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I figure that, even if I didn't want to, I should do my part to bring this topic back to the 1290 and 1335 days. I requote the verses from 2 Thessalonians that Nana Fofana already quoted because so many of these recent speculations appear to me to fit the same idea that Paul warns us about. It's as if these speculations are intended to quickly shake us from our reason or "alarm" us into thinking that the "day of Jehovah" might be so imminent as to be immediately upon us. And there is often a sense that we must listen because this is just as important as hearing it from the apostles themselves: if we don't pay attention then we aren't paying attention to the Bible! This makes it fit the idea of "a letter as if from us [the apostles and inspired Bible writers]."
I say this, of course, while also admitting that prophetic speculation is interesting. Obviously, I do more than my share of such speculation myself. And I also believe that the day of Jehovah can come at any time now -- and will come as a surprise, as a thief in the night. I do not believe that we are still waiting for an additional specific fulfillment of the man of lawlessness, before the day of Jehovah can arrive. (2 Thess 2).
As I've said before, however, my take on this is rather boring. I expect exciting times ahead, but not because we can now see any specific events that would make us know anything about the times or seasons. It's one of the reasons I see a good portion of our current chronology as "broken." In Brother Splane's latest video about the generation, he points out the advancing age of some representatives of persons in "Group 2" to show how this system cannot last much longer. Pointing out that the system appears not to be able to go on much longer seems intuitive enough for a lot of reasons. But a claim that we "know" it due to Bible chronology, is a claim of knowledge that Jehovah says clearly he has not given to us, and we therefore need nothing to be written to us about it, because it's not for us to know; it comes as a thief! Instead, our current version times it to a time prior to the deaths of those in Group 2. In other words, we are now in exactly the same state we were when we were looking for a time prior to the deaths of those in Group 1, before a Group 2 was ever hypothesized.
(Acts 1:7) . . .“It does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction. (1 Thessalonians 5:1, 2) . . .Now as for the times and the seasons, brothers, you need nothing to be written to you. 2 For you yourselves know very well that Jehovah’s day is coming exactly as a thief in the night. (Daniel 2:19-21) . . .So Daniel praised the God of heaven. 20 Daniel declared: “Let the name of God be praised for all eternity, For wisdom and mightiness are his alone. 21 He changes times and seasons,. . (Matthew 24:36) . . .“Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father. I'm not saying that anyone here is trying to foretell the day and the hour, only that I see a parallel in what Paul said above, and in the common implication about identifying specific events that will reveal an end-times timeline.
I do have a couple ideas for the meaning of the 1290 and 1335 days that provides a specific lesson for Christians at all times, but which already had a prior application that was specific to those time periods. It's not necessarily correct, and of course something could still come up in the future that would reveal how silly all this speculation (on my part, at least) has been.
 
 
 
 

