Marjorie,
If someone tells me that his religious organization is the only true Christian body on earth today, and that I am not a true Christian because I have not accepted that Jesus returned in 1914 (and I have therefore not associated myself with the WTS), all I need to show is that 607 is wrong (and I have done so on many occasions).
....And that is the crux of the matter. Scholar has openly admitted to Marjorie that he does not view her as a true Christian because she is not one of Jehovah's Witnesses. This is of course part of a cultist theology that depends on isolating its adherents and making them feel 'special' and superior to those around them.
Nothing needs to be proved regarding the 586/587BCE dating of the first fall of Jerusalem, all that needs to be proved is that 607BCE is the incorrect date. Scholar begrudingly admits that secular chronology does not support this date, that all Biblical scholars who operate outside of an adventist agenda adhere to the the correct 586/587 date, and that the only group who believe that 607BCE is the correct date is the WTS. Few Jehovah's Witnesses even understand this chronology, let be able to defend it Biblically.
Scholar has also admitted, very courageously I might add given its implications, that the WTS has stepped beyond its authority by shunning those who question the 607BCE date.
Really, we should now rest the case because it is quite obvious to all readers that at this stage we are not debating information, we are debating an agenda, and arguing with an agenda is futile.
I don't need to show whether 586 or 587 is right, and I would not presume to tell someone else that they must accept one of those dates over the other. It is of no consequence whatsoever to the life of faith, imo.
Again Marjorie, you have struck at the crux of the matter. The WTS claims that true faith does not exist outside its own doctrines. It is a simple as that. Prove that its major doctrines are flawed and its claims to exclusive truth become completely worthless.
Scholar is living in a thick jungle of cognitive dissonance, one from which all of us who have been Jehovah's Witnesses once lived, and from which many of us painfully hacked our way out into the daylight. Some of us found life outside the jungle hard to bear after believing for many years that we owned the world, only to emerge from that world and discover that we were not special at all, and that we were just another person among billions, struggling to find some sort of meaning in our rapid journey from the womb to the tomb.
The disappointment and bitterness is evident on this Board among many of its posters as we rail at the WTS and bicker with each other, but this is not suprising given what we have come from. Many of us expected to be living on 'Paradise earth' by now, but find ourselves weary, broken and defeated by the shattered fairy tale that we once lived in.
It takes real courage to face a life without certainty, but it is a life that should be lived with a sense of honesty for it to have any meaning. Perhaps one day Neil will take the first courageous steps out of the jungle and learn to stand on his own intellectual feet without the aid of a self-serving agenda manufactured by a group of less well informed men, a hundred and fifty years ago.
Best regards - HS