Creating my own religion

I did not intend to create a religion, or for that matter, a novel.  My writing has a life of its own, and I decided fiction might be a better way to discuss cult-like religions.  In a fictional setting, I won’t offend members of a real church by calling their religion a cult.  So I created The Word of God Foundation.  Its followers call themselves Disciples of the Word, everybody else calls them “Wordies.”  It shares many beliefs and practices with other religions, and obviously, my experience shaped the creation.  This starts with prophetic interpretation.  The Foundation’s Disciples believe God will shortly destroy all human creation and establish a Paradise on Earth, for the benefit of the Disciples.  They have many other interesting habits that I will discuss in future articles.

Like the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, a main feature of my Foundation’s Biblical interpretation is “year for a day” substitution.  The Bible, in the books of Daniel and Revelation mention many prophetic cycles measured in days.  For example Daniel 12:11-12 reads “From the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. Blessed is the one who waits for and reaches the end of the 1,335 days.”  This interpretative method substitutes years for days to unlock a prophetic puzzle.  Proponents of the method cite passages in Numbers and Ezekiel as justification for the switch.

Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Watchtower Society, used the year for day principle to predict the date of Jesus’ return.  Russell’s calculated that seven prophetic times, discussed in Daniel Chapter, meant a 2520 year period from 607 BC to 1914.  He expected the end of the world that year.  The year for a day principle predates Russell by two millennia, Rabbi Akibah ben Joseph wrote of the idea around the first century AD.  Since then, many others picked up the idea, notably the American Adventist William Miller, who predicted the return of Jesus in the 1840’s.  Carl Olof Jonsson’s “The Gentile Times Reconsidered” includes a chart showing thirty-eight year for a day calculations with end dates ranging from 1260 to 2016.      

I wanted to create a unique prophetic framework for my fiction, so I set out to see what I could do on my own.  Armed with a bunch of numbers from the Bible, a timeline of world history, and an Excel spreadsheet I cooked up my own prophecies.  A simple fact jumped out at me.  There are no rules for playing this game, which means you can justify any date you want if you hunt around a bit.  For example, adding 1290 years to 691 AD, the year construction completed on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem brings us to 1981.  The Byzantines captured Jerusalem in 629, adding 1335 years takes us to 1964.  The Jewish revolt against Artaxerxes II started in 350 BC, adding 2300 years (2300 days in Daniel 8:14) equals 1951.  Pick the year you want to end the world, and back into the prophecy.  No one can prove you wrong until the foretold year comes and goes.  Unfortunately, many people believe these flawed interpretaions, and build their lives on false hope and counterfeit reality. 

My novels take place a few years after a prophetic failure, with the Disciples struggling to maintain their faith, and hope for an eternal future on Earth.  The Disciples lived without thought for the future. God would meet their needs and reward their faith.  Then the promised future disappeared.  What do you do when you bet the farm on a losing horse?  Turning away from the investment of their lives is unthinkable, so they struggle to stay faithful that God will reward them soon.  In a novel, this is interesting conflict.  In real life, it’s a tragic waste.     

Over the years a great many Witnesses, and members of other apocryphal religions, have sacrificed normal life for broken promises.  They believed the numerical manipulation and planned their lives accordingly.  They passed up education, careers, children, even vacations to pursue “spiritual interests,” meaning the interests of the Watchtower.  Some sacrificed their lives in adherence to the Watchtower’s medical directives.  Many, about my age, made these decisions forty years ago, or more.  Now they face old age with no savings and benefits based on lower income histories. 

Following the Jesus failure to return in 1914, the Watchtower revised its prophecy.  1914 marked the start of the last days, within one generation the end would come.  In the late 1960’s attention focused on the year 1975.  We had a good friend many years ago who, expecting the end of the world, sold the family farm so he could preach full-time.  He had a breakdown a few years later when the money ran out. We know of at least two married couples that decided not to have children so they could spend more time preaching.  After all, they could make families in after Armageddon.  I’ve lost count of the Witnesses that I’m sure would have done well in college, but didn’t even try, because the Watchtower called higher education a waste of time.

I hope that by incorporating such stories into my fiction I can unlock a hidden world for my audience.  Academic articles dissecting the problems of a religion can never convey the depth of injury to real people.          

Coming soon:  Why it’s so hard to leave, and how we got out.