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BOOKS |
WEB SITES |
FORUMS |
SOCIAL |
VIDEOS |
BOOKS
(Books/Booklets/Tracts/Brochures/Newsletters link)
The link takes you to a long list of books. Not all are recommended for purposes of studying chronology, but will give an idea of the many types of books out there about JWs. Some of the ones most well known for studying the chronology doctrines are highlighted in that list. In addition we list some of the best ones here, in no particular order:
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The Gentile Times Reconsidered |
Available online: http://kristenfrihet.se/english/gtr4/contents.htm |
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Jehovah’s Witnesses:…Prophetic Speculation |
Available online: (Preview) https://books.google.com/books?isbn=193123230X |
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Apocalypse Delayed |
Available online: (Preview) |
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Judgment Day Must Wait |
Available online: (No preview) https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1936411237 |
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Crisis of Conscience |
Available online: khazarzar.skeptik.net/books/franz01 |
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In Search of Christian Freedom |
Avaiable online: https://www.watchtowerlies.com/linked/in_search.pdf |
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The Four Presidents of the Watch Tower Society |
Available online: (Preview) https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1594671311 |
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Sign of the Last Days – When |
Available online: No https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0914675095 |
Of course, this is far from a complete list.
INTERNET
(Websites/Blogs/Forums/Social/Video)
It’s easy to go to Google and search on the keywords: “1914, Watchtower” or “JW 607” or “overlapping generation” and find hundreds of links to try out. Many of the sites you will also do an excellent job covering issues related to Jehovah’s Witnesses and Watchtower-related doctrines. We won’t try to list all of them, but we will try to cover all of the best ones known for their excellent coverage of the 1914 doctrine.
For good lists of JW-related sites in general, try the links at: ex-jw.com/web-directory There is also a good list of links that focus on JW outreach ministries at Make Sure Ministries. We reproduce those lists on this site, here: https://ad1914.com/general-jw-related-websites-and-jw-outreach-ministry-websites/ .
The following are some of the best ones that cover the Watch Tower chronology teachings:
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Excellent site for coverage of most major JW issues, not just the chronology issues, of course. The site owner and creator, Paul Grundy, has generously allowed us to use several of his articles on this site. For the complete and most up-to-date articles, they should be viewed on his own site. |
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This site is owned and created by Carl Olof Jonsson, and reflects the most in-depth work on all the Watch Tower’s chronology-related subjects, and several others, too. |
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Excellent coverage of the related issues surrounding the 1914 doctrine. (Not 607 only) One if the highlights of this site is the excellent response to a slickly produced, but academically dishonest site that is popular among many online JWs. (The dishonest site is at: http://www.jehovahsjudgment.co.uk/607/ but portions of it have also been copied elsewhere. Some will find this approach as a quicker approach when asked to respond to sites such as the above or http://onlytruegod.org/jwstrs/607BCE.htm or http://pastorrussell.blogspot.com/2010/08/seven-times-2520-years-607-bce-1914-ce.html |
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Many of the articles on this site, especially those from Alan Feuerbacher, present unique and extremely well-researched information. (Alan was one of the persons, along with Rud Persson and others, who worked with Carl Olof Jonsson on his research.) |
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This site, from Doug Mason, contains much more detailed research than one might guess at first sight. He covers many subjects, and is excellent on the 1914 doctrine. Also, his interactions with the Watch Tower Society on the subject reach back to the early 1960’s. |
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This is a blog by someone who claims to be a prophet. Whatever one thinks of such a claim, several of his pages on the 1914 teaching are very well-written, Scripturally sound, and thought-provoking. The link opens up several related posts on a single page. |
http://www.bible.ca/cgi-bin/texis/webinator/search/main.html?query=1914+Watchtower |
The site is about many Christian doctrines, and contains at least 40 excellent articles on Jehovah’s Witnesses ( http://www.bible.ca/indexJws.htm ). The link provided in the middle column returns 18 good articles about the 1914 teaching. |
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The site is refreshingly straightforward, and well-written. About 9 excellent pages on 607 and 1914 from the main menu. |
