1914—Pulling the Linchpin

– posted by meleti
Sir Isaac Newton published his laws of motion and universal gravitation in the late 1600s. These laws are still valid today and scientists used them to achieve the pinpoint landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars just two weeks ago.  For centuries, these few laws appeared to explain everything we could observe about the motion of objects in the universe. However, as our instruments got more sensitive holes began to appear in our understanding.  For example, there were inexplicable perturbations in the orbit of Mercury around the sun that could not be explained using Newtonian physics. Scientists were puzzled for decades until a young patent office clerk came up with a rather radical notion. Abandoning all common sense, he postulated that perhaps time wasn't the immutable thing we had always taken it to be. Time could slow down. Changing that element in the equation meant that something else had to become fixed. He concluded that the speed of light in a vacuum could not change.  This eventually led to the most famous formula in history: E=mc2.  Matter could be converted to energy.  A tiny amount of the matter in the sun was being converted to energy which changed the gravitational quotient of the Sun which affected Mercury’s orbit.  Suddenly, the world made sense again—for a time, at least.
All this and the nuclear age to boot, because a single premise was changed.
If you been following this forum, you are likely aware that its participants no longer accept the prophetic significance of 1914. (See Was 1914 the Start of Christ’s Presence? for details.)  Since 1914 is so fundamental to many of our prophetic interpretations, it follows that changing this single premise potentially changes everything.  In a word, 1914 is the linchpin.  Like a real linchpin, our belief in 1914 as the start of Christ’s presence holds in place the interpretive structure of our understanding of all the last days prophecies. Pull up that pin and the wheels come off.
Perhaps it is time to pull that pin.
In subsequent posts, we will go through the Revelation Climax book with a view to examining every prophetic interpretation that we have linked to 1914. As you read these posts, if you feel that we are off-base in any way, please feel free to comment. The purpose of this forum is not to undermine anyone's faith, but rather to arrive at a deeper and more accurate understanding of Scripture. We welcome your input.

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  • Comment by apollos0falexandria on 2012-08-28 13:02:45

    That will be quite a challenge to dissect the 1914 references. All of the 1918 and 1919 applications hinge on that pivotal date also.
    At a quick count it appears that there are the following number of entries for each in the Revelation Book:
    1914:- 102
    1918:- 55
    1919:- 78
    Interestingly when reading the book as a whole it seems that the things that are expected for the future pertaining to Babylon the Great, the UN and world governments still seem to make a lot of sense. It is the bulk of the material that tries to make much of the content of Revelation fit the 20th century history of JW's that flounders. No doubt this is all related to beginning with a false premise as you describe in your article.

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