James Thomas Rook Jr.

I started getting interested in the Truth about 1961, and I remember that huge number chart, as big as a 4x8 foot piece of plywood.  No one ever walked me up to it and explained it to me, and I figured it was "quotas", although at the time I did not even understand that.
 

Yes. I suppose it is.  A bit sloppy in my analogies, here. sorry.
Separately, I was just reading about the first voyage to America and Columbus’s crew’s expressed fear that maybe the earth was flat. 
A brilliant answer from the captain, spurring on the crew on by appealing to their Bible knowledge.
“In that case,” he said, 
 

I agree with the credibility bit, however I do not think that ensuring contributions are the prime reason for keeping that credibility. I really believe it is a matter of pride, and the fear of what could happen to the faith of many people as a result of admitting that 1914 could be a mistake. If we were to think that the only reason is money, then this would be a fraudulent organization, which I don't think it is, and I dont think you do either.

I'll make sure they come up.
That comes across as too cynical. If there is an appointment of a special class to "feed his little sheep" why could it not just "pop up" inspirationally at any time or place that the need is great enough. (Times and places where the harvest is great but the workers are few.) Why can't all persons in history who would volunteer for such a ministry be considered as candidates in all Christian-like religions, and then the one group of teaching volunteers that appears to have the most truth be the one that lovers of truth associate with? Pre-2011, this was basically our doctrine. That wheat and weeds grew alongside each other through all the centuries from the first on down until today. Various teachers who taught a larger than usual measure of truth like Wycliffe, Tyndale, Waldenses, Arius, etc., were considered to be 'faithful and wise servants' who helped to coalesce a "wheat" class and keep it distinguished from a "weed" class. We should expect that there would have been many candidates vying to teach truth, and from the perspective of those who would be seeking out truth, they would grow as wheat.
Another perspective is that it is always correct to say it is just around the corner, because it is. It is always as close as our own lifespan. We are, in effect "harvested" as wheat or weeds at the end of our life, or at the 'harvest of the world' which happens at Christ's parousia. 1914 could be dead wrong, and the end could come tonight. But our entire life is an opportunity to continually keep our motivations in check, so that we are moved to do good for our brothers and sisters and neighbors and enemies, out of a love for God and fellow man. If we find ourselves motivated by following a group of men, or peer pressure, or to be seen by men, then we are not motivated out of a pure heart.
(1 Timothy 1:5) . . .Really, the objective of this instruction is love out of a clean heart and out of a good conscience and out of faith without hypocrisy.
But there is a difference in being motivated by a date, and being motivated by the fact that we think the end is so close because, for example, we know that the "generation" might be up in the very near future. There is nothing wrong with being motivated in part because we believe the end of all things is upon us. That would make us want to be ready at any time, every day. This is not the same thing as being (wrongly) motivated because we believe the "end," for example, going to occur within a few months of 2034, or within weeks of a declaration of "Peace and Security" or a "Hailstone message" or when we see that they finally have to put a member of the great crowd in the GB. These latter motivations are the same thing as saying "my master is delaying" and that is dangerous because it becomes a partial motivation for our actions. We will have the feeling that we need not "shape up" 100 percent, until we can see those future expectations begin to occur more clearly.
I think the proper motivation that can come out of a belief that the end can occur at any time, and that it might be very close, is probably what TTH is referring to with the carrot and stick proposition. Not that it is just meant as a tease to get more work out of us.
I believe that you have described what Jesus must have meant when he spoke of the truth as not being burdensome.
(Matthew 11:28-30) 28 Come to me, all you who are toiling and loaded down, and I will refresh you. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am mild-tempered and lowly in heart, and you will find refreshment for yourselves. 30 For my yoke is kindly, and my load is light.”
A constant "carrot and stick" with specific goal posts that are moved over and over again becomes a burden. We can never do enough, and we are then serving for specific measurable works.
The old days (1940's-1960's) had a "Circuit Servant" setting quotas for the congregation and then chiding the congregation for not meeting them. This was a sad state of affairs (that seems to have been directly copied from sales meetings for door-to-door merchandise peddlers and other types of salesmen). My uncle who was a Circuit Servant/Overseer was trained by the District Servant to find things the congregation can meet and find things the congregagion probably can't meet, with the overall goal of having the congregation "pushed" to help reach the national quotas found in the "Informant"/"Kingdom Ministry." This way there would be some items to commend, but there would always be the need to work harder. There wasn't that much of a carrot, except in the idea that the works were considered proof of righteousness. I think it was about once a month that the Congregation Servant pulled the huge number chart out from behind the curtain at the Service Meeting to go over how well we were meeting our quotas.

