“At that time, the lifesaving direction that we receive from Jehovah’s organization may not appear practical from a human standpoint. All of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not.
“Now is the time for any who may be putting their trust in secular education, material things, or human institutions to adjust their thinking. The elders must stand ready to help any who may now be wavering in their faith.”
—Watchtower, November 15, 2013, p.20
It’s customary, here at RCL, to poke a little gentle fun at some of the statements made by our good friends the Governing Body. But the quote above has stolen our thunder; it surpasses in ridiculousness any remark we might make.
For those too indoctrinated to see this, I will elaborate.
Someone is telling you to trust them even if what they tell you to do appears unsound.
They are telling you not to trust any education you may have had. (Why did you get an education anyway when they’ve been discouraging this for so long?)
They are telling you to obey any instructions you may receive from “the organization” (though it’s unclear whether this includes local elders, or just the Governing Body.)
Doesn’t that scare you a little? It scares me a lot. But Witnesses are used to this. They already sacrifice their children for unsound reasons: the blood policy, disfellowshipping, and the “two witness” rule. But in such cases the Watchtower has at least attempted to justify these “instructions” through sophistry. Now they are preparing their gullible followers to “obey instructions” whether pseudo-reasoning is provided or not!
“Don’t think: OBEY!”
They are saying that even if what you are told seems wrong to you, you must do it anyway!
So where has personal integrity and morality gone? Out the Kingdom Hall window, that’s where.
This is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been railing against for years–and not just in this context. When people obey commands that run contrary to their own sense of right and wrong–their empathy–they are liable to commit atrocities. That’s what happens with soldiers. Soldiers are trained the same way: “Don’t think: Obey!” Then, when they are ordered to slaughter a village full of women and children they do it out of a sense of duty and displaced responsibility.
Can anyone read the above Watchtower quote without recalling–with a shudder–the Jonestown incident?
The Watchtower has come a long long way from the ideology of its founder:
The liberty or privilege of choosing, exercising our wills, is one of the grandest blessings accorded to humanity, and it is an important element in man’s likeness to his creator … the human will … includes, especially, decision in respect to the higher moralities, taking hold of questions of justice and love which affect and influence all of life’s affairs.
—Pastor Russell’s Sermons p. 755
Let each fellow servant and each member of the household of faith use his consecrated judgement in accepting or rejecting this exposition, or any other exposition we may ever offer, according to his ability or inability to recognize in it the voice of our great shepherd.
—Watchtower, 3/1/1896 p. 47
And remember that this religion claims to be based solely on the Bible. According to the Bible, did Jesus say to trust an earthly organization and blindly follow whatever instructions it issued even if they seemed wrong to you? No; here is what the Bible reports him as saying:
Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?
—Luke12:57 (NIV)
Why didn’t they just take the stairs?
Trust is something that is earned by someone who proves themselves trustworthy over time. Has the governing body done this? Has the Watchtower? Look at their history; “by their fruits you will know them.” They have an unbroken record of lies, cover-ups, responsibility-shifting, and false prophecies. Time and again they have led their followers into fatal mistakes such as claiming that vaccinations and organ transplants (and still today whole blood and platelet transfusions) were against God’s law. Only later to reverse themselves. They have not earned our trust.
Even when someone has earned our implicit trust (which the Watchtower certainly has not), our own sense of right and wrong must still prevail over anything they might order us to do. Anyone demanding such foolhardy obedience has overstepped the boundaries of common sense and human responsibility, and has thereby lost all right to our trust.
Read the quote from the November, 2013 Watchtower again. Then decide, in your heart of hearts, if you really want to belong to an organization that would issue such an outrageous statement. Are you prepared to take responsibility for your own actions, and decide–based on your inherent sense of empathy–what is right? Or will you meekly gulp down the Kool-Aid or whatever else they ask you to swallow or to do?
Last night I dreamed that a persistent Witness, evidently newly converted, asked me to address his congregation at the next Service Meeting. He still believed that the Witnesses were open-minded, and I could tell that he was so thoroughly convinced that they had the “truth” that he envisioned them satisfactorily answering any questions I might pose.
I knew there was but a small chance that such a talk might actually transpire, but I thought I’d better prepare my talk just in case; it was an opportunity too golden to be ignored.
