[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ HOURGLASS2 OUTPOST ] [ FAQ ] Response to AF: Part Six

[ HOURGLASS2 OUTPOST ] [ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by Greg Stafford [GregStafford] on November 02, 1999 at 11:40:07 {.c1iAaocfM/CPYT8orz2XxZ4XktaQ.}:

SECOND RESPONSE TO AF, PART SIX

ALAN_2 ::Posted by AF [AF] on October 18, 1999 at 00:02:17 {VmAHMooXmo1EwaxRomAMdaOt1gg/Zk}: Start of Part 6 :: AF :: Now consider the problem that the 1943 book left - that "the Gentile times" began some 10 months before the fall of Jerusalem. This was a problem since it had always been taught that the reason that "the Gentile times" began when they did was that "Jehovah's king" sitting on David's throne in Jerusalem had been dethroned in order for God to give a lease of power to the Gentiles for the next 2,520 years. You ought not have the result occurring 10 months before the cause, right?

: GREG : Ideally, no.

ALAN_2 ::Greg, you certainly have a gift for euphemism. :-)

GREG_2 Like I said, the ideal situation is not always the best alternative, and they advanced a view they thought was more in line with the facts, as they understood them. It is, again, really quite simple. They made an error with respect to the fall of Jerusalem as dated in the Truth book, and the Kingdom book should not have appealed to it on any level, to justify the new date. But, they made a mistake.

: GREG : But since they took the position that the year in which the removal of Jehovah's king began ten months prior to the actual removal, I can see where they thought this might work.

ALAN_2 ::How? They already defeated this possibility, according to the quotes I provided above.

GREG_2 No, you THINK you defeated such a possibility, but that was only by ignoring the possibilities I gave, and governing yourself by assumptions and personal opinions. If they thought the counting should be from the start of the year in which king was removed, rather than from the actual date of the removal, then I can understand what they were thinking. Again, they were obviously faced with difficulties associated with imprecise understandings, and changes in thought from years past.

: GREG : I see no attempt to 'deliberately deceive' anyone.

ALAN_2 We have only two possibilities: gross incompetence or gross deception. Take your pick.

GREG_2 Another false dichotomy, I see. But, even if these were the only two options, it is revealing that you will not allow for the one that any and all person are capable of, namely, moments of incompetence, particularly regarding technical matter of chronology and prophetic application. While both possibilities are certainly possible, I see no reason to opt for the second one. You certainly have not PROVEN this is the case, which is what you claimed you could do. But now you seem to be waffling, allowing for a second option, which is not in line with your original claim. There are, of course, even more possibilities.

:: AF :: Also note this: the Society's explanation might be interpreted to mean that the reason the date for the start of "the Gentile times" was being moved back was because Jerusalem was destroyed in the summer of 606 B.C., and the Society wanted to count the start of "the Gentile times" from the beginning of that year as measured "in Nebuchadnezzar's time". But how could God have given a lease of power to the Gentiles before he removed Jerusalem as the seat of his typical kingdom?

: GREG : Again, we are dealing with what they perceived as a possible means of counting, which they, apparently, accepted as a viable solution to their view of the chronology and the actual removal of Jehovah's king. I think we are dealing with a group who wanted to try and make things work, given what happened in and after 1914. But regardless of how you FEEL about their solution to the problem, it is not proper at all for you or anyone else to make a judgement as to whether or not they DELIBERATELY attempted to "deceive" and "lie" to people.

ALAN_2 ::I disagree. Again, we have only two possibilities: incompetence or deliberate deceit. Fred Franz was not incompetent. That leaves one choice.

GREG_2 There are, again, a number of assumptions informing your disagreement, here. Two of the most obvious are that Fred Franz wrote the book, and the second is that he was not capable of incompetence. You also, of course, assume that these are the only two VERY negative possibilities, and the reason you do this is obvious. There are, in fact, other, negative yet innocent possibilities that you continue to ignore.

