Jehovha's Witnesses, im trying to find the true Christians, please help?

Question

From my earliest question I found out you guys are the only ones besides the Mormons that don't believe in the Trinity. But the Mormons have their own Bible...so I never considered them to be 1st century Christians. Anyway the only problem is the year 607 BC. The year Babilon conquered the Jews. This year is the foundation of the year 1914, but I have searched online and most places state that Babilon conquered the Jews in 586 B.C. which dismisses the year 1914 out.

Does one just have to have faith that 607 B.C. is correct... or is there any archeology evidence to the year 607 B.C. as the correct date? How did Jehovah's Witnesses come out with that year?

Any links will be helpful.

Guy S, You guys believe God is three persons or three Gods, I personally don't believe in the Trinity that the popular Christendom teaches. Sorry. So I'm looking for the group that worships only one God like the early Jews and 1st century Christians. Thanks anyway.

Answer 1

try this link.

http://www.jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/607/

Few notes also about the Trinity doctrine and why it is not supported in the Bible.

Thanks.

Is God composed of THREE PERSONS?

Gen 17:1 states “, then Jehovah appeared to A´bram and said to him: “I am God Almighty”

Do you use the phrase “I am” for THREE persons or you only use it for ONE Person?
If God is composed of THREE persons, God should have said “WE ARE God” but you cannot find that it the Bible.

You never use the phrase “I am” for THREE Persons. I am is only used for one person.

JESUS said to the Father also in John 17:3, that the Father is the “ONLY True God”, this means there is one and only one person who is God, the Father. and this is confirmed in 1 Cor 8:5 where is states “6 there is actually to us one God the FATHER”.Notice the Father only. Notice also in John 17:3 Jesus excluded himself as the only true God. Instead of saying “We are the only true God” JESUS said “YOU (referring to the Father), and not US” as the only true God.

Now, if the Son is Jehovah, the Father is Jehovah and the holy spirit is Jehovah according to the Trinity doctrine, then these THREE PERSONS, are THREE Jehovah.

But the Bible says in Deut 6:4 Listen, O Israel: Jehovah our God is ONE Jehovah.

Notice in Deut 6:4 it used “IS” and only ONE person is involved. If there are three Jehovah then it should have used ARE for THREE persons.

There is ONLY ONE JEHOVAH, who is God Almighty.

Answer 2

Nearly every archaeologist concedes a date within twenty years of 607 BCE for Israel's conquering by Babylon. Since the date was more than 2500 years ago, that's less than a 1% difference.


As diligent bible students, Jehovah's Witnesses note that the bible contains several prophecies that hinge upon the year of Israel's fall. Since they accept the historicity, inspiration, and infallibility of the bible, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the true date must allow ALL these prophecies to be fulfilled accurately. The year 607 BCE does that, and Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the year is entirely within the scope indicated by the available archaeological evidence.

There is a substantial presentation of the evidence here:
http://jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/607/


Learn more:
http://watchtower.org/e/20060715/article_02.htm

Answer 3

I came across an interesting essay that you may enjoy reading about this very subject. It gives a very detailed explanation to your question. http://www.jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/607/default.html

Answer 4

Witnesses claim the world will end in 1914

Answer 5

Not sure if this fully answers your question, but check this link for the Witnesses' explanation:

http://geocities.com/jimspace3000/JWstrs/539vs587.htm

Answer 6

While doing your research be sure to check into 7th Day Adventists. If you have any particular questions about what we believe feel free to send me an e-mail.

Answer 7

--Good question!

--THE DATES 607 b.c.e --1914 c.e are indeed significant but is dealing with Chronology rather than doctrine.
--Ones faith in Jehovah God , Christ & the Bible are not greatly based on that tabulation. There is also the prophetic expressions by Christ which in my opinion carry more weight than the tabulation itself!
--I will try to supply some secular information, on 607 b.c.e, but there is indeed more important understandings that one who is indeed searching for true Christianity should indeed concentrate on!

AN EXCERPT FROM THE ABOVE REFERENCE:

***When Did Babylon Desolate Jerusalem?
--Awake!, May 8, 1972, pp. 27-8
Copyright © 1972 Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.

SECULAR historians usually give the year 586 B.C.E. as the correct date for the desolation of Jerusalem. Why, then, do Jehovah’s Christian witnesses speak of this event as occurring in 607 B.C.E.? It is because of confidence in what the Bible says about the duration of Jerusalem’s lying desolate.

