YouKnow,
I completely agree with your statement that "it seems totally unreasonable that our faith should be based upon reconciling lunar eclipses to fragments of secular history or whatever."
Students of the Bible have always tried to use chronology to determine when prophecies would be fulfilled and have usually been disappointed. Even the prophecy of the sixty-nine weeks in Daniel chapter 9 was not referred to by any of the Gospel writers although with hindsight most Christians can use chronology to "prove" it applies to Jesus.
The fact is that Jesus said "it does not belong to [Christians] to get knowledge of the times or seasons which the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction". (Compare Mark 13:32) And, as AlanF pointed out, he also warned that "at an hour that you do not think to be it, the Son of man is coming."
This does not mean we should not have a sense of urgency or that we are not living in the time of the end. Quite clearly we will not know that until "the end" is upon us. But rather than indulge in the rather woolly science of biblical chronology we should "keep our senses" and strengthen faith, love and hope (1 Thess. 5:8).
The belief that this is "the Lord's day" has led the WTS to apply every aspect of the prophecies in Revelation to our day and particularly to Jehovah's Witnesses themselves. In many cases it would clearly have been more prudent to admit ignorance than to try and force fulfillment to coincide with 1914 A.D.
Earnest
"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" - Rev. Charles Dodgson.
