Excommunication was once viewed by the Witnesses as Satanic. However, after new leadership took over at the Watch Tower headquarters in the early 1940s, that opinion was eventually reversed.

I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.” — 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10, NASB

This was the original list of disfellowshippable offenses used by the Witnesses. This passage is the basis for the disfellowshipping doctrine. Since it was instituted in the early 1950s, the list has since grown to include smoking tobacco, receiving a blood transfusion, non-vaginal sex, speaking to a disfellowshipped or disassociated person and criticising the organization. The Witnesses believe that by expelling and shunning a member who no longer conforms to the code of conduct protects the rest of the congregation from being corrupted by him or her. Not even a word of greeting may be spoken to such a person, as the Sept. 15, 1981, Watchtower explains:

“A simple “Hello” to someone can be the first step that develops into a conversation and maybe even a friendship. Would we want to take that first step with a disfellowshiped person?”

But what about family? Surely there is an exception for disfellowshipped family members, right? There is some exception, but it is unfortunately not without its caveats.

“Cutting off from the Christian congregation does not involve immediate death, so family ties continue. Thus, a man who is disfellowshipped or who disassociates himself may still live at home with his Christian wife and faithful children. … The situation is different if the disfellowshipped or disassociated one is a relative living outside the immediate family circle and home. It might be possible to have almost no contact at all with the relative. Even if there were some family matters requiring contact, this certainly would be kept to a minimum, in line with the divine principle: “Quit mixing in company with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person [or guilty of another gross sin], … not even eating with such a man.” (1 Corinthians 5:11.) Understandably, this may be difficult because of emotions and family ties, such as grandparents’ love for their grandchildren. — Watchtower, April 15, 1988, p.27

The message here is clear: have as little contact with expelled family members as possible. As a result, many families have been torn apart by this organization. For many parents and grandparents, having a normal, healthy relationship with their children and grandchildren is simply not permitted.

Naturally, this situation creates a lot of pent-up fear in the membership. Since the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses monopolizes their life, it is most often the case that all of their friends and family relationships are within the organization. For those born into the religion, it is quite literally all they’ve ever known, and the thought of losing every friend they’ve ever had, every family member they’ve ever loved is unbearable.

So is it the case that everyone who commits a “gross sin” is automatically kicked out? No. When a Jehovah’s Witness breaks a serious rule, he or she is brought before what is called a “judicial committee”. Made up of three church elders (instead of one minister, priest or bishop, congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses are run by a group of elders appointed by the Watch Tower Society headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y.), these private trials have no juries, no lawyers present and are not recorded in any way. It is simply the party presumed guilty explaining themselves to the elders. The elders judge the level of repentance the accused shows. If they judge that he or she has repented of the sin, then depending on the level of knowledge of the deed in the congregation, the accused is put on “reproof”.  A reproved person has a diminished role in the congregation, but can still maintain friendships and familial bonds. After a prescribed amount of time, the restrictions put on by the reproof are lifted and the person is once again a full member of the congregation.

If the person is deemed not to be repentant — this decision being at the sole discretion of the elders — then he or she is disfellowshipped, or expelled and shunned by the congregation. Furthermore, if someone decides that they no longer wish to be part of the Jehovah’s Witness religion, they can submit a letter to the local elders outlining these wishes. The person is then considered “disassociated”, and the same rules regarding disfellowshipping apply. The end result is quite alarming: there is no honorable way to leave the church. There is no way out without losing one’s friends and family. The psychological issues such an event could bring about in a person is obvious.

Many who are disfellowshipped still believe the teachings of the society, thus being unable to worship God in the way in which they’ve been taught is devastating. They believe that those who are not associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses when Armageddon arrives is doomed to destruction. To go from believing that you will never die to realizing that you will is nothing short of traumatic.

The expelled often find themselves very, very alone after their excommunication. They have no friends, and often no family. On top of this, the Watch Tower organization tells them it is their fault they are being shunned:

“It is the disfellowshipped person who has made problems for himself and for his relatives.” — Watchtower, Sept. 15, 1981, p.27

The Watch Tower has taken every friend and every family member who was previously in their lives, and it is their fault, they are told. Beaten down by this intense guilt, it is often difficult to integrate into a world one has been taught to hate and fear his entire life. Thus, many true believing ex-Witnesses begin to make compromises. They may become involved in the holidays to a limited extent, but will not get involved with activities that are blatantly involved with the day. For example, cooking a meal is done routinely throughout the year, but hanging Christmas ornaments is specifically for the holiday.