Unfortunately, I woke up at that point, leaving my conscious mind to struggle with the challenge.
So I sat down at the computer intending to write the talk. At first I was overwhelmed by the blank screen in front of me; the scope was so big. There would be no way to cover all the issues in the twenty minutes allotted. So I would have to focus on a few things and tie it into a single theme. Should I choose what was most important (e.g. blood transfusions, shunning, mind-control, pedophilia, the subjection of women, hatred of “the world” and apostates)? Or should I focus on what was most tenuously held: chopping away at the thinnest root first? Should I argue Biblical interpretations with them, or show them that such disputes were pointless since the Bible cannot be “God’s word”?
After a few minutes of such quandaries I told myself I was giving it too much thought, and that I should just pour out my heart. This is what I came up with:
Sisters and brothers, if I may still call you such; having labored together with you in service for many years, and having been privileged to serve at Bethel. I still feel a close affinity with you as people trying to live moral lives and reaching out in love to others. I have been asked to speak to you this evening about why I decided to no longer serve with you, and I thank you for this opportunity to do so. I hope this talk and others like it will help open a dialog between us and replace misunderstanding and hatred with understanding and love.
What initially attracted me to become a Witness was the idea of the truth. Here was a group of people evidently so loyal to truth that they would follow wherever it would lead them, even if that resulted in persecution or the loss of their lives. I saw them serving, not an Earthly master, but God himself and his representatives: not in the form of lordly overseers, but as ones who characterized themselves as mere slaves: faithful and discreet in God’s service.
Although I was invited to speak to you today, some of you may be wondering why you are sitting here about to hear the words of an “apostate.” Well, let me tell you why: the Watchtower has repeatedly published statements that encourage you to listen to criticism and to consider both sides of an argument. I will quote three such statements:
If you were on trial in a court of law, would it be fair if only your opponent was allowed to present evidence? No, you would surely want the court to hear your side of the matter …. Reasonable persons agree that the only fair method is to examine the evidence on both sides, both for and against a disputed theory. That is how one arrives at the truth.
(Awake! October 22, 1973 p. 6 – WBTS)
We need to examine, not only what we personally believe, but also what is taught by any religious organization with which we may be associated. If we are lovers of the truth, there is nothing to fear from such an examination.
(The Truth That Leads To Eternal Life, p. 13 – WBTS, 1968)
Every man should be persuaded in his own mind and no man should permit himself to be deterred from examining a question based upon the Bible because a clergy man or any one else makes the unsupported assertion that it is dangerous or unworthy of consideration. Error always seeks the dark, while truth is always enhanced by the light. Error never seeks to be investigated. Light always courts a thorough and complete investigation.
(Millions Now Living Will Never Die p. 13 – WBTS)
Don’t you just love those quotes? I know I do.
So let’s start the investigation the Society encourages us to embark upon.
And let’s start with something we can all agree on: There is wickedness in this world of ours. Daily we witness enough immoral actions to make our hearts sick. We often wonder how some individuals can become so depraved.
Let me tell you of one example. These are the actions of an army leader. Now we know that in war there is killing to be done, and as you know, the Bible even says there is a time to kill. But even those out in the world have recognized that there are “war crimes” where soldiers or their commanders have violated human decency by such actions as killing civilians or using undue force; burning crops; destroying damns; torturing prisoners; engaging in rape; enslaving the conquered populace, and so on.
Here’s the account:
The army commander ordered 12,000 of his troops to attack several cities. The soldiers successfully plundered all of the cities, killed every man there, and then burnt the cities to the ground after taking all of the women and children as prisoners of war.
When the commander heard about the prisoners he became very angry [you see: the looting, burning, and killing of civilians didn’t bother him; it was just the taking of prisoners that upset him.] So, he was angry with his men and ordered them to murder all of the women and children except for the virgin girls whom he allowed the soldiers to keep for themselves. The soldiers kept all but 32 of the 32,000 virgin girls. The remaining 32 of these virgin girls were sacrificed to the commander’s god.
I know: that is a shocking story, and one I probably shouldn’t have shared with children present. I hope it doesn’t lead to any bad dreams. But it’s important to look evil in the face and recognize it when we see it. And I think it’s safe to say that we can all agree that what this commander and his soldiers did was cruel, immoral, and wicked.
