And still no one tackles the 40 year desolation of Egypt problem except with the silly stuff like this didn't get fulfilled. You might as well say the bible is not accurate and true if you are going to say that.
For those not sick to death of talking about this...607 BCE
by Swamboozled 601 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Qcmbr
third - would you still remain a Witness if the date was wrong?
If your answer is no then I can understand your need to defend an incorrect date by such arguments as the bible's innerancy - its full of mistakes (have a look at the numbering mistakes made with the size of Israel during the exodus.) The bible's just a book that is not the final authority (if you think it is tell me which order of temptations Satan put Jesus through, exactly how did Judas die, on the road to Damascus who saw what?) and the date you love is only of any importance to one religion the JWs and its not very important theologically anyway (who cares if Jesus is now reigning invisibilly in an invisible Kingdom?) What a useless prophecy that cannot be verified by anything - its like putting in a prophecy that in the year 2010 all the major angels will meet together to discuss world affairs. -
peacefulpete
Much time has been expended trying to make sense of the 70 years of desolation claimed in parts of the Bible with no success. I have in the past presented what i feel was evidence that the so called desolation was in fact 49 years in duration and was know as such by one of the authors of Daniel. This is the conclusion drawn by most Bible commentaries and reference works. Also the matter of what actually happened verses the Bible's description of "empty land" has been posted here before. It has also been suggested by a number of authors that the significance of certain numbers (eg.3,7,10,12) to ancient superstitious peoples is reason enuf to interpret the 70 (7x10)as literary rather than literal. I ran across an interesting piece of parallelism in Babylonian texts.
"Seventy years, the reckoning of it's destruction which He had inscribed, the merciful God Marduke, as soon as his heart had calmed down, reversed the order (of the sign) and ordered it's resettlement after eleven years." Babylonian Inscription of Esarhaddon
The cuneiform text seeks to rationalize Babylon's destruction by Sennacherib as an act of punishment by Marduke but yet explains the early restoration of the city as an act of compassion on Marduke's part. The 70 year motif is nontheless interesting.
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Hellrider
This is what jws love:
You might as well say the bible is not accurate and true if you are going to say that.
To make it into a case of jws+the Bible against the ungodly, horrible apostates. This is ridicolous, of course. I would urge all those that bothers going up against yet another jw on this issue (which ahs been debated to death a 1000 times, and in which each and every "point" of the WTS has been disproved again and again and again) to be careful not to argue in a way that might look to be contradictory to the Bible. They just love it when "apostates" do that, then they can gloat over how we will all die in a blazing inferno at Armageddon, lol. It is so simple to disprove that 607-stupidity without arguing against the Bibles own accounts of the story. I`m sick of this issue, but you can look thru the threads on this issue, thirdwitness, and see if you might learn something (of course, once doubt arises in your soul, you will turn away from it, and disappear from here).
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/112819/1.ashx
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/115461/1.ashx
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/113704/1.ashx
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/10/114685/1.ashx
This whole cubject has been done to death a 1000 times. Do you dare read thru the threads, and check the information you get there? Read carefully all posts by Jeffro, Alan F and Leolaia. Do you dare? I don`t think so.
Sadly, the joke is on you, not us.
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ellderwho
Blah, blah blah, same ole shinola. Just like scholar no workable kings list. This is where it begins and ends. The witness has nothing, never has, nerver will.
Sorry, back to the drawing board.
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thirdwitness
And yet still no one tackles the 40 year desolation of Egypt prophecy.
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stevenyc
Are you referring to the 'prophet' who also 'prophesied' that Tyre no longer exists?
If so, you better let the Israelis know that they are attacking an imaginary city.
steve
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Qcmbr
Third - that prophecy was never fulfilled..Egypt wasn't desolate for 40 years. If it was how on earth was it in a position at the end of it to suddenly be able to rasie and army and be considered for a military alliance. Nobody told the pharoahs at the time it was supposed to be deolate. Face it third, sometimes Ninevah doesn't get toasted and prophecy doesn't fit timescales.