The Scriptures assign a period of seventy years to the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem. After describing the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem, 2 Chronicles 36:21 reports: "All the days of lying desolated it kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years." By means of his prophet Jeremiah, Jehovah had declared: "All this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment, and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years."—Jer. 25:11.

Was this really a period of seventy literal years? Yes, that is the way the prophet Daniel, toward the close of the period of Jerusalem’s desolation, understood it, saying: "I myself, Daniel, discerned by the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Jehovah had occurred to Jeremiah the prophet, for fulfilling the devastations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years." (Dan. 9:2) Note that here Daniel speaks of the "number of the years" of devastation as seventy. Surely he could not have done so if the seventy years were symbolic or an inflated round number.

Additional evidence is provided in the book of Zechariah. We read: "When you fasted and there was a wailing in the fifth month and in the seventh month, and this for seventy years, did you really fast to me, even me?" (Zech. 7:5; 1:12) The way this question is framed, with reference to specific months, certainly indicates that a period of seventy literal years was involved.

That the Jews in ancient times understood the seventy years as being literal and involving a total devastation of the land is apparent from the works of Josephus, a Jewish historian. In his Antiquities of the Jews, Book X, chap. 9, par. 7, he tells that "all Judea and Jerusalem, and the temple, continued to be a desert for seventy years."

When the Israelites were able to return to Judah and Jerusalem, that desolation ended. There is general agreement that Babylon fell to Cyrus on October 5/6, 539 B.C.E. From the Scriptural record at 2 Chronicles 36:21-23 and Ezra 3:1-3, which tells of Cyrus’ decree liberating the Jews and their return to their homeland, the indications are that the Jews arrived back in their homeland around the early part of October of 537 B.C.E., ending the seventy years of desolation. Jerusalem must, therefore, have been destroyed seventy years earlier, in 607 B.C.E.

Various attempts to harmonize the date 586 B.C.E. with what the Bible says are therefore unsatisfactory. None of such attempts fit the Bible’s testimony that Jerusalem and Judah lay desolate for seventy years.

The 586 B.C.E. date is based primarily on what is known as "Ptolemy’s Canon," which assigns a total of 87 years to the Babylonian dynasty beginning with Nabopolassar and ending with Nabonidus at the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C.E. According to this Canon, the five kings that ruled during this period were Nabopolassar (21 years), Nebuchadnezzar (43 years), Evil-merodach (2 years), Neriglissar (4 years) and Nabonidus (17 years). In line with the number of years thus assigned to each ruler, Jerusalem’s desolation in Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year (nineteenth year if counting from his "accession year") would fall in 586 B.C.E.—2 Ki. 25:8; Jer. 52:29.

But how dependable is Ptolemy’s Canon? In his book The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, Professor E. R. Thiele writes:

"Ptolemy’s canon was prepared primarily for astronomical, not historical, purposes. It did not pretend to give a complete list of all the rulers of either Babylon or Persia, nor the exact month or day of the beginning of their reigns, but it was a device which made possible the correct allocation into a broad chronological scheme of certain astronomical data which were then available. Kings whose reigns were less than a year and which did not embrace the New Year’s day were not mentioned." (Italics ours.)

So the very purpose of the Canon makes absolute dating by means of it impossible. There is no way to be sure that Ptolemy was correct in assigning a certain number of years to various kings. For example, while Ptolemy credits Evil-merodach with only two years of rule, Polyhistor assigns him twelve years. Then, too, one cannot be certain that just five kings ruled during this period. At Borsippa, for instance, were found names of a number of Babylonian kings that do not appear elsewhere.

Nevertheless, someone may ask, Is there not an ancient astronomical tablet, "VAT 4956," that places the thirty-seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign exactly in the same year as does Ptolemy’s Canon?

It should not be overlooked that the source of corroborative evidence should bear the earmarks of dependability. Can this be said about "VAT 4956"? Not really. The text is not an original and it contains numerous gaps. Certain terms found therein cannot even be understood now. Twice in the text the notation hi-bi (meaning "broken off, obliterated") appears. Thereby the scribe acknowledged that he was working from a defective copy.