As an ironic side-note to this story, the commander in this account also claimed that God spoke to him, and he wrote down what he said. Would you be inclined to believe him and to accept what he wrote as God’s words? Do you think anything this commander wrote would be a good moral guidebook for our lives? Of course not!
But what if I told you the commander’s name was Moses, and the account I read is a summary of the Bible book of Numbers chapter 31? If that surprises you, I suggest you read that chapter when you get a chance.
The Watchtower accepts the view that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. That includes the all-important book of Genesis where the roots of the “ransom sacrifice” lie. If we just agreed not to value commander Moses’ writings as the word of god, then we’ve lost the foundation–indeed the very reason– for Christ’s ransom sacrifice. Without Genesis we’ve also lost the entire notion of God’s turning the world over to Satan until the “end times.” That means there are no “last days” and any organization claiming to be the “prophet” that has revealed the “finished mystery” of the “last days” will be, in a word: wrong, and certainly not our source for truth in this world.
So, what do we do now: without a faithful and discreet slave to lead us and tell us how to live our lives? To answer that, let’s turn in our Bibles to Luke chapter 12 and verse 57. I’m going to read that from the New International Version where we read Jesus’ words:
“Why do you not decide for yourselves what is right?”
Jesus’ parable of the faithful and wise servant was meant for all of us, not just the Governing Body. Right after the telling of all these parables his disciples asked him if what he said was meant just for them, or for the whole world. He answered:
“What I say to you, I say to everyone” –Mark 13:37
We all need to be faithful to our humanity and wise in our dealings. This was not a prophecy any more than the parable of the Good Samaritan was a prophecy. Rather, they were both illustrations of moral conduct for us all. Nowhere did Jesus ever intimate that there would ever be a group of men who would decide for everyone else what should be believed or what was right or wrong. I challenge any of you to show me such a Scripture. You can’t, because those who hold you in their power made it up in order to lord it over you.
Yes, sisters and brothers: you don’t need to be slaves of slaves a moment longer. We can stand on our own and use our inherent sense of empathy to determine what is right.
As soon as we start to do that, several things become obvious. One is that it is not right to shun our family members and friends for disagreeing with our views. Another is that it is not right to allow family members to die when medical care could save their lives. Yes, I’m talking about blood and platelets here. Finally, it is not right, under any circumstances, to let child molesters go unreported to the authorities.
If the soldiers under Moses’ command had decided for themselves what was right they wouldn’t have followed his order to murder boys and rape girls. If we, likewise, decide for ourselves what is right we will not follow the Governing Body’s orders to deny our children an education, shun them, ignore their cries for help, or withhold life-saving medical care.
Never forget that we are all human beings first, no matter what our religious affiliation. As humans we have certain moral responsibilities: duties to one another, for which there is no acceptable excuse for neglecting. Jesus said it best at John 13:34:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This would seem to be more important than anything else: the over-riding command. But, frankly, I have seen more love outside of the Kingdom Halls than inside. Love does not sit back and watch loved ones die needlessly. Nor does it shun those who question, nor does it fail to adequately protect the vulnerable.
If I could make one simple request of you all, my dear former sisters and brothers, it would be for you to pay more attention to Jesus’ commandment to love one another than to the Governing Body’s commandment to obey whatever they may say. Please conquer your fear of these men and their scare tactics so that you can take up your responsibilities as human beings on this planet by making your own decisions. Come back in tune with your inherent sense of empathy and abandon your slavish worship of the Governing Body and its rules that violate the spirit of love.
Thank you. I love you all {except for any child molesters who may be amongst you today.}
Conservative Christians are always on about how we need to follow the Bible and return to “family values.” But what does the Bible really say about family values? Oh sure, there is one verse (out of over 31,000) that says “Honor your mother and father.” But that’s not the whole story — not by a long shot. Let’s see what else the Bible has to say about family values.
1. If you are a parent with an unruly son, the Bible says you should take your son to the elders and have your child stoned to death.
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death.
—Deut. 21:18-20
2. If you are the parent of a daughter, the Bible has an exciting money-making scheme for you, and an exciting career opportunity for your daughter! Sell your daughter as a sex-slave!
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not satisfy her owner, he must allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. But if the slave’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave but as a daughter.
