My deconstruction

I can’t remember exactly how I first stumbled upon factual information about 607 BCE (namely that it’s all a lie) but I remember the way I felt when I realized the truth about The Truth: I had a giant “HUH” moment followed by some serious introspection. I had gone to the official JW.org website and looked at every article I could find about the year 1914, of which there are some but honestly not many. One of the reasons why so few people are aware of the historical conflicts with this date is that the religion doesn’t want them to focus too much on it, or else they will quickly realize the problems that exist. Worse yet, they might even find out that the nonsensical mathematical formula behind it came from an entirely different organized religion and was only co-opted from them after that faith’s utter prophetic failure (literally called “The Great Disappointment” in history books).

Here is where my intellectual journey started: there was a two-part series of articles in the Watchtower magazine in 2011 that used their best arguments in favor of 607 BCE as the destruction of Jerusalem (and thus kicking off the whole prophecy) which were full of “facts” and plenty of data combined with supposedly-inspired logic, all in favor of 607 BCE and quite openly criticizing the methods that historians used for the actual date that Jerusalem was likely destroyed, 587 BCE. The twenty-year difference was explained quite succinctly as a “possibility” that we must assume is what everyone should accept as established fact. For the uneducated rank and file who would read those articles, the arguments presented appear quite sound because they use selected quotes from real experts to make it seem like other people are agreeable to the date of 607 BCE, or at the very least that the exact date is questionable and not wholly agreed upon by the historical community.

The real story is that every single one of those quotes were taken out of context, and in many cases when some diligent readers contacted these experts and asked them directly to verify that they actually support 607 BCE instead of 587 BCE, the answer was, across the board and unequivocally, NO! No secular historian, not a single one, thinks that Jerusalem might have been, just maybe, actually was, destroyed in 607 BCE. The Watchtower articles cast doubt on the veracity of the records found, even though the Neo-Babylonian era is one of the most well-documented historical eras in existence due to their use of cuneiform tablets for nearly every business transaction, where regnal years of kings and even lunar events are recorded. Those lunar records have enabled experts to run computer calculations that prove when those lunar events would have taken place. There is really no reason at all to doubt the year of 587 BCE as the destruction of Jerusalem.

Most notably, there is a footnote at the end of the second article that very boldly admits the fact that none of the scholars quoted in either article agree with 607 BCE. That single footnote, a nearly-buried breadcrumb that could almost be missed entirely but certainly dismissed by unsuspecting readers, would start me down a path that would change my life and, unfortunately for them, the lives of my family forever.

We do not know who wrote those two articles exactly, but they definitely contain information that is much too technical for just anyone on the organization’s Writing Committee to drum up. It is largely assumed that they are the product of a man named Rolf Furuli (https://mybelovedreligion.no) who is the only actual scholar that supports 607 BCE as the date of Jerusalem’s destruction (and yet somehow is not himself quoted in these articles despite this agreement, hmm…). He was actually a faithful Jehovah’s Witness (you don’t say!) for over fifty years and rose to the ranks of District Overseer, a position now discontinued, before apostatizing against the Governing Body when he realized through his biblical research that the endless intrusive rules that were being forced upon the rank and file were not actually scriptural. He tried to present his case to the leadership but was rejected. He has since written extensively on his own website, linked above, about other topics where the religion’s application of scripture does not align with what he considers to be the original meaning of the texts.

Rolf was one of the many brave people who testified recently in Norway when the government was cracking down on Watchtower for their terrible shunning practices (and which case Watchtower lost, causing them to immediately backpedal on some of their extreme rules about how to treat those who are disfellowshipped). Though he maintains that he loved the religion and does not regret belonging to it, he continues to openly disagree with many of their harsh policies, including shunning. An interesting quote from his website which I find fascinating: “32 of the 43 disfellowshipping offenses that are mentioned in the book for elders, “Shepherd the flock of God” have no Bible basis.”

