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1914 Touchstone of the Watchtower

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1914 Touchstone of the Watchtower © Max Hatton 1965 MAX HATTON’S PERSONAL TESTIMONY The story begins fifty years ago when I was the Shire Clerk in the lovely town of Denmark, Western Australia. It was necessary that the Council appoint an Assistant Shire Clerk. A young man by the name of Ray1 was appointed and he and his wife Ivy2 and my wife Merle and I soon became close friends. One evening they were at our home for the evening meal and in our conversation I mentioned that in a couple of weeks we were going over to Collie where our son Rodney would be christened in the Methodist Church. It would be a sort of dual christening for a daughter of my sister Joyce and her husband John would also be christened. Ray asked us why we were having Rodney Christened? This stunned us quite a bit so we simply responded along the lines that this is the thing to do. It seemed to us that this is what everyone did in those days. I was then asked did I have a Bible for Ray would like to show us that there is nothing in the Bible requiring the christening or baptizing of infants. People are encouraged there to make their own decision when they arrive at an age where they are sufficiently mature to make such an important decision. We were far from being religious people but eventually found a Bible in an old tin trunk. We were shown that Jesus was about thirty years of age before He was baptised. We were also shown sufficient other items to convince us that baptism of infants was a tradition not based upon the Word of God. We decided that we would not go ahead with the intended christening and this caused quite a disturbance in my family. The insight we had received concerning baptism caused us to agree to study other matters with Ray and Ivy who revealed to us that they had about a year before become Jehovah’s Witnesses. We were shown the sections of Scripture that reveal that Jesus is to return to this Earth in the near future. We discovered that the Immortal Soul and Hellfire concepts were also without foundation in the Bible but had come into the early Christian Church from Paganism. We had never heard of such things before and it seemed to us that other things Jehovah’s Witnesses stand for were also in harmony with Scripture (we always had our doubts about their stand on Blood-transfusion). Eventually, we accepted the Watch Tower teachings hook, line, and sinker so we decided to become baptised ourselves. We were baptised at a Convention in Bunbury, West Australia on November 14, 1959. An appeal was made by the Head of the Watch Tower Society in Australia for many Jehovah’s Witnesses in Western Australia to move to places shown on a map in the Eastern States for the purpose of serving where the need was great. Merle and I and Ray and Ivy all decided that we should go. We had become very dedicated to the cause and because we had three children chose to move to Melbourne rather than to a country town because of the greater prospect of gaining suitable work in the city. Regulations required that I give a month’s notice of my resignation from the Council and during that time we sold our furniture and most other possessions. Not long before we left I met a very earnest Seventh-day Adventist named Geoff Rogerson. He gave me a quite small paper “An Appeal to Jehovah’s Witnesses” written by Pastor Arthur Patrick, also a Seventh-day Adventist. I explained to Geoff that I was far too busy just then to study the paper, but I promised to write to him about it after settling in Melbourne. The paper challenged the Watch Tower teaching on their chronology leading to the year A.D. 1914, the vital year in Watch Tower history. Shortly after arriving in Melbourne I wrote to Geoff re the paper. This began a protracted study of the subject on the part of both of us for we really didn’t know very much on the 1 This is not his real name. 2 This is not her real name. i Max Hatton’s Personal Testimony subject at that time. Geoff turned out to be a very intelligent and capable Bible student and quite voluminous correspondence was sent back and forth and this went on for a couple of years until Geoff became convinced that what he had provided me should have been sufficient. However, he could not read my mind. I had staunchly defended the Watch Tower position but by now I was becoming quite concerned. However, I was nowhere near ready to capitulate, I needed to do more study yet. Geoff refused to continue the discussion. For my part I continued studying and wrote to several Scholars who were competent to be of help on matters related to their field of speciality. I found that there were several Scholars in the Seventh-day Adventist Church who were leaders in the field of Biblical chronology, both Siegfried Horn and Edwin R. Thiele offered helpful information. I also wrote to the Watch Tower headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, on several occasions but received no help whatsoever. On one occasion I was informed that they were too busy to spend the time that would be necessary to study for answers to my questions. This response obviously shocked me for I had been convinced that they were the real experts and were completely conversant with the subject of chronology. On another occasion they just counselled me to give less attention to chronology and rely on the signs they said confirmed their 1914 date. My confidence in the Watch Tower Society being God’s Channel of Communication was greatly shaken to say the least. Some of my friends and associates tried to assure me that if the Society didn’t have the answers to my questions now, they would one day be revealed in Jehovah’s due time. It was evident to me that if you accept this delusive reasoning, which was fostered by the Society, it could never be wrong - Jehovah will sort it out for you one day. In those days I was interested in the Australian Institute of Archaeology, their headquarters was situated in Collins Street, Melbourne. I learned of the Annual Lecture Series for 1964 and was tempted to attend. It is quite out of order for a Jehovah’s Witness to attend such meetings and particularly for me, because the meetings were on Tuesday evenings and I was conducting a book study for the local Congregation on those evenings, I managed to stay away, well, at least until the night of the final lecture when I felt compelled to attend. As I look back now I am quite sure it was providential that I should be at the meeting for the lecturer highlighted chronological information for the Neo-Babylonian Empire supplied on a Stele by the Lady Adda-guppi the mother of Nabonidus, the last King of Babylon. This Stele provides the names of the Kings of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and provides the length of reign for each king. This evidence corresponds exactly with all of the various other items that construct a chronology for the period. The evidence is so inextricably woven together that it cannot possibly be in error. I was absolutely amazed and now deeply impressed with the fact that I had been misled, and deliberately so, by the Watch Tower Society. I had accepted that the Watch Tower was God’s Channel of Truth and had supported its claim that there had to be seventy complete years of desolation of the land of Judah, that it had to be completely empty for seventy years of both man and beast. The evidence they provide had become much more than shaky according to my investigations and this last piece of contrary evidence was just too much for me. It was the last straw, so to speak, and I wended my way home that evening now completely convinced that I had been following a false prophet rather than God’s Channel of truth. A false prophet that deliberately kept its mind controlled adherents in darkness by deliberately denying evidence and lying to them. I prepared a letter of resignation from Jehovah’s Witnesses on August 16, 1964 and delivered it to the local Congregational leader. From then on we were completely ostracised by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, they didn’t want to speak to us or have anything to do with us. The bottom had dropped out of our world so we decided to return home to Western Australia. We concluded that we had been wrong, it was not God who was wrong nor the Bible. We would start again and find out without any ii Max Hatton’s Personal Testimony mind control from the Watch Tower people or from anyone else what God really wants us to believe and to do. A little later, after being re-established in Western Australia I decided to put all my findings about JW chronology and their 1914 down on paper and send it to my former friends in Melbourne. Many of them must have been puzzled why we left the Watch Tower. Some, we thought, may not even have known that we had left. Shortly after I distributed my paper, “1914, THE TOUCHSTONE OF THE WATCHTOWER” one of the senior Jehovah’s Witnesses was sent from Sydney to interview me and ask me to attend a meeting of the local Congregation in order to consider my actions.
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