If a man who has married a slave wife takes another wife for himself, he must not neglect the rights of the first wife to food, clothing, and sexual intimacy.
—Exodus 21:7-10
3. Need God to help you out with some overwhelming task? Offer to burn your daughter as a sacrifice to God and he’ll be sure to help you.
And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord: “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
Then Jephthah went over to fight the Ammonites, and the Lord gave them into his hands.
When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter… When he saw her, he tore his clothes and cried, “Oh no, my daughter! You have brought me down and I am devastated. I have made a vow to the Lord that I cannot break.”
“My father,” she replied, “you have given your word to the Lord. Do to me just as you promised…But grant me this one request,” she said. “Give me two months to roam the hills and weep with my friends, because I will never marry.”
“You may go,” he said. And he let her go for two months. She and her friends went into the hills and wept because she would never marry. After the two months, she returned to her father, and he did to her as he had vowed.
—Judges 11:30-39
4. In order to win accolades as the perfect host, willingly offer your daughter to a mob of rapists.
While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”
The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don’t be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don’t do this outrageous thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don’t do such an outrageous thing.”
—Judges 19:22-24
5. Want to show God that you’re his faithful, loyal follower? Be prepared to tie up your son and cut his throat!
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
…When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. —Genesis 22:2,9-10
6. Hungry? Eat your children!
The Lord will bring a distant nation against you… The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters… The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh of one of his own children… The most tender and delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter. She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them.
—Deuteronomy 28:49-57
Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents.
—Ezekiel 5:10
7. Want to be a disciple of Jesus (i.e. a Christian)? Then be sure to hate your family!
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
—Luke 14:26 (NWT, 2013 ed.)
8. Here’s a sure-fire recipe for happiness: bash out children’s brains!
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. —Psalm 137:9
9. As an obedient servant of God, be prepared to murder your brother, because sometimes God commands this of his people:
Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’”
—Exodus 32:27
10. Oh, and if you have parents, you can go ahead and disown them before others:
Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.
—MT 12:46-50
11. And go ahead and lie to them and deceive them if you would be blessed:
Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn.”
—Genesis 27:19
12. Wives must be kept in submissive subjection to their husbands. They must be “silent” and if they have any questions they must ask their husbands in private.
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
—Ephesians 5:22-24
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
—1 Corinthians 14:34-35
13. Children are to be beaten.
Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die.
—Proverbs 23:13
Bonus Family Values for Jehovah’s Witnesses!
Now, if you happen to be a Jehovah’s Witness, you are “privileged” to receive seven bonus “values”! (Due to the Watchtower’s interpretation of the Bible):
1. If your family member ever stops believing in the Watchtower, or is kicked out of the Watchtower organization, you must shun them.
2. If your child is molested by an elder you should drop the matter and continue to respect and obey the elder unless there are at least two witnesses to the molestation (in which case the elder will dutifully report the matter to the local Watchtower branch office rather than to the authorities.)
3. Take your children to the Kingdom Hall, though you fully realize that it may be a haven for known pedophiles (as documented in the Watchtower’s secret database.) Also, allow them to go out “in service” with elders who could well be pedophiles.
4. Make sure your children are ostracized at school by telling them not to make friends with non-Witness children, and by forbidding them to engage in shared cultural activities such as birthday celebrations or engaging in sports.
5. If your child or other family member is ever in need of a blood transfusion you must watch them bleed to death rather than allow them to receive the life-saving treatment.
6. Encourage your children to donate whatever money they may have to the Watchtower rather than permitting them to spend it on some frivolous item that they might actually enjoy (such as an ice-cream cone).
7. If you’re the wife of an abusive husband you just have to put up with it (divorce is only for adultery.) If your husband is a Witness then be sure to “put Kingdom interests first” by not reporting him to the authorities (you don’t want to “bring reproach on Jehovah’s organization.”)
There you have it! Are those the family values you want us all to follow? If not, then just be glad that the world in general does not follow the Bible’s values, and stop asking us to return to such a state of barbarism.
Most people are familiar with the biblical miracles of parting the Red Sea; surviving three days in a fish’s belly (and being spewed out good as new); walking on unfrozen water and turning it into wine; resurrecting the dead, etc. These have all been done to death, so in this series, we’re going to take a look at some of the lesser-known miracles of the Bible: the ones that often pass by without notice.