I figure that, even if I didn't want to, I should do my part to bring this topic back to the 1290 and 1335 days. I requote the verses from 2 Thessalonians that Nana Fofana already quoted because so many of these recent speculations appear to me to fit the same idea that Paul warns us about. It's as if these speculations are intended to quickly shake us from our reason or "alarm" us into thinking that the "day of Jehovah" might be so imminent as to be immediately upon us. And there is often a sense that we must listen because this is just as important as hearing it from the apostles themselves: if we don't pay attention then we aren't paying attention to the Bible! This makes it fit the idea of "a letter as if from us [the apostles and inspired Bible writers]."
I say this, of course, while also admitting that prophetic speculation is interesting. Obviously, I do more than my share of such speculation myself. And I also believe that the day of Jehovah can come at any time now -- and will come as a surprise, as a thief in the night. I do not believe that we are still waiting for an additional specific fulfillment of the man of lawlessness, before the day of Jehovah can arrive. (2 Thess 2).
As I've said before, however, my take on this is rather boring. I expect exciting times ahead, but not because we can now see any specific events that would make us know anything about the times or seasons. It's one of the reasons I see a good portion of our current chronology as "broken." In Brother Splane's latest video about the generation, he points out the advancing age of some representatives of persons in "Group 2" to show how this system cannot last much longer. Pointing out that the system appears not to be able to go on much longer seems intuitive enough for a lot of reasons. But a claim that we "know" it due to Bible chronology, is a claim of knowledge that Jehovah says clearly he has not given to us, and we therefore need nothing to be written to us about it, because it's not for us to know; it comes as a thief! Instead, our current version times it to a time prior to the deaths of those in Group 2. In other words, we are now in exactly the same state we were when we were looking for a time prior to the deaths of those in Group 1, before a Group 2 was ever hypothesized.
(Acts 1:7) . . .“It does not belong to you to know the times or seasons that the Father has placed in his own jurisdiction. (1 Thessalonians 5:1, 2) . . .Now as for the times and the seasons, brothers, you need nothing to be written to you. 2 For you yourselves know very well that Jehovah’s day is coming exactly as a thief in the night. (Daniel 2:19-21) . . .So Daniel praised the God of heaven. 20 Daniel declared: “Let the name of God be praised for all eternity, For wisdom and mightiness are his alone. 21 He changes times and seasons,. . (Matthew 24:36) . . .“Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father. I'm not saying that anyone here is trying to foretell the day and the hour, only that I see a parallel in what Paul said above, and in the common implication about identifying specific events that will reveal an end-times timeline.
I do have a couple ideas for the meaning of the 1290 and 1335 days that provides a specific lesson for Christians at all times, but which already had a prior application that was specific to those time periods. It's not necessarily correct, and of course something could still come up in the future that would reveal how silly all this speculation (on my part, at least) has been.
 
 
 
 

Here's a picture I found at JW.ORG many years ago.
When a witness called on the house above, a woman upstairs began cursing him.
He then said, "Sorry ma,am. Can I please speak to George?"

SCHHHHHhhhhhhh!!!

 
 

Nope, you are not going to derail US into an off topic discussion!! Not falling for that!

Bethel has a long history of child labor:
(Genesis 35:16) 16 Then they pulled away from Bethʹel. . . .  Rachel began to give birth, and her labor was very difficult. And wickedness too:
(Amos 4:4) Come to Bethʹel and commit transgression,. . .

IT'S OUTRAGEOUS!!! THE WICKED PLACE EVEN MAKES BABIES WORK!!!!

Bethel has a long history of child labor:
(Genesis 35:16) 16 Then they pulled away from Bethʹel. . . .  Rachel began to give birth, and her labor was very difficult. And wickedness too:
(Amos 4:4) Come to Bethʹel and commit transgression,. . .

Bethel has a long history of child labor:
(Genesis 35:16) 16 Then they pulled away from Bethʹel. . . .  Rachel began to give birth, and her labor was very difficult. And wickedness too:
(Amos 4:4) Come to Bethʹel and commit transgression,. . .

This is true. Blood is dangerous. Heart surgery is dangerous too and has killed many patients. But it has also saved many patients. It's the same with blood, which is why so many thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses take blood. They take it in fractional components. Most blood is stored in fractional components anyway. And most blood is supposed to be used within 42 days. This was true long before the Duke study, because it was already known that blood stored for 4 months was only about half as efficient for carrying oxygen.
The Duke study (this is only one of many Duke studies) was one of the most repeated in the media because it was the "scariest." But attempts to repeat the study with more randomized data did not fully confirm it. And the failure to show any difference by trying to bump up the nitrous oxide might be evidence that they were on the wrong track anyway.
None of this is evidence one way or another that Jehovah's Witnesses should reverse their conscience on blood. Blood saves lives in the same way that heart surgery saves lives. Just because something might save our life doesn't mean it's right. But we shouldn't have to find ourselves always trying to defend our position based on specific secular studies of risk vs benefit. Are human scholars that important to us? If we are right, why would it matter even if blood only saved lives 80% of the time or 50% or 20%? Is it men we are trying to please, or God?
The apostle Paul obviously didn't mind getting some blood in his meat, and said it was a matter of conscience. So let each one decide for himself, he said. As adults, we have the right to our own conscience in this matter. None of us should question the conscientious choice of another. I have a concern over whether we should force our conscience on unbaptized members of our household including small children, or should we follow the "higher authorities" of Romans 13:1.
Obviously, this discussion should go under another topic.
Edited to add: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851210/

He's the one on the right side of the picture.

