Watchtower leaders are geniuses at removing themselves from CAUSE while manipulating the EFFECT they wanted.
We can begin by looking at a fellow named Alexander Hislop. Hislop authored THE TWO BABYLONS.
Alexander Hislop was rabidly anti-Catholic .
1.Hislop cherry picked minutia. He strained seeming connections where there weren't any and drew conclusions through false analogies. He drew on similarities and ignored differences.
2.Hislop partially quoted historical sources, misquoted and often misrepresented his connections by simply distorting the facts. He drew parallels of practices into a false conclusion of cause and effect influences.
3.Hislop invented out of whole cloth significances which weren't called for and used them to build even greater strained arguments. He used partial information and not entire contexts.
4.Hislop painted with a broad brush while amassing a mountain of irrelevancies. He employed a scholarly tone of academic neutrality while employing ad hominems to poison the reader's conclusions.
He failed to emphasize when his speculations were passed off as fact based.
While seeking to condemn the paganism of Roman Catholicism, Hislop produced his own myths.
Because Hislop wrote in the mid-1800s, the books he quotes are now quite old...books such as Layards Nineveh and Its Remains, Kittos Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, Wilkinsons Ancient Egyptians, as well as old editions of Pausanias, Pliny, Tacitus, Herodotus, and many more. Good Luck finding any of them!
If you CHECK his footnote references, in numerous cases you shall discover they do not support his claims. And we thought the Watchtower Society set the lowest standard for quote distortions!
Hislop taught that Tammuz (whom he says was Nimrod) was born on December 25, and this is the origin of the date on which Christmas is observed. Yet his supposed proof for this is taken out of context.
Having taught that Isis and her infant son Horus were the Egyptian version of Semiramis and her son Tammuz, he cites a reference that the son of Isis was born about the time of the winter solstice.
When we actually look up the reference he gives for this (Wilkinsons Ancient Egyptians, vol. 4, 405), the son of Isis who was born "about the time of the winter solstice" was not Horus, her older son, but Harpocrates. The reference also
explains this was a premature birth, causing him to be lame, and that the Egyptians celebrated the feast of his mothers delivery in spring. Taken in context, this has nothing to do with a December celebration or with Christmas as it is known today.
In another appeal to Wilkinson, Hislop says that a Lent of 40 days was observed in Egypt.
But when we look up the reference, Wilkinson says Egyptian fasts "lasted from seven to forty-two days, and sometimes even a longer period: during which time they abstained entirely from animal food, from herbs and vegetables, and above all from the indulgence of the passions" (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. 1, 278). Clearly, Alexander Hislop was squeezing his references and shaping them into something different than what they were.
With as much credibility, we could say they fasted 7 days, 10 days, 12 days, or 42 days. Hislop's claim appears to have validity only because he used partial information.
Who would Hislop influence the most with his cherry-picking opinions-as-scholarship approach?
None other than C.T.Russell, Joseph Franklin Rutherford and Fred Franz, that's who.
Both Pastor Russell and Judge Rutherford employed these self-same methods regularly and without much conscience not only promoting opinion as "god's words, not ours" but blending wild speculations with historical citations to "prove" the unprovable.
Pastor Russell and his wife promoted Pyramidology and a Divine Plan of the Ages chart to weld a theology of End Times "logic" which was nothing more or less than sillyness and flim-flam passed off as Truth.
Rutherford promoted quack beliefs on health with the same disregard for Truth as he shovelled manure into a heap predicting the return of "ancient worthies" while planning a mansion in California for them (i.e. himself) to live in.
Fred Franz regularly employed Hislop's reasoning style in defending against Christendom's views on Romans 13:1 for the purpose of making Jehovah's Witnesses the only true Christians in not obeying Governments as Superior Authorities appointed by God. Later, the Society reversed this "Truth" by aligning themselves with Christendom after all!
Scriptures, historians, experts, authorities and bible scholars could be made to say only what the Watchtower wanted them to say and nothing more!
Defending the New World Translation's idiosyncratic interpretation of the anarthrous Greek in John 1:1, the Society (mis) quoted authorites and scholars as saying the very opposite of these scholar's correct views!
Hislop set the tone and the Watchtower has ever followed as pseudo-historians, chronologists of elastic dates and circular reasoners who can make wrong right and day night to suit their own purposes.
