Jehovah's Witnesses and 1914

Studying the Bible, not the Watchtower
or any other manual, will help us avoid error

It's been 100 years since the Watchtower said the world would originally end, and we are still here.  Yet the Watchtower tries to hide this from modern Jehovah's Witnesses.  The January 15, 2014 Watchtower Study edition says on p.28: "anointed Christians had keenly been anticipating 1914... They were not completely sure what would happen"  Really?  I have a copy of Studies in the Scriptures, Volume 2 - The Time is at Hand, published by the Watchtower in 1889.

On p98-99 it says: "within the coming twenty-six years all present governments will be overthrown and destroyed...we consider it an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms of this world, and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God, will be accomplished at the end of A.D. 1914."

How then can the Watchtower today claim "they were not completely sure what would happen"?  Seems to me that they were sure!  Obviously that didn't happen, and that should have been the end of the Watchtower, but they got creative and started teaching that 1914 was when Jesus began to rule in Heaven.  The generation alive on earth would not pass away before the world ended.

The book You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, published in 1989 says (p154), "[Jesus] meant the generation of people who were living in 1914.  Those persons yet remaining of that generation are now very old.  However some of them will still be alive to see the end of this wicked system."

On p.31 of the January 2014 Watchtower it now argues that the generation is now 2 groups of Christians!  The second who were anointed during the lifetimes of the first group will not pass away until they see the tribulation.

The Watchtower is so tied to 1914 (based on the wrong 607BC date anyway) that they are getting very inventive with their theology.  

What about what the Bible plainly teaches in Deuteronomy 18: "“But you may wonder, ‘How will we know whether or not a prophecy is from the Lord?’ If the prophet speaks in the Lord’s name but his prediction does not happen or come true, you will know that the Lord did not give that message. That prophet has spoken without my authority and need not be feared."

As the Watchtower's predictions have not come true, how can anyone doubt that they are false prophets?

UPDATE - May 2014
In the May 1st Watchtower they ran an article on "Predicting the Future" in which they said, "RELIGIOUS LEADERS sometimes predict tragic worldwide events to warn mankind and gather followers. Doomsday prophet Harold Camping and his disciples widely advertised that the earth would be destroyed in 2011. Needless to say, the world is still here." 

In light of their own failed predictions, is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?