So you think that the headline "Blood Transfusions Kill Millions" was a hyped-up lie to try to sell a patented solution to a problem that didn't work?
Wasn't this also found to be incorrect information (disinfo)? [The site quoted above also shows studies and experiments that include finding certain freezing/thawing methods to keep blood effective after storing for 37 years.]
At any rate, my point was that even if blood were 100% effective and safe, we should still avoid it if we truly believe this is Jehovah's will. If we begin selectively picking out negative studies, and ignoring more positive studies, we end up looking like we are embarrassed to hold to a Biblical position on the subject, and are hoping that we can find a secular reason to bolster our position.
It reminds me of what a Jewish person under the Mosaic law should do if he were starving to death and the only meat available to him that could save his life was the meat from a pig. Would he begin telling people that pig meat can be prone to trichinosis, and people have died from it? Or will he say that it's against God's law? (Of course, if he were truly dying, the position of Jesus appears to be that he should do what is unlawful in order to save a life.)
(Matthew 12:1-7) . . .disciples got hungry and started to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 At seeing this, the Pharisees said to him: “Look! Your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them: “Have you not read what David did when he and the men with him were hungry? 4 How he entered into the house of God and they ate the loaves of presentation, something that it was not lawful for him or those with him to eat, but for the priests only? 5 Or have you not read in the Law that on the Sabbaths the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and continue guiltless? 6 But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 However, if you had understood what this means, ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’. . . There is more than one way to understand that passage, but it is clear that the conscience of some would allow them to get one thing out of it, and the conscience of another would allow them to get something else out of it.
By the way, I agree completely that there should technologies by now that would help with both increased volume and increased oxygenation. The position of JWs along with the financial costs of collecting and storing blood have already combined to help produce advances in these areas. Hopefully, more will be done sooner than later.

Exactly!

This is true. Blood is dangerous. Heart surgery is dangerous too and has killed many patients. But it has also saved many patients. It's the same with blood, which is why so many thousands of Jehovah's Witnesses take blood. They take it in fractional components. Most blood is stored in fractional components anyway. And most blood is supposed to be used within 42 days. This was true long before the Duke study, because it was already known that blood stored for 4 months was only about half as efficient for carrying oxygen.
The Duke study (this is only one of many Duke studies) was one of the most repeated in the media because it was the "scariest." But attempts to repeat the study with more randomized data did not fully confirm it. And the failure to show any difference by trying to bump up the nitrous oxide might be evidence that they were on the wrong track anyway.
None of this is evidence one way or another that Jehovah's Witnesses should reverse their conscience on blood. Blood saves lives in the same way that heart surgery saves lives. Just because something might save our life doesn't mean it's right. But we shouldn't have to find ourselves always trying to defend our position based on specific secular studies of risk vs benefit. Are human scholars that important to us? If we are right, why would it matter even if blood only saved lives 80% of the time or 50% or 20%? Is it men we are trying to please, or God?
The apostle Paul obviously didn't mind getting some blood in his meat, and said it was a matter of conscience. So let each one decide for himself, he said. As adults, we have the right to our own conscience in this matter. None of us should question the conscientious choice of another. I have a concern over whether we should force our conscience on unbaptized members of our household including small children, or should we follow the "higher authorities" of Romans 13:1.
Obviously, this discussion should go under another topic.
Edited to add: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851210/

I just read the article. Interesting -- and today would be the anniversary of that eclipse, if true. Also noted that it works fairly close to the Bible chronology of several modern scholars, but does not fit the chronology of most religions who pay attention to that sort of thing. (Witnesses, for example.)

