Jehovah's Witnesses. How many generations have there been since 1914?

When I was associating with the JWs some 30 years ago now, they taught back then that many living from the 1914 generation will not see death as they will go straight through into the new system! Whatever happened ???

Lets face facts, the Jehovah witnesses are false prophets, they do not preach The Truth at all! They are all deluded, brainwashed and hoodwinked!

The first president of the group we now know as Jehovah's Witnesses stated that a generation was about 36 years. That would mean there have been 3 generations since 1914 (and 4 generations from when he made his calculation because he taught that 1874 was the starting point for working out which generation would still be alive by the time of Armageddon.)

His view was then debunked in favour of a generation being 70 to 80 years long. But when the limit for that was upon them, the new leaders went back to the 'old light' (without admitting this was on old belief they used to have.) Then they got rid of the 1914 anchor. They did it by saying that the Armageddon 'generation' will only be identified with hindsight - after the great tribulation starts. All the Society could say was that it could turn out to be this generation we are living in. If the great tribulation starts tomorrow, then that generation will be the one due to see Armageddon. But if the great tribulation does not start for another 30 or 40 years, then it will be that future generation, which couldn't last longer than 36-7 years..

All of that was in the 1 November 1995 Watchtower, "Questions From Readers". It said that 'a generation' is no longer viewed as being 70 or 80 years. It went back to what the first president, Russel,l claimed, that it's about 36 years. Yet it concluded that, in light of Jesus' prophecy in Matthew 24 about "this generation", it must be "contemporary people of a certain historical period, with their identifying characteristics." Clear as mud!

Because they'd dropped the anchor date of 1914, the latest 'generation' was free-floating. So they then claimed that as long as there were even one or two people alive come the great tribulation, who had been born in 1914, there would be an overlapping generation, linking the two generations. As some people today are living 110 or more years, they probably think this still gives them enough 'connection' to 1914 till at least 2024. They imagine they can still get off with mentioning 1914 as well as the generation to see Armageddon, without members seeing just how tenuous this supposed link is.

They made just such a tenuous connection in their 1 November 1995 Watchtower, page 19 - The 1914 generation now consists of all "the peoples of earth who see the sign" of Christ's invisible 1914 'presence' but who fail to repent. They then went on to claim that that composite sign was made up of many historical events of which virtually all adults alive today would be aware, regardless of when they were born. Notice the introduction of that phrase, "regardless of when they were born"?

They now have a generation that could last indefinitely. So they concluded, "Is anything to be gained by speculating about the literal lifetime of 'a generation'? Far from it! Therefore, in the final fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy today, 'this generation' apparently refers to the peoples of earth who see the sign of Christ's presence but fail to mend their ways... Does our more precise viewpoint on 'this generation' mean that Armageddon is further away than we had thought? Not at all."

Then the 15 April 2010 Watchtower felt able to claim that Jesus “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.”

This is a far less precise doctrine about 'that generation', which no longer requires an actual link to 1914; it's still a future generation, only identified with hindsight once the great tribulation starts! Clearly the explanation is that all this has been done in order to get rid of the embarrassment the date 1914 is turning out to be.

If today's Watchtower Society had the honesty to admit that it was simply wrong about the 1914 doctrine, they could drop all this absurd nonsense about a future generation (given that a generation is about 36 years). But for so long as they insist they're only getting 'increasing light' instead of switching their man-made light on and off, they cannot be directed by God.