Robert Johnson, a spokesman for Witness headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., said that the change came about through re-examination of Scriptures.
Even the youngest people alive in 1914 are now at least 80 years old, however, and their ranks are swiftly dwindling.Ī former leader of the Witnesses calls it a “monumental change” and an ex-Witness in Milwaukee who runs a national phone hot line says calls are coming in from members distressed by the move.
The now-abandoned tenet was based on the sect’s interpretation of a biblical reference to a “generation” that the Witnesses connected with the year 1914, declaring that the Kingdom of God would be established on earth before this generation died off. Some ex-Witnesses predict the change will hurt the “sky-is-falling preaching” of the 4.7-million-member global organization and disturb longtime members who made personal and financial decisions based on the promise that they would soon be living in heaven on earth. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have quietly abandoned a prediction that people alive in 1914 would live to see Christ’s kingdom on earth-a major doctrine that lent urgency to the sect’s door-to-door warnings that a bloody end of the world is imminent.
