When Prophecy Adapts

En undersøkelse av utviklingen til Våkttårnets eskatologiske forventninger

Abstract

Jehovah’s Witnesses is often presented as a special religious group, one who has preached the imminence of the end of the world for an exceptional long amount of time. The implicit assumption in this statement, is also this article’s hypothesis: an imminent eschatological expectation will, over time, create an explanatory problem, where religions, for the sake of their own survival, must revise and adapt their eschatological expectations. This article examines this hypothesis by analysing the eschatological expectations presented in Jehovah’s Witnesses magazine The Watchtower, from 1985 through 2015. With the use of Roy Rappaports theory, supplemented with some new terms to make the theory fit the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, it analyses the developments and adaptations in Jehovah’s Witnesses eschatological doctrines, and shows numerous signs of a religious organization that may be headed towards great changes in the immanent character of its eschatological beliefs.