I distinctly remember a couple years back a CO gave a long talk in which he talked about how Jesus had been hangin' out with Jehovah for at least 13.8 billion years since that's the age of the universe and jesus was around before that.
Yes, but remember, we established that the creation of the universe is not part of the seven days according to Witnesses (and other fundamentalists). So if scientists say the universe is 14 billion years old, then fine, it can be, because Genesis 1:1 is outside the creative week. But they can still believe the specific creation acts in Genesis 1 starting with light in verse 3 (which is said to refer to the appearance of light from the surface of the Earth, not the creation of light or stars) were 7,000 years.
I was forced to think more carefully about this when Hotdogs made his last topic, and I've been wondering if they really do mean to hide the fact that they still believe each of these days is 7,000 years. sir82's anecdote is very interesting in this regard. I guess now we need to see if anyone can come up with a quote from the Society about whether the days were necessarily the same length or not. In a way this whole exercise is extremely silly since, as far as I know, nobody's been able to figure out where 7,000 years even came from in the first place. But we have to be prepared to deal with silliness when discussing Watchtower teachings, right?
OTWO: Interesting math exercise. Just another number for you, the current overlapping teaching has a maximum limit of 2067 if you imagine that someone in the "second group" was anointed at age 25 in 1992 right before Fred Franz died, and that person then lived to 100. Of course the proverbial lifespan of "70-80 years" gives us 2037-2047 A.D. as the end date.