Jeffro
Zedekiah has nothing to do with the Gentile Times
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False, Zedekiah as the last King of the Divided Monarchy plays a most pivotal role in the major fulfilment of Nebuchadnezzar's tree vision as this relates to God's Kingdom/Kingship as expressed through the rulers of the House of David sitting on the throne at the city of Jerusalem trampled on and removed by Nebuchadnezzer in 607 BCE covering a period of 'seven times' being fulfilled in 1914 CE.
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Notice how the apologists do not understand how events are interrelated, largely owing to the fact that they learn their chronological beliefs by rote rather than by analysis. So if their version of the story about, for example, a particular king doesn't explicitly reference some other theme in their dogma, it is considered irrelevant (which protects their cognitive dissonance). In this case, it is particularly flawed because the calendation for Zedekiah directly influences the timing of their supposed start of the 'gentile times' (setting aside the fact that the 'appointed times of the nations' is identified as 42 months at Revelation 11:2 in reference to the Roman assault on Jerusalem).
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Notice how WT critics fail to understand how events are interrelated, largely owing to the fact that they learn their chronological beliefs from higher critics, other sceptics and failing to carry out a proper analyssis ogf the biblical text. Notice how the apologists do not understand how events are interrelated, largely owing to the fact that they learn their chronological beliefs by rote rather than by analysis. So if their version of the story about, for example, a particular king doesn't explicitly reference some other theme in their dogma, it is considered irrelevant (which protects their cognitive dissonance) especially the case when dealing with the 'seventy years of Jeremiah' and the reigns of the kings at the beginning and end of that historic period.
The supposed calendation of Zedekiah is an assumption that leads to confusion especially in relation to the exact date of Jerusalems' destruction in Zedekiah's last year whereby such critics cannot agree as to whether it is 586 or 587 BCE for this is what calendrical theories lead to -confusion.
The appointed times of the nations has nothing to do with the 42 months of Rev.11:2 of as these are different time periods in Bible prophecy.
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Of course the Watch Tower Society won't get specific about the calendar systems, because their position cannot be established when properly analysed. It is therefore in their interests to be vague. However, its flawed chronology of both the Neo-Babylonian period and the entire divided monarchy does assume Nisan calendation, with arbitrary switches between accession and non-accession dating (for example, Insight volume 1, pages 464-5: Asa's rule 'evidently' counts from following year, Jehoshaphat's rule 'evidently' counts from following year, Ahaziah's reign 'may count' from following year, 'it seems' Jehu's 'years of kingship' begin the following year, 'it seems' that Menahem's reign is counted from the following year).
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Such a position is truly a wise position as issues of calendation are by no means uniform in current scholarship which uses a different Methodology. Our Methodology avoids such problems only using such data when necessary thus having a scheme of Chronology that is simple, accurate, faithful to the biblical text and its prophetic outlook. In short, WT Chronology succeeds whereas all other schemes are problematic and useless.
I put a challenge to you please provide a Chronology of the Divided Monarchy that is widely accepted by mainstream scholarship seeing that you are so smart!!
scholar JW
