Acts 1:7
Acts 1:77Jesus replied, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by His own authority.
The Watchtower cites ("It does not belong to you to learn the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction") as a qualifier on date-setting by individual believers, while paradoxically asserting organisational authority to identify 1914 as the year of Christ's invisible enthronement and to have repeatedly published date-specific expectations (1925 for the patriarchs' resurrection, 1975 for Armageddon). Jesus's direct command in the verse is treated as applying to rank-and-file members, not to the Governing Body's prophetic pronouncements.
is Jesus's direct, personal answer to the disciples' date-of-restoration question, and it is explicit: "It does not belong to you to learn the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction." The command is unqualified. The Watchtower's response has been a century of date-specific predictions, each presented as Jehovah's timing.
1920: Rutherford's Millions Now Living Will Never Die stated he could "confidently expect that 1925 will mark the return of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob." He called the chronology "not of man, but of God" and "definitely settled by the Scriptures." 1929: Beth Sarim was built in San Diego, a ten-bedroom mansion titled "perpetually in trust" for the ancient worthies who never arrived. Rutherford lived there until his death in 1942; the property was quietly sold in 1948 and is now San Diego Historical Landmark #474. 1975: heavily implied as Armageddon throughout early-1970s Watchtower literature. Each of these was a specific year, spoken in Jehovah's name, that did not come true.
shows the opposite posture: the faithful patriarchs "did not receive the fulfilment of the promises" and trusted God's timing without presuming to name it. is Jesus's own rule on the matter. provides the test for a prophet who speaks presumptuously in Jehovah's name. The pattern is not hidden — it is on the public record.