But I will still say that Jehovah's Witnesses are proud that they were able to point out in advance the year 1914 as a year of radical changes in human society. I think that they themselves are victims of this coincidence because, looking at it, it is very difficult for them to refuse such a "successful" prophecy. That's why they "cling" to it with the last of their strength. But the fact is that the dates of Nebuchadnezzar's reign have already been proved, on the basis of ancient astronomical tablets, in terms of our chronology, and thus it has been established that the date of the destruction of Jerusalem is 586 BC, and not 607 BC, as Jehovah's Witnesses believe.

Therefore, 2520 years, if we accept this theory, ended in 1933, not in 1914. This, if we do not take into account the unreasonableness of the method itself, is more reliable. And indeed, let's imagine a little how the "faithful slave" could have imagined all this, and maybe he will in the future: "Yes, there was a chronological error of 19 years, so we can take 586 BC, as the year of the destruction of Jerusalem, and come to 1933, adding 2520 years. This year, Hitler came to power in Germany, who communicated directly with "heaven" (according to some sources), and therefore with the Devil. It is more plausible, then, that it was in 1935 that Jehovah's light shone forth and we understood the truth about the "great crowd" who would live on earth. It follows that Jehovah "shed light" on the significance of this in time, as soon as the Kingdom began to rule, in just 2 years, etc., etc. Here I have simply presented some options for the development of events in the future, when the year 1914 will have to be recognized as erroneous. I did this so that when this happens, it will not be unexpected for you.

Invisible Presence

Now about the invisible presence or "parousia". We can talk a lot about this. But the point is that there are no two "canvases" and Christ nowhere said that his return would be carried out in 2 stages. But this is how Jehovah's Witnesses now interpret Christ's return—first the invisible presence since 1914, when he became King in heaven, and then the visible coming with the angels: "Then will the sign of the Son of man appear in heaven; and then shall all the families of the earth weep, and see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and he will send his angels with a loud trumpet, and they will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other... But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory, and all nations will be gathered before Him; and separate one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;  and he will set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his left" (Matthew 24:30-31, 25:31-33).

That is, now we are in a transitional period between these 2 events. Christ is already King in heaven, but He has not yet begun to reign on earth. And this is no longer the Bible's message, it is the "truth" borrowed by Jehovah's Witnesses from the Adventists. Any Jehovah's Witness who reads these words of mine will be very surprised that the Watch Tower Society has managed to confuse the matter in such a way that fellow believers simply do not see such an obvious state of affairs. Interestingly, until October 1995, the situation was somewhat different. It was believed that after Jesus Christ became invisibly present or reigning as King in heaven in 1914, the invisible judgment of the world and the division of people into "sheep and goats" began. No visible sign of the presence of Christ will be given, and after the passage of "this generation" Armageddon will begin, i.e. the destruction of this "system of things". But the Watchtower of October 1 and 15, 1995, published articles in which, simultaneously with the change in the doctrine of "this generation," the doctrine of the two-stage "parousia," or the presence of Christ, was introduced. This is the "radiance of light" we have today.

  Obviously, this was done because the Society is now forced to make concessions to Bible truth. And so they decided that the visible coming of Jesus would take place after all, and it would be before Armageddon (or as part of it), when all the nations on earth would "weep" when they saw the clear sign of His coming, and there would be a division into "sheep and goats."

Interestingly, the Watch Tower Society's researchers did not pay attention to this because they managed to confuse not only their adherents but everyone else. And I have the impression that they themselves are completely confused about this issue.

"The Great Crowd"

Now about the "great crowd". This teaching of Jehovah's Witnesses is that there are two castes among Christians – "heavenly" and "earthly". This contradicts the entire teaching of Jesus Christ, the entire New Testament, the entire centuries-old Christian faith, as well as common sense, in which, according to them, Jehovah's Witnesses believe so much. First of all, because the New Testament is written for those who have a heavenly hope, there is no other hope.

In 1935, however, Jehovah's Witnesses brought about a "revolution" in all Christian teaching on salvation and the heavenly hope. On the basis of completely unfounded types and some "hints" that they saw in the Scriptures (especially in the Old Testament), they came to the conclusion that Jehovah God would bless millions, even billions, of people with eternal life on earth in a perfect physical body. This became a "new revolutionary word", I am not afraid of such expressions, because, indeed, it turned everything upside down. For this purpose, completely incomprehensible analogies were used with ancient Israel in the person of King Jehu and the pagan Jonadab, and on this basis it was concluded that in the 1930s there were such "Jonadab" living on earth who would live forever on earth. Further - more! It was announced that these "Jonadava" were the "sheep" of Jesus' parable of the "sheep and the goats," and then the most amazing things were that if they were "sheep," they were "other sheep" in John 10:16: "I have other sheep that are not of this fold, and these I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd." And if so, then they are also a great crowd," at the same time, from Revelation 7:9: "After these things I looked, and behold, a great crowd, which no one could number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb in white robes and palm branches in their hands." All this was done completely unreasonably. But how serious this can be judged by the results: now 6.5 million Jehovah's Witnesses hope to live forever on earth, and only 8.5 thousand Jehovah's Witnesses (mainly world leaders and elderly believers) are forever in heaven.