c. 1999 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ Forty-five-year-old Delecia Wilcox believes Christ will rule over a paradise on Earth free of wickedness, crime and death in her lifetime. So does 75-year-old Louise Bell.
Angelo Natali, 72, had thought God would have already acted, striking down the wicked and establishing his kingdom on Earth. He also believes a new world order is imminent and millions of people now living will never die.
In all the apocalyptic speculation surrounding the turn of the millennium, Jehovah’s Witnesses have lost little of the sense of urgency concerning the end times that have made the movement one of the world’s fastest growing faiths. Yet Americans should not expect any fewer visits from these dark-suited missionaries if 2000 is ushered in without incident.
This is one made-in-America religion that has survived the date-setting prophecies of its founders to build a worldwide following with a new message: The end is near, we just don’t know how near.
This summer, hundreds of thousands of Witnesses are discussing Bible prophecy at regional district conventions. In a religious world littered with failed movements forecasting how God will act in human history, the Witnesses have spent the final years of the second millennium striking a balance between urgently anticipating the end and shying away from predictions.”Everyone believes it’s going to happen in our lifetime,”said Donald Madzay, an elder in the Brunswick West congregation in Cleveland and the keynote speaker at a regional convention.”We believe it could happen any day. So we live that way, as if it could happen tomorrow.””Look, now is the day of salvation,”says the sign above the speaker’s podium at the Kingdom Hall of the congregation in Shaker Heights, Ohio. On a recent warm evening, everyone from children to the elderly is attired in suits and dresses and skirts for the service meeting of prayer, song and instruction.
Being a Jehovah’s Witness involves commitment. Congregations have as many as five meetings a week, and some members volunteer 50 hours a month or more spreading their message door to door or on street corners or in home Bible studies.
Gail Gordon, 46, dressed in a hat, white jacket and black skirt, spends 70 to 80 hours a month in evangelism work. Her sense of urgency to save others from eternal destruction resonates with a history of the movement that had its beginnings in the prophecies of William Miller, the founder of Adventism.”It’s like being in a burning house. You certainly would appreciate someone waking you up,”she said.
The”Great Disappointment”of 1844 _ when Miller’s predictions of the Second Coming did not come true _ did not stop him and others from establishing a religious group based on prophecy. Coming out of the Adventist tradition was the founder of the Witnesses, Charles Taze Russell.
Russell set 1874 as the date for Jesus’ return, and 1914 for the battle of Armageddon and the beginning of Jesus’ rulership on Earth. In their book”The New Millennium Manual,”Robert G. Clouse, Robert N. Hosak and Richard V. Pierard said that was only the beginning of the Witnesses’ date-setting.
Russell, they said, reset his timetable to 1918, but the slogan of Russellites _ that millions now living will never die _ lost some impact when Russell died in 1916. Russell’s successor, Joseph P. Rutherford, predicted the”full restoration”of humankind would occur in 1925. Other dates many Witnesses looked to for the end of this world and the beginning of an earthly paradise were 1941, 1954 and 1975, the authors said.
The Witnesses taught that Christ returned in 1914 and established his kingdom in heaven. They await the establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth. But they have steadily moved away from predictions. In 1995, the masthead of its magazine Awake! talked of a peaceful and secure new world before the generation alive in 1914 passes away. That timetable was blurred to speak less specifically of a new world”that is about to replace the present, wicked lawless system of things.””What’s happened in recent years is they’ve sort of fuzzified this kind of stuff,”Pierard said in an interview.”They’ve downplayed this stuff considerably.” And their growth _ particularly internationally _ has been explosive, according to the Witnesses. The organization says its membership has increased 1.4 million in the last four years to nearly 5.9 million. There are 1,040,000 U.S. Witnesses.
Ironically, said Clouse, Hosack and Pierard, what the failed prophecies did was strengthen the movement”by separating the chaff from the wheat, the true believers from the hangers-on, and thereby reinforced in-group cohesion.” As do many evangelicals, Witnesses continue to see signs of the end times in events such as floods, wars, earthquakes and famines that some Bible writers said would foretell the last days.
At the Shaker Heights congregation, Hugh Kidd, 51, knows the time is close.”Very soon, God’s kingdom will take effect on Earth,”he said.
Still, in itself, the year 2000 has no special meaning, Witnesses said.
Wilcox, who spends 60 to 70 hours a month knocking on doors and at bus stops and on the street propagating her faith, has no plans to slow down if the next millennium begins without the establishment of God’s kingdom on Earth.”It means it’s another year closer to the end of time and for me to continue to keep busy,”she said.”The point is for me to live my life as if it might be tomorrow, or the next day.”
DEA END BRIGGS
