In the 19th century, after the Civil War, so many members of the same Protestant religious denominations had killed so many of their own Brethren, there was a deep scar in the American psyche. A longing for God to put an end to human strife overswept the religiously naive.
A crackpot solution appeared and caught fire among certain denominations: Predicting the Return of Christ by organizing "signs" and using scriptures to approximate (with exaggerated claims of accuracy) time periods, seasons, epochs and DISPENSATIONS.
Ever heard the old expression, "Figures don't lie but liars figure"?
Enter our hero: Charles Taze Russell!
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Russell took the buffet luncheon style approach to religious belief; a little from here, a little from there, and he put it all in a blender and combined it with pyramidology and SYSTEMIZED the presentation.
Pastor Russell simplified Aquinas' approach with TOPICAL chapters in his STUDIES IN THE SCRIPTURES.
A logical presentation of bullshit, pyramid inches, dispensations, signs, dates and such dazzled the hell out of naive folks and impressed upon their minds TIME IS SHORT!
SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY is logical, precise, detailed, formal and rigorous, but the Jehovah's Witness version is sloppy, whimsical, ambivalent, pretentious, and absolutely certain of itself--even when it backflips over itself!
Take a look for yourself.
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Bible's definition of a Generation
70 (10 X 7) generations being listed in Genesis, chapter 10, as springing from Noah and his sons.
40 years: (Numbers 32:11-13) Jehovah's anger blazed against Israel and he made them wander in the wilderness for 40 years, until all the generation that was doing evil in the eyes of Jehovah came to its end.
38 years: Deut 2:14 - And the days that we walked from Ka'desh-bar'ne·a until we crossed the torrent valley of Ze'red were thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war had come to their end.
35 years: (Job 42:16, 17) "And Job continued living after this a hundred and forty years and came to see his sons and his grandsons—four generations.
37 years: Jerusalem was destroyed about 37 years later when Jesus said "this generation will by no means pass away"
(Mt 1:17) "All the generations, then, from Abraham until David were fourteen generations, and from David until the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon until the Christ fourteen generations". Reading the list in Matthew, none of them are described as overlapping:
65 years - Abraham to David : 2018BCE -> 1107BCE / 14 generations = 65 years
35 years - David to deportation : 1107BCE -> 607BCE / 14 generations = 35 years
___CONCLUSION___
JW Chronology is a false premise because it assumes a false idea to be a true idea. Namely, JW's channel correct information, dates, conclusions, and interpreations based on the Scriptures and that the Scriptures are harmonious.
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