Because of his continued support for 607 BCE, Rolf’s story was one of the initial items of interest that I found when searching outside of Watchtower’s publications for information about that date. The very first item I found, however, was Carl Olof Jonsson’s correspondence with Watchtower about his findings. He was not a credentialed scholar like Rolf Furuli but he might as well have been, judging from his very thorough and well-documented research. He also corresponded with Rolf Furuli and the two maintained a professional disagreement on the topic, though I think Jonsson is on the winning side of that argument (and countless scholars would agree). His particular case was very interesting to me as I was beginning to wake up because of how similar in foundation and principal the issue was for him. He had not done his extensive research because he was personally doubting the doctrine or was disenfranchised with the religion; he had honestly tried to prove that they were right.

According to his book “The Gentile Times Reconsidered” he was an elder and pioneer who had been challenged by one of his students to find secular support for 607 BCE. This was decades ago in the late 1960s when he first started his extensive research project. What was notable to me was the amount of work he put into this project over the course of a decade, at a time when information was not as readily available to the average person as it is today. Also of note to me was that Jonsson’s story showed how this issue wasn’t exactly new, something that perhaps was only gaining momentum in very recent years and thus flew under the radar of most Jehovah’s Witnesses; this would have indicated that maybe I had accidentally stumbled upon something quite unique. It turned out that many people had seen the problems with using 607 BCE as a prophetic date, but only Carl Olof Jonsson had taken it upon himself to go to such lengths to investigate it. At least, his account was the most notable one that I could find and to this day I haven’t seen anything that has reached such a level, probably because no further research even needs to be done after his incredible efforts. After several revisions to his original work, he managed to compile a comprehensive collection of indisputable facts to disprove 607 BCE beyond any reasonable doubt, which included his correspondence with Watchtower’s branch office over a period of years where they finally told him to keep quiet about his findings.

The overall picture became much more clear by this point. The very existence of those two Watchtower articles from 2011, with their rather dismissive tone regarding historical data and outright manipulation of quotes from experts, pointed to the fact that there was dissension somewhere in the JW community about this date that had grown significant enough to warrant an official restating of the doctrine (oddly enough, this new explanation completely dismissed Ptolemy’s Canon as a proof, even though it had been instrumental in C.T. Russell’s original teaching). Now that the internet had exploded and all sorts of information was readily available to people, it was fairly easy to fact check the things that Watchtower was claiming. For years prior, the rank and file, who were and still are fairly uneducated, could not realistically refute anything that their religion was saying because this required more effort than they were willing to invest, or even could invest, while still maintaining their active JW lifestyle. What average person could be busily engaged in worship services, field ministry, raising a family, working secularly, etc. and have time to do what Jonsson had done? As the twenty-first century came into swing though, even the most uneducated person could do a simple internet search and quickly verify whether these claims were accurate or not.

Even though I found that these so-called “apostate” ideas were rooted in historical facts, I diligently went straight to encyclopedias and museum websites to confirm them for myself. I was still honestly a believer at this point so I knew that I couldn’t just show the elders a few random websites or self-published books as proof, or else I’d risk being considered an apostate myself. I was even still hopeful that I might encounter some vague explanation that maybe supported either date, 587 or 607 BCE, and perhaps left the conclusion up in the air and open to interpretation. That would have been good enough for me, and I would have gone along with what Watchtower said in the end since I was slanted in their favor. Some jaded former JW wrote a book proving the religion wrong? Yeah, sure, whatever. Mentally diseased apostates, spiritual poison, yada-yada…

Suffice to say, I never found that opening. Every single mainstream secular source was in agreement that 607 BCE was not a significant date for anything. As if to counter this difficult truth, Watchtower coined their own term for their fake history, biblical chronology, which is superior to any secular history wherever the two are opposed. There is no such thing as biblical chronology though because the Bible doesn’t list dates for events, since our modern calendar system was not in use at the time. It uses regnal years of rulers, just like the Babylonian cuneiform tablets, to establish when in history an event occurred. Watchtower’s biblical chronology is itself anchored to an actual historical date, 539 BCE when there is indisputable proof that Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and freed the Jews from captivity, but even this date does not perfectly align with their required formula of 607 BCE being exactly seventy years prior to this date, as the book of Daniel (a forgery) speaks of (607–70 ≠ 539). There is no wiggle room for two years in their mathematical formula, however, because they absolutely need to subtract 2,520 years from the end date of 1914 in order to establish their authority as the chosen religion (see chapter 3 for the exact formula) and doing this requires that the other end of the formula equals 607 BCE, not 609 BCE or any other date whatsoever. So, they invent a rule about how it must have taken two years for the Jews to return to their homeland after 539 BCE and reestablish true worship in the land. Thus, 607–70 = 537, and the prophecy has been fulfilled.