In most cases, the best thing that can be done for an ex-Witness cut off from his family is to find others to fill that void. If your significant other is in this situation, perhaps you could make a greater effort to include him or her in your family events if you don’t already do so. Talking about his or her experience can be quite healing. There are many communities of ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses on the Internet in which one could find support and a place to heal. Having someone to talk to that has experienced the same thing is invaluable to the healing process.

Depending on the situation, efforts can be made to bring the family out of the destructive sect. However, this is rarely if ever successful, and should be approached with extreme caution. Jehovah’s Witnesses are taught and conditioned to handle attempts to get them to leave the church, and more often than not such attempts backfire. An ex-JW must face the possibility that he or she may have lost their JW family for good, and the only recourse is to try to move on as much as possible.

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Our thanks to Brian Stilson who allowed us to publish his excellent article here in JWRecovery Magazine. This article was originally published on his blog, Memoirs of a Godless Heathen, which has since closed.

An uncomfortable fact for the Watch Tower organization is that the entire field of archaeology points to 587 B.C.E. as the date, some 20 years later. In response, the society obstinately insists the words of the Bible trump any tangible evidence to the contrary. Never mind the fact that using a book as proof of itself is circular reasoning, but is the organization even following the book in the first place?

In order to convince a Watch Tower-following Jehovah’s Witness of anything, only two sources may be used: the Bible and Watch Tower-produced literature. So, using only those two sources, I will demonstrate that the date of 607 B.C.E. for Jerusalem’s destruction cannot possibly be correct.

Tracing the line of kings

According to the Bible, archaeology and Watch Tower literature, the last king of Babylon was Nabonidus. The biblical encyclopedia Aid to Bible Understanding, published by the Watch Tower Society says on page 1195 that Nabonidus is believed to have reigned for 17 years. As far as this author knows, no clarification or correction has been made to this statement in any Watch Tower literature.

The king before Nabonidus was Labashi-Marduk, a “vicious boy” as the Watch Tower publication Babylon the Great Has Fallen — God’s Kingdom Rules states on page 184. It also says that his rule only lasted nine months, until “he had his throat cut by an assassin.”

On that same page, it names Nerigilassar as the king before that, reigning for four years, and also Evil-Merodach, reigning for two years before that.

Finally, Insight on the Scriptures, the successor (although largely identical in content) to Aid to Bible Understanding, says that Nebuchadnezzar ruled Babylon for 43 years (vol. 2 p. 480).

So the line of Babylonian kings from the start of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign can be totaled as follows:

• Nabonidus – 17 years
• Labashi-Marduk – 0.75 years
• Nergilassar – 4 years
• Evil-Merodach – 2 years
• Nebuchadnezzar – 43 years

The sum of the above figures is 66.75 years, which means there were almost 67 years from the start of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign until the fall of Babylon to the Persians. Using this number and the Bible, we can calculate the date of the fall of Jerusalem.

Calculating the fall

According to the Bible, Jerusalem’s destruction took place in the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (2 Kings 25:8, 9). Since Nebuchadnezzar had ruled for a full 18 years and was in his 19th, he had a little more than 24 years until his kingship over Babylon ended when Jerusalem was sacked. Let’s see what happens when we start with the date of 607 B.C.E. for Jerusalem’s destruction.

607 – 24 = 583 B.C.E., the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and the start of Evil-Merodach’s

583 – 2 = 581 B.C.E., the end of Evil-Merodach’s reign and the start of Nergilassar’s

581 – 4 = 577 B.C.E., the end of Nergilassar’s reign and the start of Labashi-Marduk’s

577 – 9 months = 577/576 B.C.E., the end of Labashi-Marduk’s reign and the start of Nabonidus’s

577/576 – 17 = 560/559 B.C.E., the end of Nabonidus’s reign and the invasion of Babylon by the Persians.

But wait! Something isn’t right here. Does not the society teach that Babylon was overthrown in 539, some 20 years later than our calculation resulted? It does! Since the Jews were send back to the ruins of Jerusalem two years later, in 537, this is the very basis for the calculation of 70 years, arriving at the date 607 B.C.E.! But there are 20 missing years and no accounting for it. Even if the months were fudged (because after all, it is doubtful each king ruled for an exact number of years) it still wouldn’t account for the discrepency.

