Bungi Bill

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Posts by Bungi Bill

• 
  492

  607 wrong using ONLY the bible (and some common sense)

  by Witness My Fury in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if this has been covered before i apologise in advance.

  using only the bible and a bit of common sense.. ok, here goes:.

  do the "seventy years" count from jerusalems destruction or not?

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  Bungi Bill

  By referring to information in just two of the WTS's publications - Insight on the Scriptures and Babylon the Great has fallen,God's Kingdom Rules (who could ever forget that one!) - and then counting backwards from 539 BC, it becomes evident that the WTS is contradicting itself when it insists on the 607 BC date.

  1) That Nabonidus was the last "supreme ruler of the Babylonian Empire" and "ruled for some 17 years" is stated in Volume 2 of Insight on the Scriptures (p.457, under the heading "Nabonidus"). In that particular passage, Insight on the Scriptures even performs the calculation for you!

  i.e. It even gives the years of his reign as being from 556 to 559 BC.

  2) "Labashi-Marduk ... was a vicious boy, and within nine months had his throat cut by an assassin." (Babylon the Great has fallen, God's Kingdom Rules. p184)

  That leaves us still in the year 556 BC.

  3)"Neriglassar ... reigned for four years." (Babylon the Great has fallen, God's Kingdom Rules. p184)

  So, (when I went to school, at least!), 556 + 4 = 560 BC.

  4) "After reigning but two years, King Evil-Merodach was murdered" (Babylon the Great has fallen, God's Kingdom rules. p184).

  Adding two years to 560 BC takes us to (560 + 2 )= 562 BC for the beginning of Evil-Merodach's reign.

  5) "Nebuchadnezzar ruled as king for 43 years" (Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 2, p.480, under the heading "Nebuchadnezzar").

  Adding 43 years to 562 BC (562 + 43) brings us to the year 605 BC as being the start of Nebuchadnezzar's reign.

  i.e. two years before the WTS would have us believe that he destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. (Which 2 Kings 25: 2, 8 tells us occurred during the 19th year of his reign - NOTtwo years before it started!. Again, simple maths takes us from 605 - 19 = 586 BC).

  It is not for nothing that all informed researchers agree on 586 or 587 BC as being the date of the Jerusalem Temple's destruction - Archeology alone providing overwhelming evidence. However, one only needs to go to the information provided by the Watchtower Society's own publications -and then do some simple mathematics - to see that the 607 BC date is wrong.

  Yes, it is contradictory; and yes, it is totally irrational - and those stubbornly clinging to the 607 BC date are well and truly deluding themselves!

  Bill.
• 
  492

  607 wrong using ONLY the bible (and some common sense)

  by Witness My Fury in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if this has been covered before i apologise in advance.

  using only the bible and a bit of common sense.. ok, here goes:.

  do the "seventy years" count from jerusalems destruction or not?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Bungi Bill

  WTS literature agrees that Nabonidus ruled for 17 years, and you only have to pick up your copy of Insight on the Scriptures to find this (Volume 2, p.457, Nabonidus), where it clearly states:

  Last supreme monarch of the Babylonian Empire, father of Belshazzar. On the basis of cuneiform texts, he is believed to have ruled some 17 years (556 - 539). He was given to literature, art and religion. (Quoted word for word)

  Notice that Insight on the Scriptures even does the calculation for you, so that you don't have to make the effort of subtracting 17 from minus 539, in order to discover that Nabonidus reigned between 556 and 539 BC!

  Bill.

  PS: Witness My Fury, all this appears not simple enough for one certain individual - seemingly, somebody needs to teach him how to count! When I first began posting on jehovahs- witness.net, I never imagined that I would be teching Grade 2 maths.
• 
  492

  607 wrong using ONLY the bible (and some common sense)

  by Witness My Fury in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if this has been covered before i apologise in advance.

  using only the bible and a bit of common sense.. ok, here goes:.

  do the "seventy years" count from jerusalems destruction or not?

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  2. 
  3. 
• 

  Bungi Bill

  Witness My Fury;

  Indeed - as I said at the outset, those various WTS publications mention the length of the reigns of the various Babylonian kings:

  - "go read the Watchtower!"

  - All anybody has to do is to then count backwards from what the WTS believes to be the "Absolute Date" of 539 BC to establish the dates of the reigns of the five last kings of Babylon ( not too difficult a task, surely - but then again maybe to some it is beyond their capabilities?)

  Of course, if certain ones (no names mentioned!) still want to continue denying the obvious, then that is their problem.

  Bill.
• 
  492

  607 wrong using ONLY the bible (and some common sense)

  by Witness My Fury in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  if this has been covered before i apologise in advance.

  using only the bible and a bit of common sense.. ok, here goes:.

  do the "seventy years" count from jerusalems destruction or not?

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  2. 
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  Bungi Bill

  This is the main reason that I finally broke with the WTS:

  - i.e. being more and more placed in a position of having to try and defend the indefensible.