Good JWs are supposed to accept biblical chronology over established secular history. That biblical chronology is amazingly flexible when it needs to be though, since C.T. Russell’s formulas used the measurements of pyramids for confirmation and also pointed to 1874 and 1878 as prophetic dates. I recommend looking at the Wikipedia page for Charles Taze Russell where you can learn more about all of his teachings. His early writings that Watchtower has attempted to erase from history are still available online in certain archives, and they are eye-opening to say the least. Definitely don’t take anyone’s word for it; always confirm what you hear with multiple sources of information.

The fact of the matter is, if the Bible said the moon was made of cheese, Watchtower would publish an article heavily supporting the notion, casting doubt on anyone who said otherwise, misquoting astronauts and culinary connoisseurs alike to make it seem like no one but Jehovah’s earthly organization was brave enough to preach the truth about formaggio della luna.

At this point in my journey, the feeling of mental awakening was like a floodgate opening. What followed soon after was a righteous anger that I had once felt toward apostates who might dare attack the one true religion, only now it was directed back at that religion and its leadership. It took time, many months in fact, for my brain to make sense of that anger and realize what my conscience would force me to do. At first I had self-doubt, wondering if I was just too stupid to really understand the issue, and if maybe I was missing something important that connected all of the broken pieces. Did I not understand was “faith” really was? If faith was just a blind acceptance of things I was told because they have to be true and there is no other possibility, then what exactly am I putting faith in when there is solid proof against that truth?

I had read Carl Olof Jonsson’s book, as well as his later rebuttals to the two Watchtower articles that attempted to prove 607 BCE where he completely excoriates their reasonings and falsehoods, and by this point I knew that the problem was not with me. It didn’t matter how smart or stupid I was because this very smart man who was himself an active JW had come to the same conclusion that I had been suspicious of: Watchtower is lying. They’re not just wrong or misled, because his correspondence with them would have alerted them to this fact, allowing for an honest admittance and opportunity to correct the prophecy, either by reinterpreting it or simply abandoning it altogether. Instead, they forced his silence to protect their self-appointed authority which completely hinges on the date of 607/1914. If they admitted that 1914 might be wrong, then there was really no reason to believe that Watchtower was hand-selected by Jesus Christ himself (and effectively Jehovah God) as the only true religion on Earth.

Ironically, there are probably very few JWs alive today that would realize how dire this matter is for the leadership. My own wife thinks it’s silly that I’m so hung up on a date. The elders from my congregation that I’ve spoken to about this matter openly and honestly have themselves dismissed it in the same manner. The old tropes of “waiting on Jehovah” and “this organization isn’t perfect but where else would you go?” have been repeated over and over to me. They don’t even stop to realize what the implications of this finding are, and when they continue to read about 1914 and how the Governing Body are the “faithful and discreet slave” from Jesus’ parable (not prophecy) in Matthew, they will never stop to consider how that bold claim can honestly be made if history does not actually support that assumption.

I knew that Jehovah’s Witnesses were not a true religion by this point, even though it took time for me to fully accept it and actually do something about it. I continued going to meetings but I had stopped my participation in the ministry for the most part. I found it entirely too painful and a source of extreme anxiety, exacerbating my depression as I realized that I was expected to preach to people about a belief system I no longer accepted. At first, my wife was fairly accepting of my doubts once I finally had the courage to sit her down and explain that I had found information that cast extreme doubt on 607 BCE. She likely imagined I was just having mental issues, going through a rough time that I would quickly snap out of, and I was honestly shocked at how easy it was to transition from being active in the religion to inactive, though that term carries some fairly intensive stigma with it for believers. After some months had passed though, realization set in and it was obvious that I wasn’t “snapping back” to my former beliefs. My change was permanent, and this scared her, not just because of the implications for her but also for our child. To this day I remain committed to her and have never considered terminating our marriage, but she continues to fear that the other shoe will drop and somehow my doubts and lack of belief are actually the result of some selfish motive or secret sin that caused me to feel guilty enough to “pretend” not to believe in the religion anymore. She refuses to speak to me about anything spiritual, as that would be entertaining “apostate” ideas and apostates are mentally diseased, spiritual poison, yada-yada.