Even if, despite these problems, the astronomical information presents a true picture of the original, this would not establish the correctness of the historical data. As Ptolemy used the reigns of ancient kings (as he understood them) simply as a framework in which to place astronomical data, so the copyist of "VAT 4956" may, in line with the chronology accepted in his time, have inserted the ‘thirty-seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar.’ As admitted by the German scholars Neugebauer and Weidner (the translators of this text), the scribe evidently changed words to conform with the abbreviated terminology common in his day. But he was both inconsistent and inaccurate. So he could just as easily have inserted other information to suit his purposes. Hence both Ptolemy’s Canon and "VAT 4956" might even have been derived from the same basic source. They could share mutual errors.

Opposed to Ptolemy’s Canon and "VAT 4956" stands the unanimous testimony of Jeremiah, Zechariah, Daniel and the writer of 2 Chronicles, that Judah and Jerusalem lay desolate for seventy years. Thousands of ancient manuscripts of these writings contain the identical testimony. So, because of the problems inherent in Ptolemy’s Canon and "VAT 4956," it takes more faith to accept them than it does to accept the Bible’s testimony, which would place the desolation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 607 B.C.E.*

Footnotes

Appendix to Chapter 14 ("Let Your Kingdom Come," pp. 186-9)
When Did Babylon Desolate Jerusalem? (Awake!, May 8, 1972, pp. 27-8)
Babylonian Chronology - How Reliable? (The Watchtower, February 1, 1969, pp. 88-92)
The Book of Truthful Historical Dates (The Watchtower, August 15, 1968, pp. 488-494)
From 607 B.C.E. to return from exile (Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, p. 463)
Jehovah, Enforcer of Prophecy (The Watchtower, December 1, 1964, pp. 732-6)
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UPDATE #1
--WHEN I CAME IN THE TRUTH, in 1966, I did not know of the 607 b.c.e --1914 ce as I do now , but I had trust in the words of Christ which in my opinion , IS of greatest importance!
(Matthew 24:7-8) “. . .“For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another. 8 All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress. .and because of the increasing of lawlessness the love of the greater number will cool off..... 13 But he that has endured to the end is the one that will be saved. 14 And this good news of the kingdom will be preached in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations; and then the end will come. .”

--THE WORLD HAS RECOGNIZED our emphasis on the said words of Christ Jesus , rather than the chronological presentation, in my opinion!

--THIS IS WHAT they stated as to our emphasis of 1914!

*** ce chap. 18 pp. 227-229 par. 32 The Bible—Is It Really Inspired by God? ***

32 Decades before that date, there was an organization of people who were making known the significance of 1914. The New York World of August 30, 1914, explains: “The terrific war outbreak in Europe has fulfilled an extraordinary prophecy. For a quarter of a century past, through preachers and through press, the ‘International Bible Students’ [Jehovah’s Witnesses] . . . have been proclaiming to the world that the Day of Wrath prophesied in the Bible would dawn in 1914. ‘Look out for 1914!’ has been the cry of the . . . evangelists.”29
-- “It is indeed the year 1914 rather than that of Hiroshima which marks the turning point in our time.”—René Albrecht-Carrié, The Scientific Monthly, July 1951.
--1977.
--“In 1914 the world lost a coherence which it has not managed to recapture since. . . . This has been a time of extraordinary disorder and violence, both across national frontiers and within them.”—The Economist, London, August 4, 1979.

--THERE IS NOTHING THAT can take away from the uniquiness of what Jesus stated and how the year 1914 fits his words like a glove on a hand!

--Please do not let your not fully understanding the presentation of 1914 become a stumbling block in your relationship with the most high God and his beloved Son!
--IF INDEED you have found what we teach about them is the truth , is that not more important at present than a chronological presentation, that has importance and yet is not involved in our relationship with them.

PLEASE BE CAREFUL that you do not fall prey to those who attack us on the dates we have tried to understand and apply, for indeed they can become too important in comparison to our relationship with God--- , as Paul stated:

(Galatians 4:9-11) “. . .But now that YOU have come to know God, or rather now that YOU have come to be known by God, how is it that YOU are turning back again to the weak and beggarly elementary things and want to slave for them over again? 10 YOU are scrupulously observing days and months and seasons and years. 11 I fear for YOU, that somehow I have toiled to no purpose respecting YOU.”
(the Jews made dates of greater importance than they were intended to be , we need to be careful of the same attitude)
--NOT THAT chronology is of unimportance , but indeed we need to "make sure of the more important things"
(Philippians 1:9-10) “. . .And this is what I continue praying, that YOUR love may abound yet more and more with accurate knowledge and full discernment; 10 that YOU may make sure of the more important things, . . .”