Is it not concerning that much of the Jehovah witness doctrine is counter to what the Bible actually states?
Our beliefs only run counter to what Christendom teaches....but it is fully aligned with the Bible. You are welcome to test me out on that.
It was never my intention to have anything to do with Jehovah's Witnesses because, like you, I had heard all the negative talk about them, but when I lost my father at a young age, (52) very suddenly, I wanted answers. Why was a good family man taken, while the worst husbands and fathers were still drawing breath?! It didn't make sense.
I asked many ministers of different faiths why.....but no one could tell me why God had taken my Dad. I heard all the platitudes, but nothing from the Bible that gave me any comfort. Was he in heaven as miserable as we were by this sudden separation? Was he suffering in hell? That is what bothered me more than anything.....did God give us our family members to love, only to have them taken away with so much grieving and unanswered questions to follow? I lost faith in the church and resolved never to go back. I had so many questions and the church's lack of scriptural answers just made me angry. Why didn't they know?
JW's knocked on my door some time later, and just because I was angry at religion, (I never got angry at God and I always respected the Bible) I asked (rather sarcastically) the same question of them that I had asked of many others......"Where are the dead?" I was expecting them to give the same pathetic response as everyone else so I could send them off, but they simply opened their Bible and showed me Ecclesiastes 9:5; 10. It changed my life.
More questions followed and the Bible was used to answer all of them. There was no NWT back then, so they got me to read the scriptures in my own KJV. It was the only Bible I used back then.
I felt comfort for the first time. My father was not pining away like we were....he was just asleep. (Like Lazarus. John 11:11-14) He was not aware of our grief and he would live again by means of a resurrection....not to heaven, but right back here to the earth to be reunited with his family. (John 5:28-29) This is where God put humankind. It was never meant to be a training ground for heaven, or a place to earn torture in hell. This is not a Bible teaching....it is Christendom's sad misinterpretation of scripture.
Of corse if the NWT is used, then perhaps some are supported, but as far as the kingdom being established in 1917, salvation, and others, these all can be clearly disproven within the use of the NWT.
Have you ever really checked it out, or are you just going by what others have told you? Please remember that not many of the Jews believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Why did that nation not respond to the proofs that he gave them from their own scripture? The Pharisees lied about him....why? Because he exposed them as the worst hypocrites in existence. He already knew that they were incorrigible because his Father did not send him to the religious leaders, (who had already proven to be neglectful shepherds) but to "the lost sheep" who had been ignored and condemned by them. They accused him of hanging out with sinners. He knew why, but they had no idea.
Our calculation of 1914 (not 1917) as being the year of Christ's enthronement as king (Daniel 7:13-14) was made using Daniel's prophesy which was the same calculation used by the Jews when anticipating the arrival of their Messiah the first time.
His "parousia" (his "presence" not his "coming") is supported by scripture and all of the physical signs that Jesus gave in Matthew 24:3-14. We know the beginning of the"last days" but not when they end. (Matthew 24:37-39)
Happy to take this conversation further if you want.....