Who does this description fit? 
A carrot dangler is someone who promises something—and never comes through. When you try to collect on the promise, there is always some reason why they can't give it to you right then, though they tell you they will do it another time. But when "another time" comes along, that isn't a good time either, and so it goes, until you give up on that carrot, and then they start to dangle another carrot. 
Most of the time, whoever does this, wants something from you, but never gives anything back. However, in this case, (1914) I am thinking the person or persons just doesn't want to lose face...

Question:  "If a son is not to pay for the sins of the father, why did we have to suffer for the original sin? Wouldn't that be making everyone pay for the sin of one man?"
It's really quite simple ... Adam and Eve could not pass onto their children genetic attributes that they themselves did not possess.
It is not God who gave all future generations a severely limited lifespan ... it was their parents.
Actions have consequences.
 

As Bullwinkle the Moose sez: "OOPS! .... wrong hat!"

Just a passing thought ... could be the Day that was the "Rest Day", which if  creative day, and the rest day are actually 500,000,000 solar years (3.5 billion year old Earth, divided by 7 "days" - 500 million solar years), then A dam and Eve DID die DURING ( perhaps at the very beginning ??) that  500,000,000 year day..
My understanding of the meaning of that scripture could be accurately paraphrased as: "..Sometime during the epoch that you eat of the tree, you will surely die.", a pronouncement Jehovah made before there were any human garden rats running sround. ... as they were born OUTSIDE the Garden of Eden.
Only a guess ... please feel free to disprove the logic.

As Bullwinkle the Moose sez: "OOPS! .... wrong hat!"

As Bullwinkle the Moose sez: "OOPS! .... wrong hat!"