ALAN_2 ::Furthermore, they had ample opportunity the next year, 1944, to come clean and set forth a real explanation. Instead they compounded it with another set of lies. They also could have come clean in later articles on chronology, but they didn't. Instead you'll find in the few articles that touch on the issue a skirting of the reason for the changes, and never a real explanation. This means that the Society has never provided a rational explanation for changing the dates of Jerusalem's destruction and the start of the Gentile Times from 606 to 607 B.C.

GREG_2 They obviously believe that what they have said sufficiently explains what they believe. You and I may disagree about how and what they have said, but that does not prove any deception on their part, and this is what you set out to PROVE. Obviously, you have failed in your attempt.

ALAN_2 :: This also means that when later books like Revelation Climax refer back to the basic books in which the changes were supposed to have been made, and wrongly claim that a reason was given for the change, we have only two alternatives: the writers were lying or incompetent. The latter did have a choice, you know: they could have just not said anything.

GREG_2 The Revelation book does NOT say that the Truth book gives a reason for the change. It merely refers to the source, perhaps IMPLYING that such a reason will be found, but it could be that the writer of the Revelation book himself did not understand what , exactly, the Truth book was saying, but felt that it contained a reasonably good discussion of the material. But, again, there is a reason given in the Truth book for the change from 606 to 607. You and I may not agree with it, but they felt that since Jerusalem fell in 606 that the counting should begin at the start of that year, namely, from 607. One thing the writer of the box on page 105 of the Revelation book did not state clearly, or did not realize in his reading of the Truth book, is that the change in the Truth book is no longer used today, for the dating of the fall of Jerusalem and the time when the Gentile Times began their count. So, yes, there are problems here. But "deliberate deception"? I don't think so.

:: AF :: Then we have the problem of the non-English versions of The Truth Shall Make You Free that were published several years after 1943. After 1943 the Society used 607 B.C. for the start of "the Gentile times". This date was used in non-English editions of The Watchtower, which were published as much as six months later than the English edition. So a version that was published in, say, 1946 could not very well use a direct translation of some of the dates, since you'd have The Watchtower saying that the start of "the Gentile times" was in 607 B.C. and the 1946 non-English book version saying 606 B.C. The solution? Move all critical dates prior to the English page 239 back by one year, i.e., 606 gets changed to 607 and so on. The result was something like this: Beginning in 607 B.C., and being seven in number, when would these `times' end and the righteous overlordship of God's kingdom be established?. . . In Nebuchadnezzar's time the year began counting from the fall of the year, or about October 1, our time. Since he destroyed Jerusalem in the summer of 607 B.C., that year had its beginning in the fall of 608 B.C. and its ending in the fall of 607 B.C. Inasmuch as the count of the Gentile "seven times" began its first year at the fall of 607 B.C., it is simple to calculate when they end. :: Note that this is much like publishing a book in English where an explanation is given that 2+3=6 but in the Spanish edition it explains that 3+4=6. :: Confusing? You bet! It was done deliberately so that no one could understand the explanation, and therefore no one could argue with it. The proof that it was deliberate is partly that it takes a lot of work to come up with such a masterpiece in the art of intellectual sleight of hand.

: GREG : Hardly. First, can you supply the original-language text of those non-English publications of which you speak?

ALAN_2 :: Either firsthand or secondhand. I have an original of the Truth book in Arabic and I had it translated according to what I set out above. I have a photocopy of a German edition and it reads the same. I've looked at a Spanish edition and since I can read a little bit, confirmed that it too reads the same way. I also looked at a Danish edition and confirmed with a Danish speaker that it reads the same way. Do you want me to send you photocopies of my stuff? You might use your Bethel contacts to get a quick confirmation.

GREG_2 Yes, please send me PDFs of the material in all of the above-referenced editions, or just transliterate the texts from the languages you read. I will take it from there. This is not a big deal in terms of my argument, but I want you to document your sources. I don't know why this was not done in the first place, and why the text of the above editions has yet to be provided by you, since it is your contention.

: GREG : Secondly, what you say is a deliberate attempt to DECEIVE I see as a deliberate attempt to CORRECT.