For any current JW that is beginning to doubt, and has the courage to look for outside sources of information which their leadership condemns, they will quickly learn of a book that was written by a former member of the Governing Body called “Crisis of Conscience” by Raymond Franz, the nephew of Fred Franz, Watchtower’s former vice president turned president, and probably the singular most influential individual leading the religion since J.F. Rutherford. Fred Franz was, by all accounts, a fairly unhinged and unconventional person who had completed barely any college but still considered himself a full-fledged biblical scholar, and who felt he had the qualifications to interpret the Bible and decide some of the religion’s most unique doctrines. Watchtower is still, in my opinion, cleaning up after his mess to this day with some of their clarifications and outright backtracking.

Raymond Franz, however, served on the Governing Body during the tumultuous time of the 1975 fiasco. At this time, Fred Franz had concocted the idea that 1975 would mark the end of exactly six thousand years of man’s existence on the Earth. Young Earth Creationism was still very popular back then, and Jehovah’s Witnesses believed in that concept at the time even though today that idea has been thoroughly debunked and even they accept that it isn’t possible. They no longer think that the Earth itself is only six thousand years old but they do still hold that man has only existed on the Earth since around 4000 BCE. Fred Franz used passages in the Bible to determine the exact year that Adam was supposedly created and placed in the Garden of Eden and then calculated from that supposed year to arrive at 1975 as exactly six thousand years later. Since the numbers six and seven have deep biblical significance (according to fundamentalists), this must mean something significant was likely to occur during the next thousand years, since Revelation speaks of a “thousand year reign” that Watchtower interprets as a literal period of time when the Earth will be slowly restored to a paradise (which is happening any day now, of course).

Are you seeing a pattern here? Watchtower has been cherry-picking numbers out of Bible verses to devise whatever year they want to be some modern-day fulfillment of ancient prophecy, always conveniently to happen within the next few years. The times are urgent, so you better get more involved in preaching to help more people be saved while God holds back the End of Days (despite the passage of time allowing the population to grow exponentially and thus create even more “victims” of Armageddon). Hey, I have a great idea: start pioneering! You can count most of your time commitment performing free labor to maintain our real estate investments…I mean, supporting Jehovah’s organization. You are so fortunate!

The organization today heavily denies that it actually stated what was to be expected during the momentous year of 1975, but of course we have their publications from the late 1960s and early 1970s that show otherwise. They hyped up that year (“stay alive til ‘75”) and celebrated people selling their homes and businesses to use the short time remaining to enter the pioneer ranks. Convention talks were given by the leadership that reinforced the very short time left remaining, mirroring many such convention talks from the early twentieth century that gave the same false impression. There was no question that the organization itself, and not just a small handful of misguided fools, was completely under the spell of the impending end of the world expected to arrive very soon. Of course this is a trademark of the religion still, but they’re a bit wiser about how they go about predicting it. No definite years are ever given now, though the same descriptive choice of wording is leveraged to imply that it is “just around the corner” and we are “in the last of the last days, shortly before the last day of the last days”.

Raymond Franz weathered the storm as a member of the Governing Body when 1975 came and went, leading to a great disillusionment among both the rank and file as well as the upper echelons. Full-time “Bethel family” members, people who had given up their lives, potential families, and career opportunities to instead work for free at the headquarters in support of the organization, were starting to realize that the religion might not actually be guided by God’s holy spirit. Many left or were kicked out due to apostasy. Raymond Franz saw this happen in person, as a true believer with doubts beginning to surface regarding specific doctrines that he felt were not biblical (a foreshadow of people like Rolf Furuli). He and others had begun to do independent Bible study to reinforce their own personally held beliefs that each free person is entitled to have, and they were starting to see that Watchtower may not be right about things like two separate hopes for Christians (one heavenly and one earthly) being a concept that the scriptures clearly supported.