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The link to the left will return about a half a dozen excellent articles written with the insight about the Watch Tower doctrine-makers themselves. Barbara Anderson’s combination of experience, intelligence and accuracy is what makes these articles so valuable. Additionally, the gigabytes of collected and archived documents found in the site’s library ( http://watchtowerdocuments.org/document-library/ ) provide a wealth of often unexplored information for the researcher. |
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Randy Watters’ site is an amazing collection of information. Too big to organize. The list of articles that appear when clicking the link to the left gives some idea of the scope. |
We could never expect to cover the many excellent stand-alone pages that are often part of larger sites, or even great articles on the subject that one can find on wikipedia or publications found on archive.org, etc. Here are just a few more examples, however, that you won’t want to miss:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology_of_Jehovah’s_Witnesses
- http://www.jwstruggle.com/2012/01/a-problem-with-1914/
- http://www.4jehovah.org/why-1914-ad-and-607-bc-are-false/
- http://taze.co/2015/06/05/are-we-living-in-the-last-days/
- https://ia700705.us.archive.org/26/items/JerusalemWasNotDestroyedIn607B.c/jerusalem-607.pdf
- http://www.towerwatch.com/articles/the_1914_doctrine.htm (Jan Haugland)
- http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/the-1914-obsession-watchtower-clings-to-flawed-teaching-in-first-magazine-of-2014 (John Cedars)
- http://www.cftf.com/1914/index.html (David Reed)
- http://www.watchman.org/articles/jehovahs-witnesses/jehovahs-witnesses-and-the-history-of-1914/
- http://www.sixscreensofthewatchtower.com/11914.html
- http://www.religioustolerance.org/witness8a.htm
- and many, many more!
FORUMS
There are many types of forums online where beliefs of all kinds are discussed, and there are gems of information in many of these.This includes answers.yahoo.com, yuku.com, beliefnet.com (read only as of October 31, and many others.
The largest of these forums is called “Jehovah’s Witnesses Discussion” (JWD) and often also called “Jehovah’s Witnesses Net” (JWN). It’s at www.jehovahs-witness.com (recently moved from .net). It’s huge, but well managed. It has been around many years, and a lot of excellent, intelligent comments have been collected. Unfortunately, they are often difficult to find again, even with an adequate search tool on the site. Over time we may try to extract some of the more interesting ideas posted there, and make them more accessible by organizing some of the links and getting permission from posters to through some organization There is also the common forum-specific problem of those high level of argumentation that often end in the dramatic removal of accounts. This has affected even the best of commenters.
SOCIAL MEDIA and VIDEOS
The best of these are usually already associated with a website or blog, but the best way to take advantage of them is to do a search on Vimeo, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc., using a combination of keywords including, 1914, JW, and Watchtower. The advantage of these tools is based on the fact that most JWs do not care about the problems with 1914. Sites like this one and many like it are too confusing. Once something gets complex, the Watch Tower doctrine wins by default, because it’s the one that can’t be seriously questioned.
Most JWs won’t give more than a few seconds of serious thought to such controversies. That gives the upper hand to the quick, pithy statement in a Twitter feed, or the title and image of a shared Facebook item or a “meme” that gets a message across in 5 seconds or less, but with an image that makes the message stick for at least a few more seconds. (Just a few Internet seconds are hard to get, and therefore very valuable.)
I’ve seen evidence of at least a quarter-million JWs who have Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for example, and at least half of them also belong to forums or follow accounts where the 1914 controversy has come up.
Keeping track of some of the available video resources is especially worthwhile because video has the ability to draw JWs into serious thought about their teachings, when many of those same persons would have studiously avoided reading anything that promoted serious thought about their teachings. Also, JWs are trained to learn passively from talks, and trained to interact with rational-sounding argument in their house-to-house or Bible study ministries when a non-JW confronts them about their beliefs. Besides a message can be conveyed before a Witness even figures out if it was from a pro-JW site or not. More video resources should be created for these reasons.
Some good videos also make use of humor, sometimes to a ridiculous extent. We don’t see this as a problem and include them below. Some of the more serious ones have a different problem to watch out for. We’ve noticed that a much higher percentage of videos get their facts wrong when compared with persons who create written documentation and evidence. Still, these are quite useful for sharing with others who need some extra background about the problems and controversies, but won’t read about it.
JW’s- Your New Tool to Explain 1914
JW.ORG ~ 1914 Is A Lie Covering Up A Huge Mistake!
1914 and the Elders Wife [JW.org]
1914 - The LAST DAYS of Chronology in the Doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses (Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society) 