  All one has to do in order to realize the 607 BC date is wrong is to:

  (i) Read what WTS literature itself says about the reigns of the five last Babylonian kings.

  (ii) Then count backwards from what the WTS calls that "Absolute Date" - 539 BC.

  1) Nabonidus, reigned 17 years i.e. 556 - 539 (WT 68 8/15 p.491)

  2) Labashi-Marduk, reigned "less than one year" i.e. 556 (WT 65 1/1 p.29)

  3) Neriglassar, reigned 4 years i.e. 560 - 556 (WT 65 1/1 p.29)

  4) Evil-Merodach, reigned 2 years i.e. 562 - 560 (WT 65 1/1 p.29)

  5) Nebuchadnezzar, reigned 43 years i.e. 605 - 562 (WT 00 5/5 p.12)

  According to 2 Kings 25: 2,8 Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed during Nebuchadnezzar's 19th year of reign - according to the 607 BC date, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed two years before his accession to the throne!

  The Watchtower article of January 1, 1965 in particular mentions nothing about an extra (or kings) between Labashi-Marduk and Nabonidus. All one has to do is count backwards, which is not diffcult!

  Once more, as in many other matters, it is the WTS's own literature that shoots them in the foot.

  (Realizing, of course, that this is not going to bother the more blinkered JW diehards - which, sad to say, constitutes most of them. In the end, it all comes down to "God is using only one channel, which is the FDS, and this is what they say .......... etc. etc. etc - all without one shred of evidence in support).

  It would all be quite laughable - except so many people have been badly hurt taking this denial of the obvious seriously!

  Bill.
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  68

  Is there a correlation between personality type and leaving the WT?...

  by Tuesday in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  on facebook tonight there was a post asking to take a personality test, in posting the personality tests a trend started emerging that certain personality types seem to leave around the same time.. i came out as an intj which is introverted intuitive thinking judging.

  which a good paragraph describing it was:.

  intjs apply (often ruthlessly) the criterion "does it work?

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  Bungi Bill

  INTJ

  According to Keirsey, "Only ideas that make sense to them are adopted."

  In my case, that statement (at least) is certainly relevant:

  - as time went on, I became increasingly frustrated with trying to make something work that was never going to work; and by extension, becoming more and more frustrated at having to try and defend the indefensible.

  Bill.
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  13

  Start and end of the "Seventy Years" according to the WTS

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the wts says that the seventy years started when a group of judeans, including jeremiah, crossed the border into egypt.

  this, they say, was required since the land had to be absolutely and totally depopulated, without a human or a beast on the land.. one would thus expect that the wts would end the seventy years when the first captives crossed the border into the province of yehud.

  that would mean that once again there were people on the land.. but no, the wts does not do that.

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  Bungi Bill

  So desperate is the WTS to cling on to this date of 607 BC, that they pick and choose which evidence is "admissable" - and which is not.

  According to Fred Franz's chronology, the year 539 BC is an "Absolute Date" (WT 8/15/1968 p.488) - and THE date from which all others are calculated. The first thing to note here is that, in the Bible, there is no such thing as an "Absolute Date" - nowhere in the scriptures will you see a statement like "Babylon fell to the Medes and Persians in the year 539 BC." (This should be obvious to the dimmest of dimwits, you would think!)Rather, in common with most other writings of those times, the Bible dates events by "regnal years" i.e. by which year of which king's reign the event occurred. For example, 2 Kings 25: 2, 8 state that Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed during the "eleventh year of King Zedekiah" and the "nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar."

  The date of 539 BC for the capture of Babylon by the Persian armies has had to be determined by what the WTS likes to call "secular history", and - for the last century or so - scholars have generally been in agreement about this date.

  The Watchtower of 8/15/1968 even lists nineteen different reference works to support that claim:

  - However, what it fails to acknowledge is that, rather than 539 BC being the date around which everything else hinges, 539 BC itself was calculated from another event - the succession of Nebuchadnezzar to the throne in the year 605 BC. (This followed quickly after the Babylonian victory at the decisive Battle of Carchemesh, in which the Egyptian army was practically destroyed).

  If, as the Bible says, Jerusalem's destruction occurred in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, then the date was 586 BC - NOT (horror of horrors!) 607 BC. Aside from the Bible's record ( and secular history pointing to 605 BC marking the start of Nebuchadnezzar's reign), there is much archeological evidence which also identifies 586 BC as being the date for Jerusalem's destruction by the Babylonians. Archeologists have unearthed literally "tens of thousands of detailed economic, administrative and legal documents" (according to the Dictionary of Biblical Archeology p.274) that all identify the year 586 as being when the city and its temple were destroyed. Further, the Jewish historian Josephus is in agreement that the desolation of the temple lasted 50 years - NOT 70 years, as the WTS insists it was.

