Every Prophetic Failure of Jehovah's Witnesses In About 5 Mins

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower organization that leads them have a two-century habit of naming the year the end will come, watching the year pass, and then quietly moving on to the next one. Laid out end to end, the record runs from a solar eclipse in colonial New England to arithmetic printed in this century — roughly thirty separate dates, each promoted with confidence and each abandoned or reinterpreted when it failed.

Here is that record, in order.

The 18th and 19th Century Adventist Dates (1780–1874)

1780. The "Dark Day" of May 19, 1780, when smoke and cloud cover blotted out the sun over New England, was taken by contemporaries as the first sign of the last days.

1798. In the book Three Worlds, Nelson Barbour and Charles Taze Russell taught that Daniel's "time, times, and a half" ended in 1798, when Napoleon stripped the papacy of its temporal dominion.

1799. The date was later recalculated by a year in Joseph F. Rutherford's The Harp of God, which stated:

1799 definitely marks the beginning of the time of the end.

1829. The Watch Tower of 1914 said a prophetic period had terminated in 1829, marking the start of William Miller's Second Advent movement.

1840. Three Worlds taught that the seventh trumpet of Revelation sounded from August 1840 until the day of wrath.

1844. The great Adventist date for the end of the world, inherited by Russell from the Millerite movement. It didn't come.

1846. The math was adjusted again: Thy Kingdom Come relocated the cleansing of the sanctuary to 1846.

1873. Studies in the Scriptures declared that 6,000 years since Adam were complete in 1873, marking the threshold of Christ's millennial reign.

1874. Russell's keystone date — Christ's invisible second coming — was still stated as fact in the November 1922 Watch Tower, and wasn't abandoned until 1943, when the blame was placed on the King James Bible's chronology.

Russell's Dates: From the Second Coming to a World War (1878–1918)

1878. Christ was to take the throne and the living faithful were to be raptured in April 1878. When nobody left, the rapture was redefined as happening quietly at each believer's death.

1880. The Day of Vengeance claimed that, as of 1880, "every item predicted had begun to be fulfilled at that date."

1881. Zion's Watch Tower taught that the gathering of the 144,000 would be sealed and complete in 1881, and the chosen once again expected to go to heaven.

1906. Russell foretold a European "war of extermination" for 1906.

1910. Based on measurements taken from the Great Pyramid, Studies in the Scriptures expected trouble "chiefly upon the church" about 1910.

1914. Originally the end itself. The Time Is at Hand said the "battle" would end in AD 1914 with:

The complete overthrow of earth's present rulership.

That failure was later revised into an invisible enthronement of Christ instead.

1915. Russell, positing a missing year, wrote:

The trouble to the full will be accomplished by October 1915.

1917. The Finished Mystery predicted the World War would end around October 1, 1917. Later reprints quietly changed the line to "probably early in the year 1918."

1918. The same book said that in 1918:

God would destroy the churches wholesale and church members by the millions.

Rutherford's Dates: Millions Now Living, Then Moving the Goalposts (1920–1943)

1920. The Finished Mystery also claimed:

Even the republics will disappear.

in the fall of 1920. Later editions edited the line to "the time of anarchy."

1921. The following year, the book said the chosen would finally reach heaven.

1925. Rutherford's "definitely and clearly marked" year for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to return to earth — promoted under the title Millions Now Living Will Never Die, and backed up by a mansion in San Diego, Beth Sarim, built for their arrival and eventually sold off in 1942.

1932. After 1925 failed, the destruction of Christendom was moved to 1932, as a 1938 Watch Tower itself later described.

1935. The door to the heavenly calling was declared closed in 1935 — an end date the organization conceded in 2007 it could not actually set.

Early 1940s. The book Children, along with the September 1941 Watch Tower, told young people to put off marriage and families for the remaining months before Armageddon.

Postwar Predictions: 1951 to 2033

1951. The November 1, 1950 Watch Tower paralleled the 37 years from Christ's death to Jerusalem's fall with 1914, pointing readers toward a more terrible end due around 1951.

1975. Built up from 1966 on as the end of 6,000 years of human history and driven home at conventions, the failure was later blamed on members who had read into it that it was a certainty.

1980. The Finished Mystery had floated 1980 as possibly marking the re-gathering of fleshly Israel from death.

1986. True Peace and Security tied the United Nations' International Year of Peace to the prophesied "peace and security" cry that was supposed to precede sudden destruction.

2000. Watchtower literature written in 1989 said the preaching work would be completed:

In our 20th century.

That phrase was later edited in the bound volumes to:

In our day.

2033 (implied). Watch Tower literature in 2003 set Noah's 120 years alongside roughly 90 years since 1914 — arithmetic that, on this reading, first implies 2023 and then actually lands on 2033, all without the organization ever printing the year outright.

A Pattern, and a Price Tag

Soon, soon, soon. Just around the corner. The last of the last days. As long as Watch Tower can get away with it, they'll keep baiting Jehovah's Witnesses with the end-times carrot while beating them with the work-for-us-for-free stick.

By one estimate, Watch Tower is sitting on about 55 billion dollars in assets — all while telling Jehovah's Witnesses they need to do more in volunteer service to its corporate empire.