Overview of the Controversy
http://144000.110mb.com/607/index.html#C
The Jehovah’s Witnesses' task of proving that Jerusalem was destroyed in 607 B.C.E. and not 587/6 B.C.E. is no easy feat in light of strong archeological, historical and scriptural evidence to the contrary. Notwithstanding this uphill battle, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have gone to elaborate lengths to rationalize their position, regrettably causing a dizzying smoke-screen of complexity when the answers and issues, as will be detailed below, are relatively simple and straightforward as the Almighty intended them to be - in order to reach as many people as possible.
At the heart of the controversy is a seventy-year prophetic period of time. The Jehovah’s Witnesses simply count backward seventy years from the fall of 537 B.C.E., the year Jews returned to Judah after being exiled to Babylon, to arrive at 607 B.C.E. Therefore, they reason, Jerusalem must have been destroyed in 607 B.C.E.
The problem is that they have completely misinterpreted and misapplied the prophecy at Jeremiah 25:11 and accompanying verses because they desperately need 607 B.C.E. in order to arrive at 1914. An abbreviated form of this seventy-year prophecy, unfortunately taken out of context, and reproduced in the article Setting the Record Straight - a fierce and very comprehensive defense of the Jehovah’s Witnesses' pro-607 stance - provides:
The word that occurred to Jeremiah . . . concerning all the people of Judah and concerning all the inhabitants of Jerusalem . . . 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. —Jeremiah 25:1a, 2, 11.
According to Setting the Record Straight this prophecy has two parts equal in length, both parts beginning and ending at exactly the same time:
A) The land of Judah, and Jerusalem, would be devastated and remain so without a single inhabitant exactly seventy years commencing with Jerusalem’s destruction and not before, and this period of devastation ended seventy years later only when the exiled Jews physically returned to their homeland Judah from Babylon in 537 B.C.E. The opposing view is that Jerusalem was destroyed in 587/6 B.C.E. and the period of complete devastation lasted only 48 - 50 years.
B) All exiled Jews that fell within the scope of the prophecy were removed at Jerusalem’s destruction, and not before, and remained as exiles serving Babylon a full seventy years until their actual return to Judah in 537 B.C.E. Again, the opposing view is that Jerusalem was destroyed in 587/6 B.C.E. and those exiles removed at that time to Babylon served only 48 - 50 years in captivity.
It should be pointed out that should either prong of this composite two-prong approach fail, the entire prophecy, or their version of it, fails.
As such, we are essentially dealing with two primary areas of interest related to a) when Judah’s devastation began and ended, and the extent of that devastation, and b) when servitude to the king of Babylon began and ended, what servitude meant, and to whom it applied. Saving the Record Straight frames the Jehovah’s Witnesses' position as follows:
While some critics argue that Jeremiah 25:11 only refers to seventy years of servitude, Daniel 9:2 confirms that the prophecy also entailed seventy years of devastation for the land of Judah. Second Chronicles 36:20, 21 further shows that it was the composite effect of exiling the remaining ones who “came to be servants to [Nebuchadnezzar]” and the resulting devastation and desolation of the land of Judah that began to fulfill the prophecy concerning the seventy years.
The Watchtower Society in its publication Let Your Kingdom Come and elsewhere confirms that the seventy-year period ended only upon the Jews’ return to Judah, and not before.
The 70 years expired when Cyrus the Great, in his first year, released the Jews and they returned to their homeland. (Chronicles 36:17 - 23)
The Bible prophecy does not allow for the application of the 70-year period to any time other than that between the desolation of Judah, accompanying Jerusalem's destruction, and the return of the Jewish exiles to their homeland as a result of Cyrus' decree," - Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, p. 463.
This paper begins with an analysis of the underlying issues presented by the phrase a) “and these nations will have to serve the king of Babylon seventy years” (servitude), followed by a discussion of issues pertaining to the phrase b) "all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment” (devastation).
http://www.144000.110mb.com/directory/607_bce_586_587_destruction_fall_desolation_jerusalem.html