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Though he maintained his Christian faith to the end of his life, Raymond Franz eventually stepped down from his position on the Governing Body in the midst of an internal investigation into widespread apostasy at headquarters. Only, that wasn’t enough, since the leadership knew that such an influential person who was particularly excellent at biblical understanding (he had been the one to write the book series “Aid to Understanding” which was later updated to become the current “Insight on the Scriptures” volumes which still contain much of the exact same wording as the former publication) would only lead to trouble for them during their witch hunt. They were bleeding members after 1975 and in response they began a crusade to squash any dissent and regain control of their narrative. They hunted Raymond Franz down and forcibly disfellowshipped him on the grounds of a newly-created rule that seemed to fit his situation perfectly.

Up until that point, someone could formally resign from the religion without extreme consequence, and this was called Disassociation. One could write a short letter that clearly requested their name to be removed from the ranks of active members, much like one might do today for any particular religion. Once that step was taken, the status of that person was the same as any non-believer. You would treat that one just like any stranger on the street, or any family member that was never a part of the religion. After all, they like all people were potential converts, perhaps able to be re-indoctrinated at a future time, so a friendly relationship was preferable and conducive to that end.

Either as a way to trap Raymond Franz, or to stave off the growing apostate problem in general, Watchtower changed this rule and stipulated that now those who were “disassociated” were to be treated the same as someone who had been disfellowshipped, or forcibly removed from the organization on grounds of moral wrongdoing. The timing of this change occurred at an extremely opportune time for Watchtower, as Franz had just left headquarters and taken up residence with a friend who had, incidentally, formally disassociated from the religion some years prior. Franz had no children or family to take him in when he left, but he kept ties with this person who, like himself, had done intense biblical research and came to the conclusion that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t have things completely correct. Now, conveniently, JWs were no longer allowed to associate with someone in that position, a formally “disassociated” former member, so Franz’s living conditions on the man’s property and his cordial relationship with him as his employer was considered improper and worthy of punishment. He was expelled after a drawn-out investigation process, and this exceptional rule has remained in place ever since to the dismay of many who have come to the same conclusion as Franz and simply disagree with things that Watchtower says and does, though not necessarily with the Bible itself.

It is this rule specifically which traps me in the same way. As outlined in a secret letter to only Circuit and District Overseers not long after the Raymond Franz debacle, if someone persists in thinking something that isn’t in harmony with Watchtower’s proclamations and rules, Watchtower considers them as apostates whether or not they actually act on these thoughts. Of course who can know what each person is thinking in order to determine this, but the fact remains that Watchtower does not tolerate dissent in any form and will punish those who they view as a danger to their authority. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only members of this religion among their families (in fact, very few are themselves the sole JW, unless the others have already left or been expelled) and their entire social circle revolves around their religious activity. To be removed from that circle is devastating and has led to countless suicides, even though it is labeled as a “loving” arrangement designed to persuade a person to return to Jehovah (by obeying the earthly component of God’s theocratic rulership). This is a cruel and sadistic way to treat someone who has exercised their God-given right to decide for themselves what to believe and act in harmony with that belief.

Today, my beliefs have continued to change and evolve as I immerse myself in biblical scholarship from non-apologetic sources. It turns out there is a wealth of information available to anyone who wants to learn about the Bible without bias. I believe that unbiased and critical study is the only way to truly understand something, however it is more difficult than one might think. Christian apologetics can make it extremely difficult and frustrating to find accurate information about what is actually contained in the original text of the Bible. So much of Christian biblical scholarship relies upon inherent beliefs and predetermined outcomes, as many professors and educators have to sign devotional agreements with the institutions where they are employed. This prevents them from openly discussing things that conflict with the religious bent of the institution, even if that is what is actually contained within the Bible, and unfortunately many people who choose to study the Bible already have some sort of Christian bias when they enroll in these institutions with the express expectation that their existing beliefs will be fortified and not challenged (greatly, anyway).

There are many unbiased and excellent Bible scholars, however. Even some who profess to be Christian have, in my opinion, some of the best technical argumentation against the inerrancy of the Bible and they would even admit this. There are also some prominent atheist biblical scholars that are considered the top minds in their field. It is not difficult to find their YouTube videos and podcasts so I won’t mention them by name here. Truly, a simple internet search will uncover these sources for you if you expend the effort. Most interesting to me is that many of them have repeated the same notion over and over: modern biblical scholarship has always been many decades ahead of what the public is largely aware of, and this huge knowledge gap is closing more and more with the proliferation of information on the internet. This is perfectly exemplified with Charles Taze Russell, who became popular in his time for exposing the fact that many of Christendom’s teachings aren’t actually supported by the Bible: the Trinity, Hellfire, the immortality of the soul, etc. It is unfortunate that he got so much wrong still, but that’s why you don’t only accept any single source of information. Always confirm and verify using multiple sources. Otherwise what you are believing is merely propaganda even if it happens to be truthful.