You'll notice that I spoke, not of his weakness, but of the strength of Satan to cause persecutions that resulted in millions of deaths through the centuries. Satan and the spirit of the world that he embodies, has been at the heart of centuries of wars and persecutions. You will never see me complaining of his weakness.
I won't get into any of the nit-picky anachronisms here, but yes, there was the pressure for young men to join the war. There is the same pressure today in many lands, but pressure to join in doing something wrong is not normally considered persecution. Some might feel pressure to avoid a lot of things the world would want us to join. But this is not the kind of "persecution" I was speaking about.
Rutherford himself gave into the "pressure" to speak of the League of Nations as if it were some kind of awesome political expression on earth of what God's kingdom offers from the heavens. Does this mean that Rutherford could claim he was persecuted to do this, and that's what pressured him to say pretty much the same thing that the World Council of Churches was saying?
The point I was trying to make is that, from 1914 to 1917, we are still talking about Russell's version of what preaching meant, not Rutherford's later versions. Rutherford, even up until 1919, had added only a couple of new elements to the Bible Students by that point in time: a much (better) stronger view against participation in war, stronger involvement in wordly politics, and a book called the "Finished Mystery" which was literally full of ludicrous "apostate" explanations of prophecy and false predictions which we would be embarrassed to read today. Probably the best pages in the whole book were the pages that Rutherford offered to rip out of every copy in 1918 so that the book could still be sold.
It was already minimal from 1914 to 1934, but even if we maximized it, it still pales in comparison to the Biblical imagery of Revelation 12. Give it a quick look again as a reminder:
(Revelation 12:3-17) Another sign was seen in heaven. Look! A great fiery-colored dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and on its heads seven diadems; and its tail drags a third of the stars of heaven, and it hurled them down to the earth. And the dragon kept standing before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she did give birth, it might devour her child. . . .  And the woman fled into the wilderness, . . . And war broke out in heaven: Miʹcha·el and his angels battled with the dragon, and the dragon and its angels battled 8 but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them any longer in heaven. 9 So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him. . . .  the accuser of our brothers has been hurled down, who accuses them day and night before our God! 11 And they conquered him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their witnessing, and they did not love their souls even in the face of death. . . . Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing that he has a short period of time.”  Now when the dragon saw that it had been hurled down to the earth, it persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child. . . . 15 And the serpent spewed out water like a river from its mouth after the woman, to cause her to be drowned by the river. 16 But the earth came to the woman’s help, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river that the dragon spewed out from its mouth. 17 So the dragon became enraged at the woman and went off to wage war with the remaining ones of her offspring, who observe the commandments of God and have the work of bearing witness concerning Jesus.
Now, I'm sure that a lot of religious groups have seen this as being fulfilled upon themselves through the centuries. No harm done. That's just the way we egocentric humans have always been. And many of them had situations where they actually faced literal death. But in our case we say it was some legal maneuverings that resulted in the 9-month removal of 7 or 8 replaceable men of a specific organization that had already spent all its money on the Photo-Drama with the expectation that, after October 1914, no money would be needed for further preaching by any of them in 1915. The false expectations for 1914 had already resulted in the loss of many adherents. The autocratic nature of Rutherford, and the worldly, political infighting within the Society (over how it should be controlled in the wake of Russell's death) resulted in the loss of many more. The book, "Finished Mystery" caused a further controversy that resulted in the loss of even more Bible Students. The core adherents to the Watch Tower Society were fewer and fewer, even before the war had much impact. Rutherford began touting false expectations for 1918 and then 1925, and by the end of that decade, he had dropped pyramidology, the explanation for the End of the Gentile Times, and most of the the Russell/Barbour chronology.
Rutherford's actions from 1914 to 1931 resulted in the loss of MOST of the Bible Students. (For mostly good reasons, however.) Satan's actions during the same period were nothing like what Revelation 12 would have led Bible Students to expect. And yet we know that Satan is not weak. Look at WWII, and the holocaust, for example. Where was this "war with the remaining ones of her offspring"? Where was this rage against the woman between 1914 and 1934? You have already guessed that maybe Satan diverted his attention to the overall long-term terrible effects of the war for a few years. That's possible. But reading Revelation 12 doesn't fit the idea of making excuses for Satan.
Nothing to minimize about the war itself. It really was terrible and really was a change to an era. Of course, we already have minimized the "end of the gentile times." Rutherford completely changed its meaning by about 1931. It no longer meant the complete dissolving of all non-Jewish institutions over a course of a few months starting in October 1914, while natural, physical Jews in Jerusalem (Palestine) simultaneously proved themselves (starting in 1914) to be the only government that had Jehovah's backing and blessing.
Again, we are forced to guess why he acted less like the Biblical Satan at the very time he was supposedly more angry, and had dragged a third of the stars of heaven down with him. Perhaps you are saying that Satan is less powerful after 1915 than he was in 1913? Or did this change in his power happen sometime closer to the time of Nero? (37 CE to 68 CE.)
I would say that Jehovah's Witnesses are doing this. Sounds like you might agree.
Just to be a little more careful here, when Jesus taught them to go 2 by 2, he clearly told them NOT to go "door after door."
(Luke 10:1-7) . . .After these things the Lord designated 70 others and sent them out by twos ahead of him into every city and place where he himself was to go.. . .  Do not keep transferring from house to house.
The method was announcing themselves in public and then only going to persons' houses where they were invited.
But our current method of going from house to house has worked well, too. I have nothing against it, and have used it to excellent advantage in starting studies and making disciples.
Just one person's opinion here, but If we were to be given a hailstone message to warn others with before the actual end is upon as (as a surprise) then Jesus must have been lying when he said it would come upon ALL of us as a surprise. Jesus said the parousia would be like a flash of lightning that suddenly flashes from one end of the horizon over to the other end. Hardly even a split second should remain to start a hailstone message. Of course, there will always be people who think they know better than Jesus.

Just a passing thought ... could be the Day that was the "Rest Day", which if  creative day, and the rest day are actually 500,000,000 solar years (3.5 billion year old Earth, divided by 7 "days" - 500 million solar years), then A dam and Eve DID die DURING ( perhaps at the very beginning ??) that  500,000,000 year day..
My understanding of the meaning of that scripture could be accurately paraphrased as: "..Sometime during the epoch that you eat of the tree, you will surely die.", a pronouncement Jehovah made before there were any human garden rats running sround. ... as they were born OUTSIDE the Garden of Eden.
Only a guess ... please feel free to disprove the logic.