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rassillon
thirdwitness, Answer me this question. Fact: The prophecy about Tyre did not get fufilled during this time period. In fact the Insight book indicates it did not until several hundred years later. WHY then do you claim that this 40 years for Egypt must be fufilled during this time period. AND no there is nothing in EZEKIEL which makes it a necessity, I have read the whole book, and all of the scriptures in context are no more specific about this prophecy than the one about TYRE. ?
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AlanF
It seems that thirdwitness rose to my challenge (see my post 4521 dated 28-Jul-06 16:40 in this thread) and presented an argument from the latest JW chronology defense website "Jerusalem 607 B.C.E." (see http://www.jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/607/default.html#menu for its Index) for perusal on this board. Congratulations, thirdwitness! I'm proud of you!I will now show why the JW defender website's article "Egypt's 40 year desolation prophecy" fails to support the Watchtower Society's claim that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.
INTRODUCTION
Let's look at the arguments presented on the JW defender website, from the section that thirdwitness referred to ( http://www.jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/607/egypt.html ).
The basic premise of the section is that the prophet Ezekiel predicted the conquering and complete, 40-year desolation of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. The website puts the fulfillment of this prophecy between 588 and 548 B.C. It argues that, if this prophecy failed, then the Bible must be wrong, but since the Bible cannot be wrong, the chronological problem must lie with secular chronological data. Thus, the website argues that "the 40 year prophecy of Egypt's desolation disproves 587" and therefore claims that 607 is the correct date for Jerusalem's destruction.
Pretty cut and dried, right?
Not at all. The problems with the website's argument are legion. I will only cover the basics in this post.
First, the website's author assumes that the 40-year desolation prophecy by Ezekiel was to have and actually did have a literal fulfillment. But the Bible contains many examples of claims and prophecies that might appear to have a literal interpretation, but which, in the light of uncontrovertible facts, can only be interpreted as symbolic in some sense. I give two examples below, the second of which completely destroys the website's claim.
Second, it ignores the demonstrable fact that the testimony of several independent ancient historical sources proves that Egypt's history was continuously documented through the entire period in question. I'll go into this in detail in a subsequent post. It really isn't necessary for the disproof of the JW defender website's claim, though.
Because the website is written by Jehovah's Witnesses who obviously feel that the JW Governing Body is "divinely directed", and therefore that Watchtower publications carry a weight of authority virtually equal to that of the Bible itself, in this series of posts I'll use such publications as an authority when I deem fit. I'll also quote scriptures from the Watchtower Society's New World Translation unless otherwise specified.
SEEMINGLY LITERAL BIBLICAL CLAIMS ARE NOT ALWAYS LITERAL
Creation
According to Genesis 1, God created everything in six days (cf. Exodus 20:11: "For in six days Jehovah made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them.") According to biblical literalists, such as most Evangelical Christians (cf. the Institute for Creation Research website http://www.icr.org/ and the Answers in Genesis website http://www.answersingenesis.org/ ) the six days of creation described in Genesis were literal 24-hour days. However, the Jehovah's Witness organization disagrees, and argues that the creative days should be interpreted as symbolic and lasted either 7,000 years each or some unspecified number of "millennia" (cf. Life -- How Did It Get Here? By Evolution Or By Creation?; 1985, ch. 3, p. 27). Why does the Watchtower Society argue this way? Because science has shown definitively that life has been on the earth for a long time, at least 3.5 billion years (although the Society does not yet seem prepared to accept this last figure -- at least, not in print). Therefore, Jehovah's Witnesses accept that some apparently literal biblical statements are not to be viewed literally.
The Desolation of Tyre
According to certain passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel, the ancient city of Tyre would be conquered by king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and desolated and destroyed, never to be rebuilt. I's easy to demonstrate that these prophecies either were not actually prophetic, but were written after the fact, or were never literally fullfilled as written.
