Aid to Bible Understanding

[The Librarian]

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Principal author of this book: Raymond Franz - Later member of the Governing Body and nephew of Frederick W. Franz

[Evacuated]

1 hour ago, The Librarian said:

Principal author of this book: Raymond Franz -

So was it just Raymond Franz that supported this view?

"It will be more endurable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for that city ."
Sodom and Gomorrah were everlastingly destroyed as cities, but this would not preclude a resurrection for people of those cities" Aid to Bible Understanding 1971. p 1519

[Guest Nicole]

Thank you very much dear @The Librarian

[JW Insider]

13 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

16 hours ago, JW Insider said:

(This, of course, got the writer, R.L., dismissed from Bethel, even though he continued working for the Writing Dept.)

This makes no sense to me. If he was dismissed for his renegade writing, why was he retained as a writer?

Rumor was that he "knew where the bodies were buried" as JTR stated. Of course, that's not a literal expression, unless it included the old controversy about supposedly breaking California law with respect to the burial of J.Rutherford's body.

I think the explanation was in the fact that he (RL) was a good friend of R.Franz, and had been one of the primary Aid Book authors. Brother Schroeder wanted to discredit the Aid Book as part of the process of raising himself up as the next "Oracle" after F.Franz. Only one of the major Aid Book writers survived. And even this survivor was also considered discredited, but these were days when you could save your hide by turning others in for their non-standard beliefs even if your own were exactly the same. Brother Swingle barely survived, some would say, only as a discredited curmudgeon. He lost his responsibility for the Writing Department having produced so many renegades, blamed on allowing too much freedom of research on the Aid Book. Brother L.Barry took over. But Swingle still had to complete his projects, and when Barry took the reigns, he found that most of the Writing Department could not produce the output of those who had practice on the Aid Book and similar projects.

A presentation given by K.Klein, in mid-1980, at "morning worship" was revealing. He was trying to show how brothers in Writing must be the most humble people in the world because their work that they worked on for so long, could be torn apart by editors. He showed on the TV screen, a three page article, with marks all over it. Bad enough.  But he showed an earlier version of it with twice as many red marks and x's all over it, with notes in the margins, all from a big red marking pen, as if it were a school paper receiving and "F" that had to be redone almost from scratch if it were to pass even with a "D-minus"  I asked RL about this later, and he laughed about it, saying that Klein was especially dramatic about how his own work got torn up because he just couldn't write without making dozens of logical, scriptural and doctrinal mistakes. He didn't keep up, and he made no sense. His were the worst examples, so he thought that it was kind of funny that Klein would choose the topic for "morning worship." He told me about a time just a bit earlier when L.Greenlees came to him (RL) and raised his voice about something he disagreed with in an article. RL asked him to point out something specific that was wrong so he could change it, and this made Greenlees turn red and furious because, I'm guessing, it was about what he was leaving out, not what he was saying. RL said he just took the article, and said OK, and rewrote it from scratch on the spot -- in one take --but that it was rare for an editor to even make a single mark on his work, which was true of several of the brothers who had learned to work under the time pressure of large projects.

I think that was the key. Another brother who had come to the Aid Book project team late in the process, was a bit slower and more meticuous, but his work on the Sermon on the Mount articles and similar "Bible gems" style articles were always very well-received and, I'm told, rarely got an editorial mark on them. (He was one of the brothers who gave my wedding talk.) He was dismissed from Bethel about a year after he gave my wedding talk.

So the real problem, I think, was the level of production and speed, that the remaining brothers could muster up. The brothers from the Aid Book team had written most of the last few convention releases for the last few years. (Is This Life All There Is? Life Does Have a Purpose. Choosing the Best Way of Life. Commentary on the Letter of James. The majority of "study articles" in the Watchtower. All the convention talks presenting the various books. Articles in the Watchtower explaining Biblical matters and doctrine.) They hadn't just cut out 20% of the Writing Dept, they had cut out 85% of the production capability, and 95% of the research capability. They still needed them. Otherwise all new convention releases would have to be re-hashes of prior releases. Swingle never really thought that the dismissed persons had done anything wrong. Even Lloyd Barry still liked them and appears to have believed they were right about many of their concerns. Besides, they had given RL, for example, a "special pioneer" stipend and (I assume) he could count his hours spent continuing to write.

[Cheepcheep]

On 11/05/2017 at 7:31 PM, Gone Fishing said:

So was it just Raymond Franz that supported this view?

"It will be more endurable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for that city ."
Sodom and Gomorrah were everlastingly destroyed as cities, but this would not preclude a resurrection for people of those cities" Aid to Bible Understanding 1971. p 1519

Up until the 2015 revision the above excerpt was still in the Insight Volume also. It has now been replaced with a more "we don't know, therefore wait and see" wording:

Quote

Concerning a Jewish city that would reject the good news, Jesus said: “It will be more endurable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day than for that city.” (Mt 10:15; 11:23, 24) Of course, Jude 7 says that Sodom and Gomorrah “are placed before us as a warning example by undergoing the judicial punishment of everlasting fire.” So Jesus’ statement evidently was simply making use of hyperbole to emphasize how unlikely it was that people from certain first-century Jewish cities would repent even on Judgment Day.

This phrasing feels easier to accept now, since it has been a back n forth topic over the years. So it looks more neutral and a willingness to wait. We simply aren't the ones who decide who get resurrected and who don't.