13 women having 3 million great-grandchildren
The question is typically posed: How could 70 people have 3 million offspring in only four generations? We’re going to explain the rationale behind that question, answer it, and then show why it may not be the right question.
The Bible states that the members of Jacob’s family who went to Egypt were 70 in all, and gives the names of 57 of these as men–leaving 13 of them to be women (Gen. 46:8-27). Moses was only the third generation from one of these people (Kohath, who begat Amram, who begat Moses (Gen. 46:11, Ex. 6:18-20)
From 57 men and 13 women, how many people could there have been in four generations? [Not three generations, because Moses was certainly old enough to have children at the time of the Exodus from Egypt.] The Bible tells us that there were 603,550 Israelite men over 21 years of age who crossed over the Red Sea with Moses as they fled Egypt (Ex. 38:26). For each of these adult males, we could safely assume that there was at least one woman (603,550) and three children (1.8 million). That would make a total of well over three million people!
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most prolific women have had great-grandchildren in the hundreds. For 13 women to achieve 1.8 million great-grandchildren would require an average of 139,281 great-grandchildren per woman! This, in turn, would require each woman on average to give birth to 53 children (with at least 52 of them being females.) [This meets the quantity criteria, however, it does not give us 603,550 adult males at the end of four generations. For that, the women would’ve had to have been even more pro-creative!]
The miraculously fertile 4 generations of Exodus
Let’s say that all of these women had 26 child-bearing years (from sexual maturity at age 14 to age 40). That’s not enough years to meet their quota of children with single births every year So, each woman would have to bear at least 26 pairs of twins. Every one of those children would need to survive and reproduce. Every single female child and grandchild would likewise have to meet this incredible quota of offspring: giving twin births every year of their lives between the ages of 14 and 40.
The above scenario would be extremely unlikely. Women: Can you imagine getting pregnant again 3 months after giving birth–every year? Men: Can you imagine trying to raise 53 children on a slave’s wages? We could safely call it a miracle.
But, of course, Bible-defenders will claim that we’ve got it all wrong; they tell us that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years (Exod 12:40-41). Okay; that certainly helps! Now, with more than four centuries to play with, our Israelite women only had to produce 4 children apiece to arrive at 3 million Israelites after 16 generations. That’s still remarkably fertile, but, alas, not a miracle.
However, don’t be dejected; even with 430 years there are still some hidden miracles at work here.
Moses: Old Enough to be Dead?!
How could there only be four generations (at least in Moses’ line) in 430 years? After 430 years no one from the fourth generation would still be alive; they’d be over 300 years old.
Unless, of course, the men in Moses’ line fathered children after the age of 100, and Moses was at least a hundred years old when he crossed the Red Sea.
Oh, but even this “solution” leads to impossibilities miracles:
Year
Person/Event
Person’s Age
Age at death
0
Kohath (son of Levi) journeys (we’ll assume as a newborn) with Jacob to Egypt (Gen 46:11)
Now here’s the miracle: the Bible plainly tells us that Moses died at the age of 120 (Deut 34:7). That means he had been dead for forty years before he ever led the Israelites out of Egypt! Quite a feat! No wonder he was reluctant to speak in public; the smell would’ve been overwhelming!
But, other Bible-defenders will tell us that the other Bible-defenders have it all wrong: the Israelites weren’t in Egypt for 430 years; they were only there for half that time (215 years) based on Galatians 3:15-17. So, we could now have a live Moses to lead them as follows:
Year
Person/Event
Person’s Age
Age at death
0
Kohath (son of Levi) journeys (as a newborn) with Jacob to Egypt (Gen 46:11)
Very good. But wait, that means we also need to cut in half the amount of time for our 13 Hebrew women to produce 3 million descendants.
Actually, this isn’t too big of a deal: we just have to increase their output from 4 children to 6 children. The unlikeliness factor is still large, but not so huge as to rate the word “impossible.”
So, for the Bible-defenders in the 215-year camp (which may be the minority) there is no miracle here. But I’ve unearthed some related ones for us to enjoy:
1. More, yet fewest!
There were more Israelites than Egyptians (according to Exodus 1:7-9) yet a chronologically later Bible book [supposedly also written by Moses] states: “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all people.” (Deut. 7:7)
2. Three Million down to 7 thousand!
We are later told in the Bible that the entire population of Israel was only 7,000 (1 Kings 20:15). What happened to the rest of the descendants of three million of “God’s chosen people” whom he was allegedly “blessing” in the “land of milk and honey” during that time?