First let's review the meat of what the JW defender website claims about Ezekiel's prophecy:
One year before Jerusalem was destroyed, Jehovah said through the prophet Ezekiel, "I will make the land of Egypt a desolate waste in the midst of desolated lands; and its own cities will become a desolate waste in the very midst of devastated cities for forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations" -- Ezekiel 29:12
Yes, Egypt was to become a "desolate waste" with "devastated cities", and this would last for "forty years".
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Remember that Ezekiel earlier said that the desolation of Egypt would last "forty years". Jehovah also said, "At the end of forty years I shall collect the Egyptians together out of the peoples among whom they will have been scattered, and I will bring back the captive group of the Egyptians; and I will bring them back to the land of Pathros, to the land of their origin, and there they must become a lowly kingdom." -- Ezekiel 29:13-14
So, from the prophecy we discern the following:
1. Egypt would be desolated for 40 years ( Ezekiel 29:12)
2. By Nebuchadnezzar ( Ezekiel 29:18, 30:10)
3. It was desolated after Ezekiel's last prophecy against her in his 27th year of exile. ( Ezekiel 29:18)
4. After the 40 years, Egypt will be a lowly Kingdom. ( Ezekiel 29:14)The above argument seems to clinch the matter for a believer in the divine inspiration of the Bible. Unfortunately, the website's author left out the most critical part of Ezekiel's prophecy -- the only one that can truly be verified objectively, by direct observation. Ezekiel 26:13-14 states:
13 "‘And I will cause the turmoil of your singing to cease, and the very sound of your harps will be heard no more. 14 And I will make you a shining, bare surface of a crag. A drying yard for dragnets is what you will become. Never will you be rebuilt; for I myself, Jehovah, have spoken,’ is the utterance of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah."
Note well what "the Soveriegn Lord Jehovah" predicted for Tyre: "Never will you be rebuilt."
But Tyre is today a populous city of about 120,000. Indeed, at this writing the Israeli's are bombing Tyre because it has become a stronghold for the Islamic Hezbollah group, which has launched destructive rockets at Israel from Tyre.
The simple fact that Tyre exists today as a populous city directly contradicts Ezekiel's prediction, "never will you be rebuilt."
I can only imagine the screams of bloody murder that will come out of the "biblical inerrantist" community over this 'revelation'.
Now, if there exists in a Bible book an unambiguous prophecy whose fulfillment ("the city will never be rebuilt") can be directly observed today to be false (the city exists as a vibrant community), then other prophecies in that book that are contradicted by solid historical data are extremely likely to be false, or they were never intended to be fulfilled literally. Ezekiel's "40 year prophecy" is a case in point.
No historical data whatsoever exists that indicates that Egypt experienced a complete desolation between 588 and 548 B.C. A good deal of historical data exists that shows that Egypt continued as a viable country during that entire period.
In view of the above, it behooves JW defenders to deal with the simple fact that Ezekiel's prophecy that Tyre would never be rebuilt was false or non-literal, and with all the implications thereof.
CONCLUSION
The fact that a completely verifiable part Ezekiel's prophecy was not literally fulfilled can be dealt with in a variety of ways, none of which are compatible with the JW defender website's claims. The reason is that every possible way cannot contravene the simple fact that a literal fulfillment of a crucial part of the prophecy about Tyre failed, and that once that is established, all bets about the "40 year prophecy" for Egypt are off.
In coming posts I will set forth a good deal of historical evidence proving that Egypt's history was continuously recorded in contemporary Egyptian documents during the entire Neo-Babylonian period. I will also examine a variety of other aspects of the overall questions of the "40 year prophecy" of Egypt and of the "70 year prophecy" of Tyre. In these posts, it will become painfully evident to readers that the JW defender website's author has done a bangup job of emulating the Watchtower Society's official writers in misrepresenting the facts by leaving crucial evidence out of their arguments.
AlanF