1918
Watch Tower expectations for 1918
Date approximate Prediction date passed End TimesDate SettingJehovah's WitnessesFailed Predictions
Quick facts
- Predicted date
- 1918
- Who predicted it
- Joseph F. Rutherford, Watch Tower Society
- When announced
- 1917
- Reasoning
- Extension of the 1914 chronology by applying a harvest period of about three and a half years.
- What happened
- The expected destruction of the church systems and the taking of believers to heaven did not occur in 1918.
- Historical status
- Date approximate. The claim is documented, but the exact date or span is not.
- Outcome label
- Prediction date passed
- Editorial certainty
- Medium: reliable secondary sources
- Editorial review
- Pending. This entry has not yet been checked line by line against its sources. Treat details as provisional.
Prediction
What did Joseph F. Rutherford predict?
After 1914 passed, some Bible Student publications, including The Finished Mystery (1917), pointed to 1918 as the year when the existing church systems would be brought down and faithful Christians would be taken to heaven.
Interpretation by the author
Why did they believe it?
The argument extended the 1914 chronology. If the "harvest" period of the church began in 1874 and lasted until 1914, a short further period of about forty years or less was thought by some to run to 1918.
The Finished Mystery (1917), a posthumous seventh volume of Studies in the Scriptures compiled under Rutherford's direction, presented 1918 as a year of great upheaval.
Scripture as used by the author
Biblical basis cited
The book applied passages from Revelation and Ezekiel verse by verse. The 1918 argument leaned on the interpretation of 1914 and did not rest on a single verse.
Method
How the date was calculated
Extension of the 1914 chronology by applying a harvest period of about three and a half years.
Historical record
Historical context
The Finished Mystery was published in 1917 and was severely criticized by religious and governmental opponents during wartime. Rutherford and several colleagues were imprisoned in 1918 on sedition charges and were released in 1919, a case that historians typically discuss alongside the wartime climate.
Historical record
What happened when the date passed?
The expected destruction of the church systems and the taking of believers to heaven did not occur in 1918.
Historical record
What happened afterward
The Watch Tower organization subsequently shifted attention to a campaign of public preaching and to a new date, 1925. The Finished Mystery itself later fell out of use in the movement.
Scripture
Passages cited
-
Revelation 11:1–19 (KJV)
One of the chapters treated verse by verse in the volume.
Excerpts are from the King James Version (public domain). Listing a verse here does not mean this site agrees with how the author used it.
Sources
Sources and further reading
- Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (compiled under J. F. Rutherford). The Finished Mystery (Studies in the Scriptures, Volume 7). Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. 1917. Primary source The wording of the 1918 expectations should be checked directly against the text.
- M. James Penton. Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses. University of Toronto Press. 1985. Academic
Found an error or a better source? Send a correction. See also the methodology.