I would agree. That's usually what's brought up in anti-JW articles as a way to say the religion is a cult.

A son of a Governing Body member was handling the Watch Tower's Public Relations department just before J.R.Brown took over that position. He said that these particular two items were the two items that, if changed, would resolve 90% of our public relations problems. (This was just prior to the child abuse debacle which J.R.Brown was immediately thrown into.) I suspect people understood him to be saying he disagreed with our position on these issues, but I don't recall him ever saying that. He was fired from the position anyway.

I suspect that it really is much worse in other religions. I have already seen people who take the data that comes out of the Australian studies to try to show that it must be about 10 to 50 times worse, as a ratio, among Jehovah's Witnesses as it is among Catholics. I think this interpretation of the numbers is ludicrous. I found it to be a useful point when you pointed out that the numbers among JWs may refer to both "higher ups" AND the "rank and file," while the numbers from the Catholic Church refer mostly to "higher ups."
I was trying to find a way of saying that it was not all four "higher ups" at the London Branch who had been accused. You might have already been aware of the news when three of the persons with the highest responsibilities at the Branch were dismissed at the same time, and I did not want to cast aspersions against all of them. But you have put me in the awkward position of thinking I should defend the truthfulness of what I said. In Australia not only does the list include circuit overseers, and a former district overseer, but the accused included a person who had been a former Australian Branch overseer himself. One of the very cases that we listened to testimony about in the ARC was a case where the accused was one of these at the top of the Australian Branch organization.
So I mention the parallels as a way of showing the seriousness, even though all of us have the desire to protect the reputation of the Organization. I think it's just as dangerous to minimize the cases as it is to exaggerate them.
With respect to the Interview you mentioned, it's hard to imagine this in any institution, but there really are parallels even if we are not trying to equate our problems with Catholic problems. Although I am not speaking of child abuse, exactly, there have been cases of collusion among some accused of wife-swapping, two or more elders who all committed fornication with the same young sister, and in at least one of these cases, more than one of the accused Witnesses ended up being friends with each other, and supposedly had used this friendship to cover for each other. Something related to this has been claimed for a couple of Australian congregations and three California congregations.
I can't claim direct knowledge of those things that I just mentioned in the last paragraph, but I can claim almost direct knowledge, or at least knowledge that came to me from a member of the GB, whom I worked for. At the time there were about 16 active members of the Governing Body, and one had been accused of homosexual tendencies (Chitty), while two others had been accused of multiple child abuse instances (Greenlees and Jaracz). Another was a 80+-year GB member (Fred Franz) who had made it a longstanding practice to meet with more than a dozen naked and semi-naked 19-year olds in the sauna (steam room), who came there to listen to his Bible discussions for up to two hours every Wednesday night. Two of those GB members were dismissed from Bethel, the other two remained at Bethel until they died. I mention all of these because it reflects on 25% of the highest organizational leadership at the time. We know that it's often those with a measure of authority who use their position to manipulate the situation allowing for the crimes and the cover-up of their crimes.
So, unfortunately, I cannot accept some of the excuses about needing to slap down those who see problematic parallels. Finding the parallels with other institutions might even be a way to find more solutions that have seemed to work in some of these other institutions. I don't think it matters who is better or worse, it matters that we find more ways to help the situation, help the victims, and keep the organization clean. Making the organization appear cleaner is not the same as truly working to make it clean. I'm a firm believer in facing the issue head on as the fastest way to clean it up.

I don't want to leave the organization. There's many things I admire about it. I just don't understand why every JW has to be in 100% agreement with all GB directions. I don't think the organization would descend into chaos if more matters were treated as conscience decisions. There are already areas of conscience like entertainment and the religion hasn't fallen apart over that.

Actually, I have never insisted. Are you saying that if he himself claims to be a JW that you might not believe him? By the way, I did just get a response from him, and he preferred that I only use only one particular article of his when discussing 587/6 BCE. He says:
"To avoid any controversy on this controversial subject you can quote my article 'Basic astronomy for historians to get a chronology' . . . [link] . . . which was validated by Professor Hermann Hunger who is a reference in Babylonian astronomy." [Thanks to the person who gave me his most recent email address. I had tried the same one before without a response, but it is still correct. I received the above response a few minutes ago.]

