What event marked the beginning of the last days in the bible?

Answer 1

The answer Jehovah's Witnesses give is unequivocally: The event of 'WORLD WAR 1' in August of 1914.

40 years before 1914, Jehovah's Witnesses pointed forward that 1914 would be a 'turning point' in human history. While we did not know exactly what would happen; we did expect something extra-ordinary.

This event: (WW1); - - and this date: (the fall of 1914); has been studied by world historians, and world leaders.

The following are some QUOTES from world historians. (Jehovah's Witnesses would agree with them, regarding this event as being a 'TURNING POINT' in human history.)

· The foreword of the book Pandaemonium, by U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published in 1993, commented on "the catastrophe of 1914" reads: "War came and the world changed-utterly. There are today just eight states on earth which both existed in 1914 and have not had their form of government changed by violence since then. . . . Of the remaining 170 or so contemporary states, some are too recently created to have known much recent turmoil."

· The book Out of Control-GlobalTurmoil on the Eve of theTwenty-First Century(1993); The author is Zbigniew Brzezinski, former head of the U.S. National Security Council writes: "The onset of the twentieth century was hailed in many commentaries as the real beginning of the Age of Reason. . . . Contrary to its promise, the twentieth century became mankind's most bloody and hateful century, a century of hallucinatory politics and of monstrous killings. Cruelty was institutionalized to an unprecedented degree, lethality was organized on a mass production basis. The contrast between the scientific potential for good and the political evil that was actually unleashed is shocking. Never before in history was killing so globally pervasive, never before did it consume so many lives, never before was human annihilation pursued with such concentration of sustained effort on behalf of such arrogantly irrational goals."

· The London Evening Star commented that World War I "tore the whole world's political setup apart. Nothing could ever be the same again. . . . some historian in the next century may well conclude that the day the world went mad was August 4, 1914."

· Of the great change 1914 made, the historian H. R. Trevor-Roper said: "It is instructive to compare the first World War with the second . . . the first war marked a far greater change in history. It closed a long era of general peace and began a new age of violence in which the second war is simply an episode. Since 1914 the world has had a new character: a character of international anarchy. . . . Thus the first World War marks a turning point in modern history."

· Former chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer spoke of the time "before 1914 when there was real peace, quiet and security on this earth-a time when we didn't know fear." Then he added: "Security and quiet have disappeared from the lives of men since 1914. And peace? Since 1914, the Germans have not known real peace nor has much of mankind,"

· Note, too, the comment in the book entitled "1914." The author says: "In the year 1914 the world, as it was known and accepted then, came to an end. Far more than any year before or since was this the punctuation-mark of the twentieth century . . . from then on nothing could ever be the same."

· "1914-a year written with fire and blood in the history of man. The world war itself-and still more the conditions that followed-turned all accustomed notions and ideas upside down and inside out. Time was torn and splintered, ripped in two-we entered an altogether different era, morals became different, grosser and rougher than ever."-Bokken Lasson in the Norwegian periodical Alt for damene, August 14, 1954.

· Bertrand Russell (philosopher) declared: "Ever since 1914 the world has been reeling drunkenly toward disaster."

· An editorial in the Washington Times-Herald for March 13, 1945, stated: "The last completely 'normal' year in history was 1913, the year before World War I began."

· Dr. Harold C. Urey, one of the world's leading creators of the atom bomb, said: "We have not had a peaceful world since 1914." (Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 9, 1951)

· Declared an editorial writer in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegram, August 1, 1954: "Forty years ago the world overnight goose-stepped from the 'golden age' into a volcanic epoch marked by bloody wars."

· An editorial in the Edmonton Journal of Alberta, Canada, dated August 7, 1954: "It seems likely that when the history of the twentieth century is written, August 4, 1914, the day hostilities became general in Europe, will loom larger than even the date of the outbreak of the Second World War or the dropping of the first atomic bomb. That August day, we are beginning to realize, marked a dividing line in history. An era of peace, progress and security ended, and an age of war and revolution began."

· This same observation was made by an associate professor of history at Columbia University's Barnard College, who wrote in The Scientific Monthly of July, 1951: "It is indeed the year 1914 rather than that of Hiroshima which marks the turning point in our time, for by now we can see that, whatever the future may hold in store, it was the first world war that ushered in the era of confused transition in the midst of which we are floundering."

· And, when making a comparison of the two world wars, the New York Times Magazine of August 1, 1954, came to this conclusion: "The first war marked a far greater change in history. It closed a long era of general peace and began a new age of violence in which the second war is simply an episode. Since 1914 the world has had a new character: a character of international anarchy. . . . Thus the first World War marks a turning point in modern history."

My apologies that this was so lengthy; but we feel it establishes some validity for our belief that WW1 of 1914, marks the 'beginning' of the period called: the last days.