@James Thomas Rook Jr. 
NWT Genesis 6 v 3 
Then Jehovah said: “My spirit will not tolerate man indefinitely,b because he is only flesh.* Accordingly, his days will amount to 120 years.”
NWT  Psalm 90 v 10
10  The span of our life is 70 years,Or 80 if one is especially strong.*But they are filled with trouble and sorrow;They quickly pass by, and away we fly. 
@TrueTomHarley Mr Harley, one good point about JW Org. Easy access to the Bible for reference when conversing on here. Though for personal use i do cross ref' it with others of course.
Psalm 90 v 10 
New King James Version
The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Berean Study Bible
The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty if we are strong—yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

Death was punishment for Adam sin. I don't recall what verse said Adam and Eve will live this or that number of years before they die. Verse that say: “in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die"  not giving specific number of how long human will live. "Day". This is something that is under interpretations. No one know for sure of what day JHVH thought about. And what Moses thought when wrote word "day" or whatever that word had been. And what did translators understand later, word "day" is. WT Society interpreting day as 1000  years. But that is not only calculation that word "day" have. Genesis context also speaking about "day", seven of them. And no one of bible scholars today in WT Society don't say how such day is 1000 years long. Adam lived in Genesis context, not in some other Bible book context when one day is one year or other similar and not similar parable, prophetic day - year etc.

The picture below addresses a fundamental problem with women, as many men have pointed out.

I hope he doesn't get a sliver, or worse yet, athlete's lips

I make the "sign of the fish", whenever I pass an Aquarium based Pet Store .
I hear they have cultists that make the "sign of the turtle", which is a bit more complex....
 

"Judgement Day" can be caused by God, Global Thermonuclear War, or even a pesky virus that started out as the flu.
As Marvin Webster sez: "Y'all think about it."

Yes, true. I was referring to the fact that there was no wave of persecution, as one might expect if Satan had just been hurled down, having great anger, knowing he had a short period of time. In the days of the apostles and especially by the time of Nero, there were reports of literally thousands of Christians persecuted, even with torture and death. In the next two centuries there were reports of hundreds of thousands of Christians put to death. So I'm comparing what Satan was capable of doing when Christianity was just a "babe" compared to the relatively peaceful opposition to the Watchtower that was reported from 1914 to about 1934. It was as if Satan was not even angry during that time period, or that he did not know he had a short period of time.
Recall that the Society still had only a few thousand members worldwide, and except for some colporteurs and speakers, most Bible Students were relatively inactive when it came to preaching. Most of the Bible Students who were regular readers of the Watchtower understood that Russell suggested never speaking out against the draft/conscription in any country, but that Bible Students could allow themselves to be drafted, and if they couldn't get non-combat alternatives, that they should just shoot over the heads of the enemy (per Watch Tower recommendations given by Russell himself).
This is false. There were many more Catholics and Baptists arrested than the Bible Students. I know of at least one case of a Baptist preacher who was investigated and arrested for exact same stated reasons that the Bible Students were.
The United States did not get into the war until April 1917. The Espionage (Sedition Act) was not passed until June 1917. It was used against HUNDREDS of persons in the United States, and many of those convicted remained in jail for up to 5 years. The dozen or so Bible Students (including the 7 directors) were a very small part of the total. Almost all of the HUNDREDS of OTHER activists, socialists, suspected immigrants, and religious publishers were released within 3 or 4 years on appeal, or on commuted sentences. When the war hysteria was over, almost everyone else got released with treatment very similar to the Watch Tower directors.
Several brothers joined the war, but this did not result in any wave of persecution. There were a few imprisoned brothers in the US, Canada, the UK and a couple of other European countries at the time, but reports of beatings and violence were very relatively rare. Also a few reports of brothers who could not avoid conscription tried to get alternative work, such as hospital work, and were still told to choose either combat or the brig. So this resulted in a couple more short imprisonments at army camps, especially training camps.
(For the United States, the war lasted only about 18 months, from April 1917 to November 1918.)
The first rage of persecution against us started in the 1930's, in Germany. In the 1940's that war hysteria hit the United States. There were very close to ZERO reported deaths of Bible Students and Jehovah's Witnesses in the United States, and hundreds in Germany, with thousands incarcerated in the 1940's, many in the worst possible situations, even in concentration camps. Since then, there have been several hot spots off and on where persecution of Witnesses has resulted in violence and death. (Overall, the numbers of deaths have been very small when compared with persecution of other religious groups in this century.)
Interesting possibility. But you would think there would be much more evidence than just interesting possibilities for why Satan delayed turning to the leadership of the Watch Tower, if Revelation 12 really refers to the time immediately after 1914.

Say wha?
Oh, I get it.
nevermind.
" Stay Alive 'till 500,001,975 !! "
.... this is what is known in religious circles as a "Gross Prophet Margin".
 

getfvid_10000000_2497173233651376_8665371102998521299_n.mp4

It is not God who gave all future generations a severely limited lifespan ... it was their parents.
But didn't God reduce that life span to 120 years then 70 years ? 
3 score year + ten. 

