IT seems that the Watch Tower Society has given up inventing new prophecies. Instead, if recent Watchtower magazines are anything to go by, it's started to re-cycle its old ones.

Back in the year 1920 the Watch Tower Society released its book "Millions Now Living Will Never Die", which prophesied that the resurrection of the dead would take place in 1925, thus necessitating Armageddon and the Millennium.

On page 97 of the book, we read;

Millions of people now on earth will be still on the earth in 1925. Then, based upon the promises set forth in the divine word, we must reach the positive and indisputable conclusion that millions now living will never die".

Despite the miserable failure of this 1925 prophecy, the phrase "Millions Now Living Will Never Die", has remained a dandy little cliché featured in many Watch Tower publications ever since.

But, just in case any rank and file JW thinks the phrase is past its sell-by date, the Watch Tower of January 1st 1997 has given the phrase a new lease of life stating;

In the 1920s a featured public talk, presented by Jehovah's Witnesses, was entitled "Millions Now Living Will Never Die". This may have reflected over optimism at that time, but today that statement can be made with full confidence."

We ask on what basis can this statement be made today with full confidence?

Ray Franz, a former member of the Watch Tower Society's governing body, aptly described the whole "Millions" scenario in his book Crisis of Conscience as follows;

1925, on which the prediction and slogan was based, proved empty of all the things foretold. The teaching was without substance, mere fluff, prophetic fantasy." page 194.

Surely the January 1st Watchtower only seeks to perpetuate that prophetic fantasy.

With deserved sarcasm we must say that, based upon the promises set forth in the Watch Tower publications, we must reach the positive and indisputable conclusion that millions of JWs now living have bought a lie.