ALAN_2 :: Since real corrections were never made, nor were actual reasons given for any supposed corrections, there cannot have been any attempts to CORRECT.

GREG_2 Corrections were made, and they were made to the extent that those responsible for them felt they were needed. Whether they could or should have done more in explaining the change in dating for the fall of Jerusalem, is irrelevant for your claim of being able to PROVE that they were deliberately deceptive.

: GREG : There is a big difference, and one you allude to, but yet you seem to make light of in your next comment:

:: AF :: The non-causal "fall-of-Jerusalem/start of Gentile times" problem was "corrected" the following year in the 1944 book The Kingdom Is At Hand. A chronological chart beginning on page 172 showed the destruction of Jerusalem as occurring in 607 B.C. On page 171 a footnote concerning the chart says: The following chronology shows the date of Jerusalem's destruction as in the year 607 before Christ. This recognizes the fact that the ancient reckoning of the vulgar year began in the fall. In other words, the vulgar year 606 B.C. really began in the fall of 607 B.C. As stated on page 239 ([para.] 1) of "The Truth Shall Make You Free": "Inasmuch as the count of the Gentile `seven times' began its first year at the fall of 607 B.C., it is simple to calculate when they end. From the fall of 607 B.C. to the fall of B.C. 1 is exactly 606 years. . . Hence from the fall of B.C. 1 to the fall of A.D. 1914 is 1,914 years. :: As noted above however, The Truth Shall Make You Free explicitly stated that the date for Jerusalem's destruction was the summer of 606 B.C., so that The Kingdom Is At Hand's "explanation" of the change from 606 to 607 B.C. for this event is nothing but an outright lie.

GREG_2 Wrong. I already explained what the Kingdom book was likely trying to do, and the dual claim made in the Truth book for both 606 AND 607 allowed them to do it. It was a tricky situation, but one they decided to solve by highlighting what they viewed as the proper date in the Truth book, and going from there.

: GREG : No, it is not. The Kingdom Is At Hand footnote gives a correction to the Truth book's dating of the fall of Jerusalem,

ALAN_2 ::More precisely, the footnote implies that there is a difference between the two books.

GREG_2 There is BOTH a difference and a similarity, which is what makes this situation so unusual, and what makes their handling of it difficult to properly evaluate.

ALAN_2 ::However, the 1944 book strongly implied that an explanation for the change of date of Jerusalem's destruction could be found on page 239 of the 1943 book. That is what this sequence means: "The following chronology shows the date . . . This recognizes the fact . . . In other words . . . As stated on page 239 . . ." Such a sequence is supposed to be a line of reasoning leading a reader to a proper conclusion.

GREG_2 Again, you are dealing with possible "implications." This is hardly conclusive evidence. They did not give good reasons for the change in date for the fall of Jerusalem, but that does not necessarily mean they were deceptive about it.

ALAN_2 ::But there is no such explanation on page 239, or anywhere else in the book. You have not attempted to provide one, and you won't be able to. Since no explanation for this change can be found in any Watchtower literature of 1943 or 1944, the 1944 book's implication is a lie, just as I said.

GREG_2 It MAY have been a lie, or it MAY have been a mistake. It also may have simply been an improperly worded attempt to correct a problem in the Truth book.

ALAN_2 :: To disprove my contention you'll have to show where each book provided a rational explanation for both changes: October 606 B.C. to October 607 B.C. for the start of the Gentile Times, and August 606 B.C. to August 607 B.C. for the destruction of Jerusalem. In particular you'll have to show where the 1943 book provided the justification what the 1944 book claimed it did.

GREG_2 No, for it is readily admitted by me that a mistake has been made. It is the NATURE of and the MOTIVATION BEHIND the mistake that you have yet to PROVE.