The Watchtower Society taught nothing about the fall of Babylon the Great in1919. Yet, they claimed to do so!
They pinned their own identity as "watchmen" and "anointed" on this non-announcement!
When was this obvious misrepresentation revealed as a lie?
In 1963, when the book Babylon the Great Has Fallen! God's Kingdom Rules! was published.
1963, not 1919!
For the first time the Society (Fred Franz) began teaching that "Babylon the Great" fell in a spiritual sense in 1919. Therefore if one can say anything about this so-called "watchman class" and 1919 and "Babylon the Great", it would have to be that in 1963 the "watchman" announced that Babylon the Great fell in 1919. But since the above-quoted Watchtower gives the nearly certain impression that the "watchman" announced this in 1919, we can see that the WTS writer has told a baldfaced lie.
Clearly the same methodology as Alexander Hislop might use proving something non-historical actually happened.
January 1, 2000 Watchtower:
Paragraph 10 states:
In the latter part of the 19th century, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., a group of sincere Bible students was organized and became the nucleus of God's modern-day witness class. These Christians drew attention to the Scriptural evidence that the conclusion of the present world system was at hand. True to Bible prophecy, this world's "conclusion" began in 1914 and was marked by the outbreak of the first world war.
Paragraphs 11-13 state:
In June 1918, Satan frantically tried to wipe out those Bible students ... He also sought to destroy their legal corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Responsible officers of the Society were imprisoned ... But in
1919, these officers were released, enabling them to continue their ministry. Later, they were fully exonerated. What did this watchman see? Again, Jehovah's watchman, his witness class, announced: "She has fallen! Babylon has
fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he [Jehovah] has broken to the earth!" ... This time, following World War I, it is Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, that is toppled from its perch of authority... In
1919, Babylon the Great could not prevent the Bible Students, as Jehovah's Witnesses were then known, from escaping from their inactive state and embarking on a worldwide witnessing campaign that still continues... That signaled a fall for Babylon the Great, just as the release of Israel in the sixth century B.C.E. signaled a fall for ancient Babylon.
"The very League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, represent an international conspiracy against God's kingdom, which was born in the heavens in 1914 at the end of the Gentile Times. This international
organization for peace and security by human means is a deceptive counterfeit for God's kingdom by his Lamb, which Jehovah's witnesses have been preaching to all the nations since the end World War I. Thus the whole scarlet-
colored "wild beast" is against the heavenly Messianic kingdom."(Babylon the Great Has Fallen-God's Kingdom Rules p. 596)
The Watchtower Society revealed itself as hypocritical by JOINING the United Nations as an NGO.
"Jehovah's Christian witnesses immediately recognized that the scarlet-colored wild beast had now ascended out of the abyss. But they did not worship it any more than they had joined Babylon the Great and the worldly nations in idolizing the League of nations, the "beast" in its original form."(ibid p.585)
"Now that it has ascended out of the abyss and been out since 1945, the Bible shows that what next it will do is to go off into destruction"(ibid p. 594)
"Lovers of eternal life in God's new order of things will not join in this modern idolatry "(ibid p. 590)
Their affilation as an NGO (Non Government Agency) meant they were committed to the UN and it's charter. One of the criteria for membership is: "Have the commitment and means to conduct effective information programmes about UN activities by publishing newsletters, bulletins, and pamphlets; organizing conferences, seminars and round tables; and enlisting the cooperation of the media.
Hislop was compulsively obsessive in his finding "clues" everywhere which supported his thesis that the Catholic Church was infested with pagan encroachments. Yet, Jehovah's Witnesses made his excess seem like forebearance by comparison.
Jehovah's Witnesses find the stench of Satan, paganism, demonism and evil influence in almost every human activity under the general heading of WORLDLINESS.
By painting the world black and discrediting those who oppose them they've painted themselves into a tight little corner kingdom in a matchstick castle above the clouds.
Crack open a Governing Body member and you'll find a tapeworm of conspiracy theory chomping away at sanity.
Proof isn't proof at the Watchtower. It is a reconstruction like Frankenstein's monster kept alive by flashes of "new light" made up as needed to revitalize their quivering monstrosity.
At first glimpse it looks like science. But, when the smoke clears it is madness and obsession riven with fierce contrarian nincompoopery.