3. Two over-achieving midwives!
According to Ex 1:15 there appear to be only two Hebrew midwives.
Averaging the number of births in the 10 years leading up to the 1.8 million children gives us a Hebrew birthrate of 86,221 per year, or 236 per day, which is 10 per hour. If two midwives worked 12 hour shifts every day, they would have 6 minutes per delivery (including travel time).
But first-time deliveries typically take 8 hours. If the midwives only attended to first-time deliveries (letting the experienced take care of themselves) and only 1/4 of the women were first-time mothers, that would consume 472 hours per day, requiring a bare minimum of 39 midwives working 12 hour shifts around the clock.
Of course, the “That doesn’t mean what it says” school of biblical interpretation will tell us that when the Bible indicates that there were only two midwives, it doesn’t mean midwives at all, but rather the leaders of the midwives’ union!
So maybe the real miracle here is that anyone believes the “that doesn’t mean what it says” interpretation.
4. An Egyptian Princess bathed in the Nile. Why would a princess bathe in a river polluted by the putrefying bodies of slave babies? If the Egyptians were obeying Pharaoh’s order (which would be implied by Moses’ mother taking the drastic action of floating her baby down the river), then over a hundred male babies were being pitched into the Nile every day. It would be the last place on Earth a princess would choose to bathe in. Another miracle!
5. Wrong-way infanticide.
When I was researching this article I wrote a simulation program to determine how the birth numbers could be arrived at by tweaking the parameters. One thing I experimented with was varying the ratio of male to female babies. I found that the 3 million could be reached within the 430 years by each woman giving birth to as few as 3 children–as long as two of the three were female (and the culture and economy permitted the average Joe to have two wives.) But, if the ratio were changed to two boys and one girl we ended up with a population under a thousand after 430 years!
What this drastic difference proves is that reducing the number of males has no appreciable effect on the population compared to reducing the number of females. (Think about it: 100 women and one man can give birth to 100 babies a year. But one woman and 100 men can only give birth to one.)
This is why when infanticide is practiced the victims are universally female. The Egyptians weren’t idiots. If they were trying to curb the Hebrew population, and were willing to resort to this barbaric practice, then they would’ve drowned the girl babies, not the boys.
But, history shows that the Egyptian culture did not endorse infanticide. The Bible’s account is a calumny against Egyptian morality as well as an insult to their intelligence — and ours.
6. Take my jewelry: please! According to Ex. 12:35-36 The weary Egyptians willingly gave the Hebrews their jewelry.
After having weathered all these plagues, and having their crops destroyed, their cattle killed, their water-supply polluted, their firstborn murdered: all supposedly by the Hebrew’s God, we are to believe that the Egyptians wished them well and gave them gifts of jewelry. “Oh, you’re leaving? My goodness, don’t go empty-handed. Even though our family is now destitute, and in desperate need of our few remaining resources to feed our surviving children, we really want you to have the gold chain that we were going to hand down to our firstborn daughter whom your god murdered in punishment for his forcing Pharaoh not to release you.” Yeah, right.
7. Think rush hour traffic is bad today?
3 million slaves left Egypt in a single day, with enough provisions, cattle, firewood, and wealth to sustain them for 40 years in a barren wilderness. This despite the fact that they would’ve formed a column some sixty miles in length. If the leader began at 1:00 AM the one bringing up the rear would’ve taken his first step by 7:00 AM the following day (assuming no one stopped to rest during those first 30 hours.)
C’mon, people: this is a story for children (or child-like minds.)
8. Impossible magic! Jehovah is the creator, right? The only creator, right? And even though he “rested from all his works” on the seventh day (which Witnesses and others tell us is still continuing today) and has done no act of creation during this “day,” (WT Feb 1, 1955 p. 95 and WT Oct 1, 2001 p. 30) in one of his plagues on Egypt he created enough frogs on the spot to “cover the land.” That’s the first contradiction miracle.