:AF ::So not only did the Society revise the date for the start of "the Gentile times" back by exactly one year, but it did the same for the fall of Jerusalem. Neither book showed how an event at first said to have occurred in the summer of 606 B.C. could later be said to have occurred exactly one year earlier merely by accounting for when the "vulgar" year began counting. Obviously the Society hoped their readers would miss the switch, or if they caught it would not question it. And they were right. This leap of twelve months at the stroke of a pen is a cynical abuse of a reader's intelligence. : GREG : Rather, it was an embarrassing error that they reacted to swiftly,

ALAN_2 :: Really? They never acknowledged any such error. On the contrary, the 1944 book actually claims that the 1943 book provided justification for the change of date of Jerusalem's destruction.

GREG_2 One need not admit to an error for there to in fact be one. Their appeal to the Truth book was likely due to, as I said previously, the fact that the book did have the right date for the start of the counting of the Gentile Times, and it was a new book. They made a mistake or did not word the note on page 171 of the Kingdom book properly, in reference to the fall of Jerusalem. I do not believe they tried to deceive anyone, but, rather, they tried to correct a problem in a recent publication, and did not do a good job of it. Since I do not know all of the circumstances surrounding what happened, or their though process, I, like you, cannot say for sure one way or the other.

ALAN_2 ::Do you see any admission of error anywhere? Do you see any explanation given in all of Watchtower literature for the two date changes?

GREG_2 No. The Truth book has both dates for the start of the Gentile Times, but nothing to offer in support of the change for the fall of Jerusalem. This is where he major mistake occurred.

: GREG : to try and correct, with no clear sign of any attempt to deliberately deceive anyone.

ALAN_2 ::The fact that they claimed that explanations were given when none were given is proof.

GREG_2 There is much more going on here than you care to admit, which likely affected their wording of the material. It is not necessarily due to deception on their part.

: GREG : You are trying to capitalize on errors they made, suggesting nothing but sinister motives, when, in fact, there are other, innocent though somewhat embarrassing reasons for what happened.

ALAN_2 ::All you've provided are weak rationalizations of what might have been. You've provided no actual explanations and no answers to the questions I've posed. Perhaps you can do better next time.

GREG_2 I have done the same thing you have done! Each of us can only surmise based on what we know and how we view the evidence, what MIGHT have been the case. You have not proven anything, except and excessive tendency to portray the Society in a negative light. Perhaps you can be more charitable next time. I have shown the logical fallacies of your reasoning, and suggested viable alternatives to your view.

:: AF :: So, Greg, here we have examples not only of a couple of minor mistakes, but of a web of deliberate lies told over a period of decades. :: Can anyone rightly claim that those who initiate and continue such a web have "divine guidance", much less represent Jehovah? I think that the answer is clear.

:GREG : If that is the best you can do to try and discredit the Governing Body, then I would say their reputation is quite safe from any lethal attack.

ALAN_2 ::You have a bit more work to do to keep their reputation spotless. You are also no doubt aware that I have plenty of other documentation on other misrepresentations etc. that the Society has made. Perhaps we'll cover more of these in due time.

GREG_2 If you are able to get yourself out of the misquotations and misrepresentations from both my book and the Society's literature, and explain your way out of the logical flaws in your argumentation, then, after I finish with Tom and others, you might get another chance. As it is, you have failed in your attempt to PROVE deliberate deception.

: GREG : But I do appreciate your attempt, and I think you did present what you thought was a solid basis for your view, doing so with gentleness and respect for me, though perhaps not for those with whom you have taken issue, namely, the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses.

ALAN_2 ::I have no quarrel with you; only your defense of those I see as unscrupulous persons.

GREG_2 And I have a quarrel with your misquoting my book and the Society's writings, and portraying them in a such a terribly one-sided manner.

ALAN_2 ::I hope we can continue our reasonable discussions and come to a clear understanding of the issues raised. If in this document I've taken on a too strident tone, I apologize in advance. You can see that this has required much time to put together; it's late as I type and I'm exhausted and I'm not doing another pass at cleanup.

End of Part 6 End of Response to Greg Stafford AF

GREG_2 No problem at all. We each disagree strongly with the other, and what I say is directed, not at you, but at your arguments.

END OF PART SIX END OF MY SECOND REPLY TO ALAN