The IBSA, WTBS, and GB have never claimed infallibility. Though we are all anxious to see people get relief from this corrupt system, and for Jehovah’s rule through Jesus to bring the Kingdom benefits. That being said, let’s consider these dates you’ve posted:
Was 1914 a turning point for mankind? Maybe the end didn’t come as expected, but the Last Days — of foretold times of trouble —
did begin. Here’s a post written by a Mark Hunter, who really explains the evidence quite well:
**
The New York World of August 30, 1914, explains: “The terrific war outbreak in Europe has fulfilled an extraordinary prophecy. For a quarter of a century past, through preachers and through press, the ‘International Bible Students’ [as
Jehovah’s Witnesses were then known] . . .
have been proclaiming to the world that the Day of Wrath prophesied in the Bible
would dawn in 1914.”–The World, a New York newspaper, August 30, 1914.
As it turned out, these things were only a “
beginning of pangs of distress.”
“For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another. All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress. (Mat 24:7)
Yes, their expectations were wrong. They expected that year to be the end, but came to believe that that year was only the beginning of what the Bible calls the “end of this system of things” or the “last days.”
More passages painting a picture of these Last Days, and the invisible Heaveny events leading to them
:"And war broke out in heaven: Miʹcha·el and his angels battled with the dragon, and the dragon and its angels battled but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them any longer in heaven. 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...On this account be glad, you heavens and you who reside in them!
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.” (Revelation 12: 7-12)
“When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say: “Come!” Another came out, a fiery-colored horse, and it was granted to the one seated on it to
take peace away from the earth so that they should slaughter one another, and he was given a great sword.” (Revelation 6:3, 4)
Due to their zeal, Christians have at times had wrong expectations.
Examples:
Shortly before Jesus died, his disciples “were imagining that the kingdom of God was going to display itself instantly.” Then, after his resurrection they asked whether the Kingdom would be set up right away. Also, about ten years before Peter wrote his second letter, some were “excited” by “a verbal message” or “a letter,” reputedly from the apostle Paul or his companions, “to the effect that the day of Jehovah is here.” (Luke 19:11; 2 Thessalonians 2:2; Acts 1:6)
They were a bit early.
Anyway,
How do secular authorities or historians view 1914?
“
Ever since 1914, everybody conscious of trends in the world has been deeply troubled by
what has seemed like a fated and predetermined march toward ever greater disaster. Many serious people have come to feel that
nothing can be done to avert the plunge towards ruin.”—Bertrand Russell, The New York Times Magazine, September 27, 1953.
The London Evening Star commented that the conflict “tore the whole world’s political setup apart.
Nothing could ever be the same again. If we all get the nuclear madness out of our systems and the human race survives, some historian in the next century may well conclude that
the day the world went mad was August 4, 1914.”–London Evening Star, quoted in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 5, 1960, and The Seattle Times, August 4, 1960, p. 5.
“Half a century has gone by, yet the mark that the tragedy of the Great War left on the body and soul of the nations has not faded . . . The physical and moral magnitude of this ordeal was such that
nothing left was the same as before.
Society in its entirety: systems of government, national borders, laws, armed forces, interstate relations, but also ideologies,
family life, fortunes, positions, personal relations—everything
was changed from top to bottom. . . . Humanity finally lost its balance, never to recover it to this day.” (General Charles de Gaulle, Le Monde, Nov. 12, 1968, p. 9)
“Everyone agrees in recognizing that in the whole history of mankind, few dates have had the importance of August 2, 1914.” (Maurice Genevoix, Promise of Greatness)
“Those who lived through the war could never rid themselves of the belief that
one world had ended and another begun in August 1914.” (The Generation of 1914, Robert Wohl, Professor of History)
“
The whole world really blew up about World War I and we still don’t know why. Before then, men thought that utopia was in sight. There was peace and prosperity.
Then everything blew up. We’ve been in a state of suspended animation ever since . . . More people have been killed in this century than in all of history.” (Dr. Walker Percy, American Medical News, November 21, 1977)
“Everything would get better and better. This was the world I was born in. . . .
Suddenly, unexpectedly, one morning in 1914 the whole thing came to an end.” (British statesman Harold Macmillan, The New York Times, November 23, 1980)
“The last completely ‘normal’ year in history was 1913, the year before World War I began.” (Times-Herald, Washington, D.C., March 13, 1949)
“
In 1914 the world lost a coherence which it has not managed to recapture since. . . . This has been a time of extraordinary disorder and violence, both across national frontiers and within them.” (The Economist)
“The Great War of 1914-18 lies like a band of scorched earth dividing that time from ours. In wiping out so many lives which would have been operative on the years that followed, in
destroying beliefs, changing ideas, and leaving incurable wounds of disillusion, it created a physical as well as psychological gulf between two epochs.” (Foreword to The Proud Tower, by Barbara W. Tuchman)
“Neither the old nor the young had any suspicion that what they were witnessing, during that incomparable season of 1914, was, in fact, the end of an era.” (Before the Lamps Went Out, by Geoffrey Marcus)
“[There was] little or no evidence of a steady rise or a ‘snowballing’ of conflicts and tensions leading directly to the outbreak of war.” On the contrary, “by late 1913 and early 1914 . . . relations among the major powers appeared to be more settled than they had been for many years.” (International Crisis, by Eugenia Nomikos and Robert C. North, 1976)**
Excerpt from
Reply To: 1914 – what happened? – Heaven Net
What was said?
What was said?
Please show me where the Organization stated that 1975 was going to
definitely be the end? You won’t find it....because
nothing definite was ever written! Only that it was the end of 6,000 years of human existence, and it
could be the end.
Did not Jesus say to “keep on the watch”? To “stay alert”? That’s just what we try to do.....the sin is to
not stay awake, fall asleep.
As stated at
Armageddon – When? :
“Remember that we don't sin by watching, hoping, and anticipating. Rather,
we sin when we stop doing that. For Jesus said (as recorded at Luke 12:37):
'Blest are those slaves that are watching
When their master arrives!
For I tell you this as the truth:
He will then put on his apron
And make them recline at his table;
Then, he will come there and serve them!”
