God's Kingdom began ruling in 1914

Read Daniel 4 as a whole, and notice how it interprets itself. (Bible quotations on this page are from the New World Translation.) Daniel tells the king, “This is the interpretation, O king; it is the decree of the Most High that must befall my lord the king” (4:24). The tree is Nebuchadnezzar: “it is you, O king” (4:22). Then the chapter reports the fulfillment: “All of this befell King Nebuchadnezzar” (4:28), and “At that moment the word was fulfilled on Nebuchadnezzar” (4:33). When the time ends, the king’s reason returns and he praises God (4:34).

The chapter gives a complete prophecy and a complete fulfillment. It does not say the dream has a second, larger fulfillment. It does not mention Jerusalem, David’s throne, or the Messiah. The lesson it draws is stated in the text: “so that people living may know that the Most High is Ruler in the kingdom of mankind” (4:17).

You may answer that some prophecies do have more than one fulfillment, and that is true. But when the Bible gives a prophecy a further meaning, it usually tells you. Matthew says Hosea’s “Out of Egypt I called my son” was fulfilled in Jesus. Nothing in the Bible says anything like that about Daniel 4. Neither the chapter nor any later book gives it the larger fulfillment that 1914 depends on.

The Bible does count a day for a year twice. In Numbers 14:34, Israel wanders forty years for the forty days the spies were in Canaan. In Ezekiel 4:6, the prophet lies on his side forty days, “a day for a year.” In both places, God states the rule himself, for that case.

Daniel 4 states no such rule. The seven times there are literal for Nebuchadnezzar: no one supposes the king was mad for 2,520 years. So the calculation uses one length for the fulfillment Daniel describes and a different length for the larger fulfillment Daniel does not mention. The second length comes from borrowing a rule from Numbers and Ezekiel and applying it where neither the rule nor the larger fulfillment appears.

Each of these steps can be defended as possible, but the Bible teaches none of them. A date that Jehovah’s people are asked to treat as settled, and on which much else rests, needs the Bible to say so.

The 607 date comes from counting 70 years back from the Jews’ return in 537 B.C.E., on the reading that Jerusalem lay desolate for exactly 70 years. Read what Jeremiah says the 70 years are. “These nations will have to serve the king of Babylon for 70 years. But when 70 years have been fulfilled, I will call to account the king of Babylon” (Jeremiah 25:11-12). And in his letter to the exiles: “When 70 years at Babylon are fulfilled, I will turn my attention to you” (29:10).

In both verses, the 70 years are the years of Babylon’s power over the nations, and they end when Babylon is called to account. That happened in 539 B.C.E., when Babylon fell, as Daniel 5 describes. Counted back from 539, the 70 years begin when Babylon became the ruling power, not when Jerusalem fell.

The Watch Tower Society accepts 539 B.C.E. as the year Babylon fell. That date comes from the same historical records, Babylonian chronicles and astronomical tablets, that place Jerusalem’s destruction in 587 or 586 B.C.E., not 607. The Society has explained why it sets those records aside for 607. Whatever you make of that explanation, the starting year depends on it.

The 1914 teaching holds that Jesus’ presence began invisibly that year, and that it is known by the signs that followed. Read what Jesus said immediately before his words about his presence: “if people say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out; ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For just as the lightning comes out of the east and shines over to the west, so the presence of the Son of man will be” (Matthew 24:26-27).

Jesus uses parousia, the word the New World Translation renders “presence.” He says it will be like lightning: sudden, and seen by everyone across the whole sky. He warns specifically against reports that he is somewhere hidden. An invisible presence that can be known only by working out a date is close to what he told his disciples not to believe.

Other passages say the same. The angels at the ascension say he “will come in the same manner as you have seen him going into the sky” (Acts 1:11). Revelation 1:7 says “every eye will see him.”

You may answer that Jesus already reigns invisibly from heaven, and in one sense Christians agree. Peter says that God raised Jesus, exalted him to his right hand, and “made him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), and Jesus said after his resurrection, “All authority has been given me in heaven and on the earth” (Matthew 28:18). His reign did not wait for 1914. See Acts 2:22-36.

Shortly before his ascension, the disciples asked Jesus a direct question about the timing of the Kingdom: “Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?” He answered, “It does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction” (Acts 1:6-7). Earlier he had said of the day and hour of his coming, “nobody knows” (Matthew 24:36).

Jesus still told his disciples to keep on the watch, and the reason he gave was that they did not know the day. Watching was his instruction; a calculated date for the Kingdom was something he declined to give.

The 1914 teaching has also changed over time. The early Bible Students under Charles Taze Russell expected 1914 to bring the end of the world’s governments, and they taught that Christ’s invisible presence had begun in 1874. When 1914 passed without that end, the meaning of the date was revised. The teaching about “this generation” in Matthew 24:34 has been revised several times since. Witnesses are not the only ones to have set a date and seen it pass; William Miller’s followers expected Jesus in 1844. Jesus’ words in Acts 1:7 apply to everyone.