But, we are told, Pharaoh’s magicians then “did the same thing.” (Exodus 8:1-8) The Watchtower tells us that magic comes from Satan. So, evidently Jehovah is not the only creator: Satan created frogs too. (How they could tell, though, is a mystery: since there were already frogs “covering the land” how could they tell if more were added?)
We also have to wonder why the Egyptian magicians would voluntarily and willingly harm their own land by increasing the plague of frogs.
Even though the Bible tells us that blood is so sacred that a Jehovah’s Witness dares not have a blood transfusion (because “the life is in the blood” Lev 17:11), Jehovah turned all the water in Egypt into blood. So then, all the water had life in it (as well as someone’s “personality” according to the Watchtower Sep 15 1961 p.564). So no one could drink it without violating the “everlasting covenant.”
The Israelites would’ve died of dehydration within a few days. But here’s another impossible miracle: we are told that Pharaoh’s magicians once again “did the same thing.” (Ex 7:19-22) But “doing the same thing” would’ve required them to turn water into blood — but there was no water; it had already all been turned to blood! So this is another account in the Bible that we simply cannot believe, try as we might.
9. Violating Freewill in the Cause of Vanity Jehovah does not cause anyone to sin, right? If people sin it’s their own fault, right? (James 1:13-15) Going against God’s will is a sin, right?
Okay, so God’s will was to release the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. Pharaoh had agreed to let them go (Ex 12:31-32), and in fact, they were on their way when we read:
“I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen.The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.” Ex 14:17-18
It seems that even the dumb loyalty of Pharaoh’s soldiers was not enough to make them continue in their foolish pursuit of the Israelites. But, lest their freewill interfere with God’s showing off, God the puppet-master took control and hardened all of their hearts!
10. Absent Evidence
Bible-defenders are fond of quoting the adage: “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.” But they are mistaking negative evidence for absent evidence. Let’s take an example: A schoolchild, prone to playing hooky, tells his mother that he attended school that day. But when the mother calls the school principal he tells her that none of the teachers saw him that day, and he was not checked off on the attendance sheet. While it’s true that there is an “absence of evidence” for his attendance, the facts present convincing negative evidence to reasonably conclude that he skipped school that day.
There is negative evidence of:
a massive Hebrew population in Egypt
the Egyptians having engaged in massive slavery within their borders
the Egyptians having practiced infanticide on a massive scale
millions of people emigrating en masse from Egypt into the Sinai desert
So we can reasonably conclude that none of the above things happened.
The borders of Egypt were well guarded and logs were kept of all movement in and out: but no mention of the 3 million. There is no evidence of human habitation in the area of Goshen during the period when the Bible tells us the Hebrews spent 38 of their 40 “wandering” years after leaving Egypt. Many of the cities they supposedly did battle with are known to have been unpopulated at that time.
This cannot be explained (as it typically is by believers) by saying the Egyptians were too embarrassed to write about their butts getting kicked by the Hebrews. We’re not just talking about written Egyptian historical records here. We’re talking about artifacts. People don’t live in a country for over two centuries without leaving a trace. You can’t take 3 million people and march them through a desert for 40 years without leaving a trace. It’s impossible (or, if you prefer: an unadvertised, inadvertent “miracle.”)
The conclusion — that the Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described by the Bible — seems irrefutable when we examine the evidence at specific sites where the children of Israel were said to have camped for extended periods during their wandering in the desert (Numbers 33) and where archaeological evidence — if present — would almost certainly be found.
Sites mentioned in the Exodus are real… Unfortunately for those seeking a historical Exodus, they were unoccupied precisely at the time they reportedly played a role in the events of the wandering of the children of Israel in the wilderness.
–The Bible Unearthed, pp. 63-68 (Simon & Schuster, 2001) by Israel Finkelstein (Director, Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University) and Neil Asher Silberman (Director, historical interpretation, Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation, Belgium; and Contributing Editor, Archaeology magazine)
“At that time, the lifesaving direction that we receive from Jehovah’s organization may not appear practical from a human standpoint. All of us must be ready to obey any instructions we may receive, whether these appear sound from a strategic or human standpoint or not.
Last night I dreamed that a persistent Witness, evidently newly converted, asked me to address his congregation at the next Service Meeting. He still believed that the Witnesses were open-minded, and I could tell that he was so thoroughly convinced that they had the “truth” that he envisioned them satisfactorily answering any questions I might pose.
