson explains that the survival of a cult, when prophecy fails, may depend on the intensity of dissonance felt in the first place and, secondly, on the ability of the leadership in dissonance management. Dawson suggests that for most cults which survive the failure of prophecy, dissonance may not have been as intense for insiders as perceived by outsiders (religious beliefs being unlike scientific beliefs). Those members for whom dissonance was most intense are those who defect while those who stay form the nucleus of a new "settled" organization which may actually expand proselytizing efforts in period following failure of prophecy and gradually acquire a mainstream status.





Source
Posted by Unknown at 11.14, Add Comment
Read more

False Profit Camping Wrong in prediction of end of the world

False Profit Camping Wrong in prediction of end of the world
“If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him” (Deut. 18:22).

Jesus declares in Matthew 24 concerning His return: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” (NKJV)

False prophets have time and again pronounced the imminent doom of the world, with little apparent concern for the track record of all those who came before them. From Y2K to the tragic mass suicide of the Heaven’s Gate cult and countless other fads and false alarms over the years, leaders arise proclaiming the end of the world is at hand, and usually there is a group that will follow them. Sometimes, not even the failure of their false prophecy can shake their followers: The Jehovah Witnesses allegedly have been wrong over and over again, and yet the sect continues to find adherents.


False Profit Camping Wrong in prediction of end of the world

To the shock and distress of a handful of ultra-devout Christian believers...America and a world that had signally failed to end.

Instead of a series of earthquakes hitting successive countries at 6pm local time and heralding The Rapture – in which millions of the Faithful would ascend to heaven before the Second Coming of Christ – planet Earth simply carried on and, mostly, kept calm.

Middle East peace remained unresolved, political turmoil hit a few countries and bypassed many others. But by and large the world's toiling billions, as usual, just got on with their lives.

The non-event was a great disappointment to hundreds of followers of a hitherto obscure California-based religious group called Family Radio, which had lavished millions of dollars on a worldwide advertising campaign proclaiming yesterday as Judgment Day.

The group is centred on the teachings and broadcasts of prophet Harold Camping, an 89-year-old self-styled expert in the scriptures who told his followers that his interpretations of the Bible had uncovered the true date of the end of the world. Camping, who lives in the northern California town of Alameda, has previous form on this. He got the date wrong in 1994 when he said the world would end that year, and later explained its continued existence by saying he had made a mathematical error.

But what made this prediction different was the lavish spending that accompanied it. Camping and his followers spent more than $100m worldwide on billboards and posters, financed by the sale and swap of radio stations. Advertising popped up across America and the globe from Iraq to Lebanon to Israel to Jordan, the Philippines to Vietnam, where thousands of the Hmong ethnic hill tribe gathered together on the Thai border in anticipation of the event. The campaign was backed up by Camping's radio show, which can be heard worldwide, and a website that featured, naturally, a countdown clock. Yesterday that clock was at zero underneath the banner headline: "Judgment Day: the Bible guarantees it."

Camping's followers became a familiar sight in cities such as New York, wearing T-shirts proclaiming their beliefs and handing out leaflets in subway stations. On Friday they were at Manhattan's Union Square station, attracting a throng of fascinated gawpers who posed for pictures with them. They handed out their Judgment Day booklets and chatted amiably enough, given their conviction that the End Times were about to arrive.

But as yesterday approached many told reporters they would spend the time huddled in their homes with their families. They planned to pray for their loved ones and hope to be among the lucky few taken up into heaven and spared the global calamity the rest of us would have to put up with for the (much shortened) rest of our lives. Camping himself, who wound down his radio operations ahead of time, said he would watch events unfold at home on television.

Unfortunately for them, nothing happened; a fact that caused much hilarity on Twitter and elsewhere as the 6pm deadline passed in New Zealand, then Australia, Europe and finally America.

"Harold Camping Doomsday prediction fails; No earthquake in New Zealand," read one posting on Twitter. "If this whole end-of-the-world thingy is still going on... it's already past 6.00 in New Zealand and the world hasn't ended," said another. The jokes were global. "Through Croydon; devastation, pestilence, drawn, emaciated faces of the walking dead. No sign of the Rapture though," cracked someone evidently not a fan of the south London town. Another Twitter user suggested people scatter empty pairs of shoes and discarded clothes on their lawns to simulate those lucky few now living with God.

Perhaps not surprisingly, atheists and other non-believers used the opportunity as a way to mock the religious. Various parties were planned across the US. In Fayetteville, North Carolina, the local chapter of the American Humanist Association held a party last night to celebrate the Earth's survival and planned a music concert. The American Atheists held "rapture parties" in places such as Wichita, Kansas, Fort Lauderdale in Florida and even just a few miles from Family Radio itself at a conference centre in Oakland. New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg used a press conference to assure citizens that post-Rapture his administration would not pursue parking tickets or late library books.

But other non-believers and cynics saw an opportunity to make money rather than jokes. There has been a mini-boom in firms and individuals offering to look after the pets of those who believed they were about to be raptured. Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, set up by New Hampshire atheist Bart Centre, has about 250 clients who paid $135 (£83) for insurance policies that guarantee Centre and others will care for their animals when they ascend. Others paid out to sign up with websites that would send out farewell letters to friends and relations left behind.

But there is a serious side. Camping seemed entirely genuine in his beliefs, enough to spend a small fortune promoting them. While others may be making money out of believing in Doomsday, Camping is not one of them. Many experts have worried about the psychological impact on his followers who are suddenly confronted with the collapse of their belief system. Some Christian pastors planned to gather outside Family Radio to counsel any distraught members who showed up wondering why they – and the world – were still there.

Camping himself admitted he had pretty much staked everything on his fervently held belief. "There is no plan B," he told Reuters late last week. Which is a shame. As the day progressed in California last night with no global mega-quake in sight, he and his followers needed one.

Posted by Unknown at 17.32, Add Comment
Read more
Langganan: Postingan (Atom)