Yes, I understand the all-important emphasis that you and opposers put on "higher education." But Gerard Gertoux DOES have formal higher education. How can we explain his agreement with COJ with regard to chronology?

Curious. I've often wondered why Bible Speaks and Queen Esther and, to a much lesser extent, "you and yours" engage in self-up-voting. (TTH did this at least once, too.) But I agree that they are of zero value. There is a whole generation of people today who seem to live and die (sometimes literally) over the concept of digital approval. Facebook had to get rid of the down-vote because it caused the break-up of so many real and "social" friends. 
But the up-vote is still useful as a way to react to a good or funny comment, or express appreciation for the good and useful research that has gone into comments. You have received at least a dozen from me for the latter reason; probably a couple of them are in this very topic. I don't believe I have ever given a down-vote.
So credit where credit is due. I don't see any reason to remove it.
I hope not. I didn't think you were doing it on purpose. I just thought you sometimes saw a book with an impressive sounding title and assumed that the book supported something the GB was saying before you read the actual book. I have access to JSTOR and a lot of the full books you have referenced through a university alumni account. So, you probably don't know how much time I've nearly "wasted" trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Curious, again. You have usually been more careful to always deny that COJ had a scholar's view. I wonder if you would consider Gerard Gertoux to be a scholar. A few minutes ago, I just emailed him, asking for his permission to quote and discuss his view on the chronology of the destruction of Jerusalem. He appears to agree with COJ that the date must be either 587 or 586, not 607 BCE. The purpose of the email was also to double-check if it is still his current view.

I've never accused you of giving "scholars" more authority than God just because you often quote scholarly authorities who contradict the Governing Body in almost every way possible. That includes the "Kyrios Christos" book you just introduced above as an "example" which says basically that the New Testament was influenced by false religion. And I've never accused the Governing Body of giving "scholars" more authority than God just because they use and quote outside scholars, too, but usually in a much more judicious manner than several of your recent examples.
You include in your answer that Jesus was explicitly referring to the Pharisees and applying the verse as if he were saying that the Pharisees themselves were gods. I think this goes beyond any claim in the Watch Tower publications, which seem carefully worded to avoid this same implication. Note:
*** si p. 196 par. 19 Bible Book Number 43—John ***
In answer to their charge of blasphemy, he reminds them that in the book of Psalms, certain mighty ones of earth are referred to as “gods,” whereas he has referred to himself as God’s Son. (Ps. 82:6) He urges them at least to believe his works.—John 10:34. Other than your wildly inaccurate personal accusations, however, I found several parts of your answer to be useful, which is why I have given you another "up-vote." Thanks.

Don't know how long Gerard Gertoux has been a Witness, but two years ago I was asked to look over a paper (thesis-length) he had written on chronology. I went to get it about a year later and all the links had this item removed, but no others. Fortunately there was still a roundabout way to get a copy. I think this is his most complete work on chronology and it's excellent and comprehensive but it "demolishes" any chance that he could have believed 607 was the date for destruction of Jerusalem, at least at the time he wrote the paper. It was actually a very good paper, and I don't really know why it was removed from so many places. (I can guess, of course, but I could be wrong.) The next time the subject comes up, I'll be happy to quote at length from his paper, although I would respect his wish not to quote directly from it, if this is his wish.
Does anyone here have a current contact for him? If so, please PM me. Does he frequent any forums that anyone here knows about?

Same as always. As I said: I thought you were saying you had addressed this with scholars, so I was interested.
I was interested in whether you had run across some useful information that either debunks the connections that several scholars have made, or perhaps put them in a more understandable light. You quoted from some sources that, as far as I can see, just take us further down into the same connections I was hoping to avoid, so I have my doubts that any of these sources can help. But I try keep an open mind. Which is why I was interested in your take on this.