Some incredible things that scholars have known for years, based on unbiased textual interpretations and archaeological findings (and which Watchtower hides from its members):

1. Ancient Israelites were polytheistic
2. Yahweh (or YHWH [the tetragrammaton]) was not the only god they ever worshiped but was in fact a storm deity among other deities that eventually became the singular god of the Israelites over time
3. The name “Jehovah” is a transliteration of the tetragrammaton but is nowhere near the actual pronunciation of God’s name, and stems from a tradition of combining the tetragrammaton with the vowels of the word “Adonai” which is the plural Hebrew word for Lord: https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100221969
4. The Noachian Flood is scientifically impossible (we would have some sort of proof in the fossil record) and likely originated from an older mythological story (as did many of the Bible’s tall tales)
5. There is no archaeological evidence of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, and there certainly would be with over a million people migrating across the desert with enough supplies to survive
6. The book of Daniel is widely accepted to be a forgery written long after the fact (scholars believe they even know the exact year that it was written based on the evidence)
7. The book of Revelation was never about a far future apocalypse, but was instead a seditious piece of literature against Roman oppression of first-century Christians
8. Fun fact: the number 666 was a way to identify Emperor Nero’s name using gematria, a very popular literary practice at the time
9. Jews who were alive during Jesus’ time (assuming he was even a real person, which is disputed but hasn’t been explicitly ruled out by all scholars) would not have assumed that he was God’s son or had a divine existence prior to his earthly life
10. The messianic prophecies in the Old Testament did not point to a divine being who would save humanity as a whole, but instead pointed forward to a future Israelite king who was expected to lead the nation to greatness
11. Only when this didn’t happen (when Jesus died and thus did not fulfill the expectations of the Messiah) did the belief begin to form that Jesus the Christ/Messiah was actually now ruling from heaven and would soon (specifically, during those ancient times and not the far future) return and save his followers from all of their earthly troubles
12. The Gospels were not written by eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life but instead by anonymous authors much later (thus making their accuracy and miraculous claims highly doubtful)
13. This is confirmed by the fact that the original disciples were admittedly illiterate like other fishermen of that era and spoke Aramaic, not the literary Greek of the Gospels that would have required a formal education to learn)
14. The Apostle Paul’s letters (called the Pauline Epistles) predate the Gospels, meaning the Gospels were likely constructed in an attempt to fortify the fantastical beliefs of the relatively small Christian sect that had formed among the Jews, which Paul might have been the main progenitor of anyway

This is just what I can think of off the top of my head, based on what I’ve learned in about one year’s time. There are so many more biblical topics to consider against historical proof and honest research. You can see how my former beliefs, even the basic concept of Christianity and biblical inerrancy, were quickly challenged when I did the actual research for myself and didn’t just accept what a religious organization told me. The same critical research of any other religion that all JWs would applaud should instead be performed against their own beliefs and biases. There is really no excuse otherwise.

One thing I appreciated in my research was learning that most Bible scholars fully understand that the things they are exposing are not going to be popular among Christians. Most of them that I’ve seen actually go out of their way to carefully present the facts without being offensive or divisive. They recognize that if they reveal the data in a way that is truthful and accurate but also too blunt, this might be difficult for believers to accept, so the good ones do an excellent job at carefully presenting the facts and letting people come to their own conclusions in most cases. I appreciated this as it made my deconversion much easier, and I believe this is a critical component for helping others do the same.

Watchtower does not follow this sentiment, but instead forcefully exerts its unique interpretation of the Bible on its members and punishes anyone who doesn’t agree. That is not honest intellectual scholarship, and it reveals that spreading the Good News of the Kingdom is not their main goal at all. They want to maintain their power and authority, like any other religion, like any other corporate entity, and they will do this at any cost. This is reflected in the many legal challenges they are facing today and the rapid pace at which they change and alter their interpretations of a text that never changes at all.