http://www.freeminds.org/history/critical.htm
2 paragraphs:
The straw that eventually broke the camel's back began to materialize in 1965. For some time, the third President of the Watchtower, N. H. Knorr, had wanted to print a Bible dictionary, later known and published as the Aid To Bible Understanding. Originally Raymond Franz, the nephew of Fred Franz (fourth WT president), was assigned to accumulate data for this work. Later, it was necessary to add four more men to this project, making a committee of five. Two of these, Ray Franz and Lyman Swingle, later became members of the Governing Body. Edward Dunlap, registrar for the Gilead School, also researched material for this project.
In his book Crisis of Conscience (p. 20-27) Raymond Franz tells of the research he undertook regarding the dating system, which is based upon the cornerstone of 1914 as being the end of the "Gentiles Times," a period supposedly running for 2520 years since 607 BC. Franz tells of how he sent his personal secretary (Charles Ploeger) to visit the New York City libraries to try and substantiate this date for the destruction of Jerusalem. No such evidence was forthcoming. Instead, the date 587-586 BC was reinforced. Later, in 1977, a Swedish Witness elder sent a great deal of documentation based upon the cuneiform tablets (over 10,000) found in the Mesopotamian area that dated back to the time of ancient Babylon, which tablets substantiated, not 607 BC, but 20 years later as the destruction of Jerusalem. As Mr. Franz states in his book, "Much of the time and space (under the Aid book heading of `Chronology') was spent in trying to weaken the credibility of the archeological and historical evidence that would make erroneous our 607 BC date and give a different starting point for our calculations and therefore an ending date different from 1914." Franz and his secretary even took a trip to Brown University in Rhode Island to interview Prof. Abraham Sachs, a specialist in ancient cuneiform texts, in an attempt to find a weakness or flaw in the historical evidence. Not one possibility existed of such evidence being erroneous. Yet, Franz felt obligated to write the article in the Aid book without revealing all of the facts, as the rest of the Governing Body refused to reconsider the matter.
BEFORE YOU TRY AND REMOVE THE STICK FROM MY ARSE, REMOVE THE TELEPHONE POLE FROM YOUR OWN ARSE.