Just for experiment’s sake, let’s see what will happen when we start with the secularly-accepted date of 587 B.C.E. for Jerusalem’s destruction.

587 – 24 = 563 B.C.E., the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and the start of Evil-Merodach’s

563 – 2 = 561 B.C.E., the end of Evil-Merodach’s reign and the start of Nergilassar’s

561 – 4 = 557 B.C.E., the end of Nergilassar’s reign and the start of Labashi-Marduk’s

557 – 9 months = 557/556 B.C.E., the end of Labashi-Marduk’s reign and the start of Nabonidus’s

557/556 – 17 = 540/539 B.C.E., the end of Nabonidus’s reign and the invasion of Babylon by the Persians.

When starting from the date accepted nearly unanimously by scholars and archaeologists, the numbers add up perfectly. There is no longer a 20-year discrepancy in the line of Babylonian Kings. But what about the 70-year prophecy? If the Israelites were not captives for 70 years, doesn’t that make the Bible wrong?

If that is indeed what the Bible says, then yes, this does make it wrong. However, does the Bible really teach that the Jews were captives for 70 years? It would be helpful to read the verse in question.

“And 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. And it must occur that when seventy years have been fulfilled I shall call to account against the king of Babylon and against that nation,’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘their error, even against the land of the Chal·de´ans, and I will make it desolate wastes to time indefinite.’” – Jeremiah 25:11, 12

Notice it says nothing about Israel being captive in Babylon, but merely that “these nations” will “serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” Long before the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews (among other nations) were paying tribute to Babylon, who had conquered them but allowed them to stay in the city for a while. Also, Jews were often taken captive to Babylon long before the destruction of Jerusalem. Consider the following:

“In the first year of his [Persian king Ahasureus] reigning I myself, Daniel, discerned by the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Jehovah had occurred to Jeremiah the prophet, for fulfilling the devastations of Jerusalem, [namely,] seventy years.” – Daniel 9:2

Notice Daniel refers to the devastations (desolations, ESV), not destruction, of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was attacked and beseiged for years before it was destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar’s seige took place in 597, and was done because King Jehoiakim ceased paying tribute to Babylon following their defeat in Egypt in 601. So at least before 601 Jerusalem was paying tribute to Babylon. The word used for “devastation” in Hebrew refers to heat, desert, a dry place. These terms can, but do not necessarily refer to the destruction of a city. It is entirely possible that the “devastation” of Jerusalem could have taken place years before its destruction, though admittedly a possibility is not fact.

Taking the number of the entire period of Babylonian kings from Nebuchadnessar to Nabonidus, and then adding the two years after the Persian conquest of Babylon it took to begin rebuilding the temple, we arrive at 69 years, which is awfully close to 70. Since months are only mentioned in the case of Labashi-Marduk’s reign, it very well could have been 70 years.

It is clear then, that the date of 587 B.C.E. for Jerusalem’s destruction is not necessarily in conflict with the prophecy of 70 years, and it also happens to fit perfectly with the both Biblically and secularly established timeline. In fact, it is one part of the Bible that is amazingly accurate historically. This is not necessarily a surprise, since the oldest copies of Daniel that exist are hundreds of years younger than the events they supposedly foretell. However, it is nevertheless an area where archaeology and the Bible do not disagree.

The reason the Watch Tower Society continues to hold on to the 607 date therefore cannot be to fall in accordance with the 70 year prophecy, but instead is being insisted upon because of 1914. This is especially evident when considering the fact that the forerunners of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Bible Students, originally assigned 1914’s significance to 1874. It was only years after the events of the World War I that the meaning of 1914 was changed in order to fit with what had transpired.

It is a matter of fact that 1914 was a false prediction. Russell taught that “1914 is not the date for the beginning, but for the end of the time of trouble” (Zion’s Watch Tower, July 15, 1894, p.226). Though the Witnesses later lied about the nature of Russell’s prediction (Awake!, January 22, 1973, p.8), the facts remain. 1914 was not the end of anything, and certainly not the end of any “time of trouble.”

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Our thanks to Brian Stilson who allowed us to publish his excellent article here in JWRecovery Magazine. This article was originally published on his blog, Memoirs of a Godless Heathen, which has since closed.