  Much more could be said about the matter of these "70 years"

  e.g. were Jeremiah 25:11,12; Jeremiah 29:10; Daniel 9: 1,2 ; 2 Chronicles 36: 20, 21; Zechariah 1: 7,12; Zechariah 7: 1 -5 all referring to the same 70 year period? With their propensity for cobbling unrelated bible verses together from many different parts of the scriptures, the WTS says they do. However - to say the least - this is very much open to debate! (Particularly when bible translation comes into it i.e. did the Hebrew word used mean "in Babylon" or "for Babylon"? Whichever translation was correct puts a different slant on things).

  Also, did the "seven times" have a secondary fulfillment, anyway? And even if they did, is it not quite an exercise in creative accounting to switch from 360 day "Prophetic Years" on one hand to get your 2520 days, then convert these "days" to literal 365.25 day Calendar Years? (What sort of cigarettes was he smoking, I wonder?)

  However, as far as dating Jerusalem's destruction goes, the WTS is happy to use "Secular history" - and nothing else - to identify what they (incorrectly) call an "Absolute Date" i.e. 539 BC:

  - yet they blatantly ignore what that very same historical source reveals as to the year of Jerusalem's destruction by Nebuchadnezzar.

  Rather than face reality, the WTS desperately clings to the date of 607 BC:

  - even to the point of rewriting Middle East history to try and make everything conform to their pre-conceived ideas of 607 + (7 x 360) + year zero = 1914 (In the process, trying to portray many events - such as the Battle of Carchemesh, the enthronement of Nebuchadnezzar, plus the reigns of the last kings of Judah - as occurring 20 years earlier than when they actually occurred).

  Picking and choosing which evidence you want to use, even if it is all from the same source:

  - If that is not intellectual dishonesty at its worst, then it would be difficult to describe what is!

  Bill.
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  13

  Start and end of the "Seventy Years" according to the WTS

  by Doug Mason in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  the wts says that the seventy years started when a group of judeans, including jeremiah, crossed the border into egypt.

  this, they say, was required since the land had to be absolutely and totally depopulated, without a human or a beast on the land.. one would thus expect that the wts would end the seventy years when the first captives crossed the border into the province of yehud.

  that would mean that once again there were people on the land.. but no, the wts does not do that.

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  Bungi Bill

  Just like "The Generation" of 1914, it would seem that the boundaries of the Seventy Years of Desolation are rather elastic. This time period begins when the WTS says it does, ends when the WTS says it does, with its boundaries set to conform to WTS theology.

  It is easy to see how a person could get themselves badly hurt by taking any of this stuff seriously!

  Bill.
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  37

  I had my first encounter with JW's at my door! I was called an apostate!

  by Desert Rat in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  so, i am getting ready to move across the state.

  we bought a home there, and have taken a couple of loads over, with the main move being this next week.

  i went over this last week cause i wanted to paint the kitchen and dining room before we moved in (a lot easier to do without grandkids and dogs under foot).. anyway... here i am painting away when there is a knock on the door.

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  Bungi Bill

  I have found the Mormons to be more pleasant to deal with than the JWs who call at my door:

  - at least the LDS will take a polite "no thanks" for an answer. They do this happily, too, and for the right reasons

  i.e. out of respect for your feelings - not as an excuse to run away (like the JWs will do as soon as they detect that they have encountered somebody who is going to prove to be a little too hot to handle!)

  And, yes, the Witnesses are quick to pick up on an "Apostate." I once made the error of telling a pair of them the I "probably knew more about their religion than they did." On reflection, that may not have been an error, actually; as they sure turned and ran very quickly!

  Bill.
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  27

  WTBTS DAYS ARE NUMBERED !

  by Hairyhegoat in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  found this on another site... watchtower's many false statements about "the generation of 1914".

  http://www.jwstudies.com/2010_change_to_generations.pdf"''" .

  2014 - its significance in the watchtower society"''" .

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  Bungi Bill

  As much as anybody else, I would delight in seeing the WTS collapse in a heap - and just go a bloody way for good!

  However (and sadly), Steve2 raises quite a valid point, - the passing of the year 2014 (or anything else, for that matter) is unlikely to see this event come about. One thing the abomination that is the WTS has been successful at is ensuring its own survival.

  This hardly should be surprizing:

  - in nature, it would seem that the nastier an organism is, the more likely it is to survive. (eg. after a nuclear explosion, the only life found consists of rats and cockroaches).

  Bill.
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  42

  Do You Think It Is Wrong To Stereotype?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  i know we are supposed to be politically correct but i don't always feel that this is warranted.. i do think that certain things might be generally true and could be viewed as stereotyping.

  for example, if i see a young person driving a car very slowly, i might think that they are texting and driving (or else are asian).

  now that might not have sounded proper, but i do think it's generally true, from my experience driving in the city.. if i see a "butchy" looking woman, i generally assume the woman is gay.

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  Bungi Bill

  There is indeed such a thing as a general fact, just as there is such a thing as a national trait. However, you would never want to make the mistake of trying to prove a specific point from a general fact.

  Speaking as someone who has lived 35% of his life living in countries other than the one he was born and raised in, treating everyone you meet as an individual has always worked well for me.

  Bill.