Consider this...?

Question

Before the Civil War, people were certain that Jesus was coming (out of this era came the 1830 pronouncement of the Rapture doctrine); before WWI, people were convinced that Jesus was coming (which gave rise to the Jehovah’s Witnesses); before and during WWII, people were positive that Hitler was the anti-Christ; now we discuss WW III, and again we are told it is "the end times" and "Jesus is coming back." Such proclamations were wrong before, so how is it that they are valid now?

Answer 1

Please consider this:
Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But, man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man — state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, it enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. Very wise words.

Answer 2

It is true that for more than thirty years, Jehovah's Witnesses had been pointing to 1914 as the end of the Gentile times (see Daniel chapter 4), with Satan being kicked from heaven to the earth and "woe for the earth". Interestingly, World War 1 began in 1914 and is generally agreed to have been "woeful".

(Revelation 12:12) Woe for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.”


Jehovah's Witnesses point to other Scriptures that discuss Jesus' presence and the last days, and they invite householders to examine these and decide for themselves whether our lifetimes seem to coincide with these "last days".

(Matthew 24:3-14) When will these things be, and what will be the sign of your presence and of the conclusion of the system of things?” ...7 “For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another. ...12 and because of the increasing of lawlessness the love of the greater number will cool off. ...14 And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come.

(2 Timothy 3:1-5) But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, 3 having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, 4 betrayers, headstrong, puffed up [with pride], lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power; and from these turn away.


Perhaps most relevant to this question is another Scripture about "the last days":
(2 Peter 3:3-10) For you know this first, that in the last days there will come ridiculers with their ridicule, proceeding according to their own desires and saying: "Where is this promised presence of his? Why, from the day our forefathers fell asleep in death, all things are continuing exactly as from creation’s beginning." ...8 However, let this one fact not be escaping your notice, beloved ones, that one day is with Jehovah as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. Jehovah is not slow respecting his promise, as some people consider slowness, but he is patient with you because he does not desire any to be destroyed but desires all to attain to repentance. Yet Jehovah’s day will come as a thief

Answer 3

HOW is it valid now? I stick by the quote "no man shall ever know the day or the hour" that the end will begin.

Answer 4

They aren't and they never have been, because Jesus was a false Messiah.

-SD-

Answer 5

Because talk is cheap

Answer 6

They are not valid.