Against the defence 'Jesus said no one knows the day or hour': the organisation quoted Mark 13:32 in 1968 while in the same articles fixing the autumn of 1975 as the end of 6,000 years and suggesting the gap to Christ's reign might be 'weeks or months'; the 1924 and 1925 articles likewise paired disclaimers with dated expectations.
Claim ID claim-predictions-defence-no-one-knows-the-dayConcerns 1 May 1968Context
1 May 1968 · pp.271-273 · pars. 5, 8 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
“Eight years from the autumn of 1967 would bring us to the autumn of 1975, fully 6,000 years into God's seventh day, his rest day. ... Does this mean that the year 1975 will bring the battle of Armageddon? No one can say with certainty what any particular year will bring.”
Cautionary sentence sits inside an article urging readers to treat the old system as 'a sinking ship'.
Provenance and verification note for The Watchtower, Making Wise Use of the Remaining Time
Confidence note. Opened on wol; page markers 271 and 272/273 confirmed. The wording 'within a few years at most the final parts of Bible prophecy...' attributed by some discovery sites to pp.272-273 was not found in this article.
15 August 1968 · pp.494-501 · pars. 29-30, 37 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
“Are we to assume from this study that the battle of Armageddon will be all over by the autumn of 1975, and the long-looked-for thousand-year reign of Christ will begin by then? Possibly, but we wait to see how closely the seventh thousand-year period of man's existence coincides with the sabbathlike thousand-year reign of Christ.”
The same paragraph (30) continues: 'Our chronology, however, which is reasonably accurate (but admittedly not infallible), at the best only points to the autumn of 1975 as the end of 6,000 years of man's existence on earth. It does not necessarily mean that 1975 marks the end of the first 6,000 years of Jehovah's seventh creative "day." ... It may involve only a difference of weeks or months, not years.' Par. 29: 'in the fall of the year 1975 ... it will be 6,000 years since the creation of Adam'. Par. 37: 'They have not dedicated their lives to serve Jehovah only until 1975.'
15 July 1924 · p.211 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society
“The year 1925 is a date definitely and clearly marked in the Scriptures, even more clearly than that of 1914; but it would be presumptuous on the part of any faithful follower of the Lord to assume just what the Lord is going to do during that year.”
Preceded by 'Let no one now be deceived by calculations as to just when the Lord will cease his work with the Church on earth.'
A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-predictions-defence-no-one-knows-the-day/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.