The Watchtower Society taught nothing about the fall of Babylon the Great in1919. Yet, they claimed to do so!
They pinned their own identity as "watchmen" and "anointed" on this non-announcement!
When was this obvious misrepresentation revealed as a lie?
In 1963, when the book Babylon the Great Has Fallen! God's Kingdom Rules! was published.
1963, not 1919,
For the first time the Society (Fred Franz) began teaching that "Babylon the Great" fell in a spiritual sense in 1919. Therefore if one can say anything about this so-called "watchman class" and 1919 and "Babylon the Great", it would have to be that in 1963 the "watchman" announced that Babylon the Great fell in 1919. But since the above-quoted Watchtower gives the nearly certain impression that the "watchman" announced this in 1919, we can see that the WTS writer has told a baldfaced lie.Clearly the same methodology as Alexander Hislop might use proving something non-historical actually happened.
January 1, 2000 Watchtower:
Paragraph 10 states:
In the latter part of the 19th century, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., a group of sincere Bible students was organized and became the nucleus of God's modern-day witness class. These Christians drew attention to the Scriptural evidence that the conclusion of the present world system was at hand. True to Bible prophecy, this world's "conclusion" began in 1914 and was marked by the outbreak of the first world war.
Paragraphs 11-13 state:
In June 1918, Satan frantically tried to wipe out those Bible students ... He also sought to destroy their legal corporation, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Responsible officers of the Society were imprisoned ... But in 1919, these officers were released, enabling them to continue their ministry. Later, they were fully exonerated. What did this watchman see? Again, Jehovah's watchman, his witness class, announced: "She has fallen! Babylon has fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he [Jehovah] has broken to the earth!" ... This time, following World War I, it is Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, that is toppled from its perch of authority... In 1919, Babylon the Great could not prevent the Bible Students, as Jehovah's Witnesses were then known, from escaping from their inactive state and embarking on a worldwide witnessing campaign that still continues... That signaled a fall for Babylon the Great, just as the release of Israel in the sixth century B.C.E. signaled a fall for ancient Babylon.
"The very League of Nations and its successor, the United Nations, represent an international conspiracy against God's kingdom, which was born in the heavens in 1914 at the end of the Gentile Times. This international organization for peace and security by human means is a deceptive counterfeit for God's kingdom by his Lamb, which Jehovah's witnesses have been preaching to all the nations since the end World War I. Thus the whole scarlet-colored "wild beast" is against the heavenly Messianic kingdom."(Babylon the Great Has Fallen-God's Kingdom Rules p. 596)
The Watchtower Society revealed itself as hypocritical by JOINING the United Nations as an NGO.
"Jehovah's Christian witnesses immediately recognized that the scarlet-colored wild beast had now ascended out of the abyss. But they did not worship it any more than they had joined Babylon the Great and the worldly nations in idolizing the League of nations, the "beast" in its original form."(ibid p.585)
"Now that it has ascended out of the abyss and been out since 1945, the Bible shows that what next it will do is to go off into destruction"(ibid p. 594)
"Lovers of eternal life in God's new order of things will not join in this modern idolatry "(ibid p. 590)
Their affilation as an NGO (Non Government Agency) meant they were committed to the UN and it's charter. One of the criteria for membership is: "Have the commitment and means to conduct effective information programmes about UN activities by publishing newsletters, bulletins, and pamphlets; organizing conferences, seminars and round tables; and enlisting the cooperation of the media.
Hislop was compulsively obsessive in his finding "clues" everywhere which supported his thesis that the Catholic Church was infested with pagan encroachments. Yet, Jehovah's Witnesses made his excess seem like forebearance by comparison.
Jehovah's Witnesses find the stench of Satan, paganism, demonism and evil influence in almost every human activity under the general heading of WORLDLINESS.
By painting the world black and discrediting those who oppose them they've painted themselves into a tight little corner kingdom in a matchstick castle above the clouds.
Crack open a Governing Body member and you'll find a tapeworm of conspiracy theory chomping away at sanity.
Proof isn't proof at the Watchtower. It is a reconstruction like Frankenstein's monster kept alive by flashes of "new light" made up as needed to revitalize their quivering monstrosity.
At first glimpse it looks like science. But, when the smoke clears it is madness and obsession riven with fierce contrarian nincompoopery.