Reed - Answering Jehovahs Witnesses: Subject by Subject

In his apocalyptic vision the apostle John saw an army of locusts ruled by the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. ( Revelation 9:11 ) Who is this angel of the bottomless pit? The Watchtower Societys 1917 commentary on Revelation titled The Finished Mystery explains the verse this way: Whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon.And he is a bad one, sure enough. 2 Cor. 4:4. But in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. That is, Destroyer. But in plain English his name is Satan, the Devil. (page 159, emphasis in original) However, its 1969 commentary Then Is Finished The Mystery of God offers an entirely different explanation: In the Hebrew his name is Abaddon, meaning Destruction; and in Greek it is Apollyon, meaning Destroyer. All this plainly identifies the angel as picturing Jesus Christ, the Son of Jehovah God. (page 232)

What a dramatic reversal! It is difficult to imagine a more drastic change in teaching. The Watchtower organization identifies the angel of the bottomless pit first as Satan the Devil, and then as Jesus Christ. Jehovahs Witnesses today are familiar with the latter interpretation but generally unaware of the former.

Orthodox commentaries point out that the angel of the bottomless pit experienced a fall from heaven ( Revelation 9:1 ) and hence classify him as demonic. But the goal in sharing this information with JWs would be not to persuade them of Abaddons true identity, but rather to help them learn two more important lessons: (1) that their leaders employ the tyranny of authority in place of sound hermeneutics, simply asserting interpretations for followers to accept, and (2) that an organization guilty of confusing Satan with Christ can hardly be relied upon today for an answer to the vital question of who Jesus is.

See also Michael the Archangel .

Jehovahs Witnesses are trained to speak at great length about Adam and Eve when debating such matters as the nature of the soul and the principle of wifely subjection. But these are dead-end issues from the standpoint of sharing the gospel with them, hence inadvisable for Christians to pursue as topics for discussion. However, it may prove profitable to be aware of what the Watchtower Society has taught concerning the time interval between Adams creation and Eves. Though this may appear, at first glance, to be a piece of inconsequential trivia, it actually constitutes a significant piece of the puzzle that, when fully assembled, identifies the JW organization as a false prophet.

Adam and Eve figure prominently in the chronological calculations Watchtower leaders used during the late 1960s and early 1970s to promote their prediction that the world would end on or about October 4/5, 1975. Their theory was, in essence, that the six days of Genesis 1 are symbolic periods of seven thousand years each culminating in Gods final creative act, the making of Eve from Adams rib. The ensuing seventh day, Gods rest day, must likewise be seven

thousand years long. However, mans fall into sin in the Garden of Eden condemned humankind to six thousand years of toil, to be followed by a sabbath-like seventh thousand-year period of rest during the millennial reign of Christ. Adam was created on October 4th or 5th of the year 4026 B.C. , so the story goes; thus, According to this trustworthy Bible chronology six thousand years from mans creation will end in 1975, and the seventh period of a thousand years of human history will begin in the fall of 1975 C.E. ( Life Everlastingin Freedom of the Sons of God , Watchtower Society, 1966, page 29)

Released at conventions of Jehovahs Witnesses in the summer of 1966, the book featuring this prophecy created quite a stir among them, especially since it went on to say, It would not be by mere chance or accident but would be according to the loving purpose of Jehovah God for the reign of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, to run parallel with the seventh millennium of mans existence. (page 30) This implied, of course, that the world would end and Gods kingdom would come in the autumn of 1975.

The time interval between Adams creation and Eves came into play because the Bible is silent on how long Adam remained alone before God made his helpmate. The August 15, 1968 Watchtower article titled Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975? draws a direct connection between this time interval and the worlds end:

Are we to assume from this study that the battle of Armageddon will be all over by the autumn of 1975, and the long-looked-for thousand-year reign of Christ will begin by then? Possibly, but we wait to see how closely the seventh thousand-year period of mans existence coincides with the sabbathlike thousand-year reign of Christ. If these two periods run parallel with each other as to the calendar year, it will not be by mere chance or accident but will be according to Jehovahs loving and timely purposes. Our chronology, however, which is reasonably accurate (but admittedly not infallible), at the best only points to the autumn of 1975 as the end of 6,000 years of mans existence on earth. It does not necessarily mean that 1975 marks the end of the first 6,000 years of Jehovahs seventh creative day. Why not? Because after his creation Adam lived some time during the sixth day, which unknown amount of time would need to be subtracted from Adams 930 years, to determine when the sixth seven-thousand-year period or day ended, and how long Adam lived into the seventh day. And yet the end of that sixth creative day could end within the same Gregorian calendar year of Adams creation. It may involve only a difference of weeks or months, not years. [page 499]

The article goes on to explain that Eve was created after Adam. So not until after this event did the sixth creative day come to an end. But it adds that the lapse of time between Adams creation and the end of the sixth creative day, though unknown, was a comparatively short period of time. (page 500)

So, Jehovahs Witnesses expected that if the battle of Armageddon failed to occur in the autumn of 1975 it would still happen a short time later, in a matter of weeks or months, not years. Elsewhere, in fact, the Watchtower Society assumes Eve was created in the same year as Adam. Thus its 1971 Bible dictionary Aid to Bible Understanding comments, At the age of 130 another son was born to her. Eve called his name Seth (page 538) This, of course, is the same age Genesis 5:3 assigns to Adam at the time of Seths birth. And the 1974 book Gods Eternal Purpose Now Triumphing for Mans Good places the year 526 B.C. 3,500 years from creation of Adam and Eve (pages 131132) and specifically states that the seventh creative day begins, 4026 B.C.E. (page 51) Alert JWs saw all of this as further confirmation that the battle of Armageddon should end this old world and bring in Christs millennial reign by the autumn of 1975.

When that failed to happen and the years 1976 and 1977 found usI joined the sect in 1969still trudging from house to house offering the same literature to the people at the doors, we would answer householders questions about 1975 with the explanation that the interval between the creation of Adam and Eve must have been a bit longer than we had assumed, and that this pushed back the start of Christs thousand-year reign by a corresponding period of time. Nearly seven years after the 1975 failure, when my wife and I left the organization in 1982, that explanation was becoming a bit far-fetched. And now, in the mid1990s, it would require that Adam lived a full twenty years alone, before the creation of his matequite a bit longer than the weeks or months, not years allowed by the 1968 Watchtower article titled Why Are You Looking Forward to 1975? At this point it would be appropriate to ask Jehovahs Witnesses instead, Why are you still following the Watchtower?