Unfulfilled Watch Tower Society predictions

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Jehovah's Witnesses
Overview Organizational structure Governing Body Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society Corporations History Bible Student movement Leadership dispute Splinter groups Doctrinal development Unfulfilled predictions Demographics By country
Beliefs Practices Salvation Eschatology The 144,000 Faithful and discreet slave Hymns God's name Blood Discipline Literature The Watchtower Awake! New World Translation List of publications Bibliography Places Kingdom Hall Gilead School
People Watch Tower presidents W. H. Conley C. T. Russell J. F. Rutherford N. H. Knorr F. W. Franz M. G. Henschel D. A. Adams Robert Ciranko Formative influences William Miller Henry Grew George Storrs N. H. Barbour John Nelson Darby Notable former members Raymond Franz Olin Moyle
Criticism Criticism Handling child sex abuse Unfulfilled predictions
Opposition Persecution in Nazi Germany Supreme Court cases by country
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Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society publications have made a series of predictions about Christ's Second Coming and the advent of God's Kingdom, each of which has gone unfulfilled. Almost all the predictions for 1878, 1881, 1914, 1918 and 1925 were later reinterpreted as a confirmation of the eschatological framework of the Bible Student movement and Jehovah's Witnesses, with many of the predicted events viewed as having taken place invisibly. Further expectations were held for the arrival of Armageddon in 1975, but resulted in a later apology to members from the society's leadership.

English researcher George D. Chryssides has argued that although there have been some "unrealized expectations", changes in Watch Tower chronology are attributable more to changed chronological schemes, rather than to failed predictions.^[1] The Watch Tower Society has acknowledged errors, which it said helped "sift" the unfaithful from its ranks, but says adherents remained confident that "God's Word" had not failed.^[2]