Several years ago my fiance had a traumatic experience and decided to return to being a JW.
As a result she insisted that we read "What the Bible Really Teaches". Then later I agreed to take instruction with house visits by an Elder and his associates on weekends with the same purpose.
Although I have a background very foreign to all of this, I took the matter very seriously and studied the material presented very carefully, doing a lot of research. My suspicions were immediately aroused when the pamphlet and my instructors kept insisting that Babylon was destroyed by Jehovah (via some Isaiah citations, Cyrus and hand-waving) as punishment for desecration of the Temple. Things took off from there and I assumed that every other line in the document and citation was a manipulation, misconstrued or a lie. I want to tell someone, but everyone locally brushes me off - and my relations with my former fiance disintegrated to zero. In that regard we may as well have been trapped in the final pages of Orwell's "1984" after respective visits to Room 101...
But to sum up, one of her last correspondences to me was not to disturb the Elders or Overseers at the local congregations. Take my issues to Headquarters.
Recently I wrote back to her that now I am ready. How do I do it? But in response she wrote , "You have to write to them like the rest of us - and I don't want to get involved in this." I discovered that if I go to the official website or the Watch Tower, I can fill out a page to arrange for more home visits and the equivalent of another series of inoculations.
When I reported back to the Kingdom Hall elders - they added the note that I had to write via the mail. "Would it be answered?" "Oh, yes. They answer all of them." I've got a long list of questions and issues and it is growing. But I want to make sure that someone sees the result of my research. I want to make sure that my questions exist on line somewhere. I hope that this will be the means to do that. And I can report back on the answers as well...
...That's how I introduced this topic when I found a discussion on the topic: "The Watchtower is telling us to stop asking questions", based on a reply to readers' questions in the 15 October 2010 edition. One of the followers of the discussion topic had suggested that I start a new topic regarding the above. The pamphlet "What the Bible Really Teaches" looked like as good a place to start as any. All the anonymous contributors to that document helped make 2009-2012 possible.
As I expect to report in further detail, I had never thought much about the destruction of the ancient world's cities and capitals in the first millenium BC. But yet when I was given "What the Bible Really Teaches" as an introductory guide, I was astounded at the levels of deception surrounding this topic.
To start with, the only evidence I could find of Babylon's destruction (introduced as a concept in page 23 to support the notion of the Bible as a book of prophecy) was its complete leveling by Assyrian monarch Sennacherib in 689 BC, matching up very well with the truncated Isaiah 14:22-23. For good measure he FLOODED it, as Isaiah notes in the full quotation. In something of a bait and switch we are led to believe by the "WTBRT" text that the arrival of Cyrus in Babylon augured its destruction and then we are given Daniel's account of reading the handwriting on the wall for Belshazzar... and the quick succession after the banquet.
Not to get too diverted by this, I can cite numerous instances of Babylon continuing to exist for hundreds of years including Alexander the Great contemplating it as one of his capitals and hence dying there. If I look in the back of the NWT there is an appendix that claims Peter wrote his epistles there. Not that I necessarily believe that, but can we have it two ways either?
We are also left wondering why Daniel in his official duties did not see fit to have Belshazzar read chapters 44 and 45 of Isaiah himself. Right? But even taking into account discrepancies related to Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction between all other sources and the version initiated by Charles Taze Russell and successors, it is difficult for me to accept the idea that Babylon was destroyed early in the 7th century BC for acts it perpetrated ( to punish Israel or not) in the 6th. Even to suggest that Is 14:22-23 supports this - there is some explaining to do.
By other accounts, including Scriptures, Cyrus was received as a conquering hero by the Babylonians dissatisfied with Nabonidus absenteeism. Nabonidus, the guy who had a son named Belshazzar who Daniel thought was Nebuchadnezzar's son. Anyway, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon ( the restorer of Babylon in an official Assyrian ceremony), the Babylonian and Persian kings all left stone or original records. And it gets much better than this. When I connected Daniel 9:1-2 with two other such sources (Greek and Persian), I just about fell out of my chair. But if anyone already knows what I am talking about here, then you are welcome to come to the punchline.
Recently though, I noticed that the Watchtower had an article about how the first chapter of Exodus was accurate because Israelites in Egypt just might actually have done some brickmaking there like they surely would have been doing in Mesopotamia. I am sure we are all glad to know this, but did someone ask this question via a post in the mail and expressed their concerns? Or did the authors simply anticipate the question and provide an anwer? Before I provide such anonymous assist to the Editorial Committee I would like for my questions at least to see the light of day.
Some of these questions are of historical nature; some, the contemplation of cherry picking scriptural verses and building logical structures (?) from the result. Also, now and then I was actually able to make a test.
Best regards.
If I am going over