No persecution broke out against anyone associated with the Watchtower in 1914, or 1915, or 1916. Does this mean that it took Jesus a very long time to battle with Satan before he could finally throw him out of heaven? I don't think that was the issue at all!
Brother Russell died just two months shy of 1917, and so there was only a very short time before the next election. As the Watch Tower's and Brother Russell's attorney since 1907, Brother Rutherford had made himself the most prominent, and he was the most active in trying to make sure that the Watchtower didn't end up in the hands of the persons that Russell had picked. This was probably a good thing, because those persons whom Russell had picked were not immediately active in trying to pick up the reins of the Watchtower, because it made more sense that "the Lord" was about to act on their behalf, and that they should just go on doing things the way Russell had wanted by following his "last will and testament" and expecting things to just work out for the best. Especially because it appeared that the expected "END" was now more than 24 months overdue. They expected that Russell, whom they saw as a "SAINT" was still actively running the Society from heaven. 
But Rutherford was quite different, and he had just completed a work in 1915 that showed that, as Russell's attorney, he knew all the potential scandals that Russell had been associated with. He would not have had the attitude that things will just work out because "SAINT" Russell was still running things from the other side of the veil. He was many times more practical, and used the opportunity to gain control of the Watchtower. It looked like the Watchtower would have completely flailed into oblivion without Rutherford at the head. He brought things to a head by the middle of 1917 with the release of "The Finished Mystery" in July, at the same time that Russell dismissed a majority of the 7 directors.
It was this point that brought some measure of persecution to the doors of the Watchtower. The majority of the directors felt that Rutherford was persecuting the Watch Tower Society, by becoming autocratic and not following Russell's "last will," and by going against the articles of incorporation of the Watch Tower Society. But again, this majority "turned the other cheek" instead of standing up for themselves, probably with the same idea that the Lord would provide, and that Russell, although he had died, had been immediately resurrected and would actively run things from the other side of the veil.
Of course, Rutherford, and the two directors that stayed with him, felt that it was the four ousted directors who were persecuting them, and when Rutherford replaced those four with persons loyal to him, this became the only way to look at it. Their persecution failed to touch Rutherford though, and Rutherford had won. So except for some legal maneuvering, there was really no persecution on anyone even in 1916 and most of 1917.
But the book that Fisher and Woodworth had written, the Finished Mystery, had gone much further than Russell ever did in speaking out against war and speaking out against the religions that supported war. This got them in trouble in Canada first where religious leaders felt especially "persecuted" by the book, so they got behind some legal maneuvering to get the book banned. With war hysteria high, it was the perfect time to get some action that might not have otherwise been taken against the Bible Students there.
By 1918 the United States Justice Dept with it's Bureau of Investigation was already arresting people and preachers and activists who were speaking out against the draft, and therefore the people behind the Finished Mystery were already in the sights of the government. The book was banned and several brothers all around the United States were arrested and some served jail terms. When the Society itself was investigated, the Society was found to have also been peripherally involved in helping persons try to avoid the draft, but in a way that was careful enough to probably not have resulted in a win against the Society after appeal. But they were arrested for trial and lost the first trial which dealt mostly with the Finished Mystery, but they were not allowed bail during the appeal process so that the directors had to spend several months in Federal Prison while waiting for the appeal.
This was pretty much the entire persecution! It was a very low level of persecution when we consider what kind of religious persecution had been going on in various countries between Catholics and Protestants, "Christians" and Jews, "Christians" and Native Americans, "Christians" and colonial non-Christians, a few other relgiously motivated persecutions around the world.
It also seemed like an extremely low level of persecution when we consider what Satan has been able to accomplish since then among other peoples, where religious differences have provoked war and persecution that ended up killing literally millions.
What it did do that seemed significant was nearly put the Bible Students and the Watchtower Society out of business. But the Watchtower continued to be published during this period. Also after the President of the WTS got out of prison in May 1919, the trial was discontinued because the US prosecution was pretty sure it could not win such a trial outside of wartime. Rutherford immediately started up the campaign for the predictions due in 1925. This campaign was called "Millions Now Living Will Never Die." That campaign kept the Watch Tower Society alive and motivated, although its failure, along with the removal of the unique doctrines of Russell resulted in the decimation of the numbers of Bible Students from 1926 through the end of that decade.