Apostles, Judas, GB, Raymond, Satan, Holy Spirit

[Srecko Sostar]

20 hours ago, JW Insider said:

But the problem, as best as I can see it, was not that he said anything untrue, but that his motive was

You made important point. If someone can not defeat your arguments or evidences then they questioning your motives. So pathetic!!! 

"Yes, it can be how this what he said was happened, but WHY HE said this? ... because HIS MOTIVES are bad". 

And WHO are you? to judge my motives ! :)))  

[JOHN BUTLER]

I remember watching a very stupid 'horror' film about monsters in the mist. 

A man was in his car with his parents who were very old, in thick mist, and they could hear the monsters getting closer. 

The man had a gun with only two bullets in. He didn't want the monsters to get his parents so they decided the best plan was to use the two bullets to kill both his parents. They did this. And then the man was just sat there in the car with his dead parents, waiting for the monsters to get him. But all of a sudden the armed forces arrived with tanks and big guns, the mist started to clear, and the man was saved. However to others it would have looked like he had just murdered his parents. The film ended with the man stood by his car watching the armed forces attacking the monsters. 

I recall that because it helps me to realise that a person has to act on the situation / facts known, that they have at that particular time. A person's motives may be for the good, but to others it looks as if they are for the bad. 

It is therefore a wonderful thing that God, and Jesus Christ, can see all things and know all things. They know us better than we know ourselves. They judge us from a standpoint that we will never understand. Their ways are much higher than our ways. 

Raymond Franz, I would say it is not our place to judge him.

However I do think it is the place of JW's to judge the GB or GB decisions, because the GB run the JW Organisation. And i do think it is the right of JW's to judge the way the organisation is being run and the 'rules' it is run by. 

Therefore I think there should be more clarity, more openness, in the JW Org. So that members can make a fair judgement of whether they want to be part of such an organisation. 

I do think that in the first century, the running of the Christian 'organisation' was much simpler and more open.  

Acts 15 v 28 & 29

For the holy spirit and we ourselves have favored adding no further burden to you except these necessary things: to keep abstaining from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you carefully keep yourselves from these things, you will prosper. Good health to you!”

Those people hearing those word would have fully understood what they meant. It seems to be all that was needed at that time. 

So when some on here try to compare those days to now, in my opinion it is not possible to make a real comparison. 

Ex-JW's that have known and still remember problems from within the JW Org should of course whenever possible warn others of any dangers of being part of the JW Org. A good person would not want to send anyone into a cage of lions, even if those lions were purring like pleasant pussy cats. 

JW's still in the JW Org should also, and probably even more so, warn others of problems / dangers within the JW Org, but it is a danger for them to do so. 

I think that the more the JW Organisation pushes about Satan ruling the world, and that everyone outside the Org is part of the devil's world, then the more those that have information should push to show Satan's influence inside the JW Org. It's called balance, and honesty.

The Watchtower and the CCJW are not God. The GB are not God. The Elders are not God nor Jesus Christ.

So do not let anyone replace God or Jesus Christ with humans of any kind or status. 

[FelixCA]

9 hours ago, JW Insider said:

So it appears that you don't have any evidence to give for your claim that the book was "challenged" by Fred Franz or others who knew him.

Can we also say you don’t have proof Fred Franz didn’t? Try not to overreach and backtrack on your earlier sentiment about knowing the GB when it’s obvious that’s an exaggeration.

I’m not mentally challenged spiritually to accept apostate literature that you seem to want to promote. Sorry.

“A final reason, resulting from the previous two, is that of conscience. What do you do when you see mounting evidence that people are being hurt, deeply hurt, with no real justification? What obligation does any of us have—before God and toward fellow humans—when he sees that information is withheld from people to whom it could be of the most serious consequence? These were questions with which I struggled. What follows expands on these reasons.”

How convenient to all of a sudden develop a conscience to justify his own actions as a member of the 18 Governing Body. Not only is this untrue but disingenuous as to his motive.

Perhaps you fall for sob stories, but it takes time to know a person. This person angered over being overlooked for president is a classic case of narcissism.

If you’re a person that is looking for excuses to fade or leave, promote this book if you must, just keep the Watchtower and faithful followers of Christ out. Perhaps JW only would be more suitable to discuss this among yourselves since no one will be able to refute misguided understanding.

[Anna]

On 1/21/2019 at 12:00 PM, Witness said:

Are you equating this to the GB, or Raymond Franz as being “handpicked by Jesus” to do good, or evil?

No actually, I was not equating it, or at least if it appeared so, I did not mean that. My point was that anyone can do good or evil, no matter what lofty position they have, and no matter who they are picked by. Jesus could have chosen a different path if he had wanted to, and of course the most infamous example is of Satan, who was originally a perfect angel. So my point was that we should not be surprised if someone we previously considered good turns bad. With regard to RF, that is of course a matter of opinion whether he was good or bad. I do not believe however that Judas was "destined" to be bad, as that would have deprived him of the freedom of choice that has been given to all intelligent creatures in heaven and on earth. 

[Srecko Sostar]

51 minutes ago, FelixCA said:

How convenient to all of a sudden develop a conscience to justify his own actions as a member of the 18 Governing Body. Not only is this untrue but disingenuous as to his motive.

It is understandable for me to see your disappoint about R.F. or similar characters inside JW. Yes, perhaps your view about him is correct. But for many of us is of less concern why he wrote a book about GB and WT. We can feel sorrow for him or we can say he is/was hypocrite. Nevertheless, information's we get from his inside insight about WT GB mechanism are more important then he alone. Because "The Truth" is in question, not he, not me, not you. 

He was the one who has must struggle with HIS conscience why he stay inside and support all wrongs he knew about, despite knowledge he had. He was the one who has been responsible for covering this too long and so on. I do not care, in final stage of matter, what was his motive. Only important thing for me is;  Is it that or this, what he said, true?      

[JOHN BUTLER]

Poor Felix like a baby throwing his toys out of the pram again. 

Quote Felix "How convenient to all of a sudden develop a conscience to justify his own actions.. "

Um, one can only develop a conscience over time as one put things together. Things build up over time as one gathers information. So one's conscience builds with the more information one has on a subject.

But then it seems Felix has suddenly been given power from 'above' to judge Raymond Franz. 

Quote "I’m not mentally challenged spiritually .". That makes no sense at all. Spiritual things give wisdom from God.. Whereas we think mentally of our own choice. 

And this silly word 'apostate' is so misused now it really has no meaning at all. 

Remember, an apostate is someone that turns away from a former religion. They do not necessarily turn away from God or Jesus Christ. 

So it seems that Raymond Franz chose to serve God and not serve the GB or JW org. Hence the GB got annoyed with him. 

And once again we see typical GB / JW org attitude whereby Felix thinks he has the right to tell someone where to post his comments. 

As for faithful followers of Christ. A lot of them are already out, out of JW Org that is  ....

[JOHN BUTLER]

52 minutes ago, Anna said:

No actually, I was not equating it, or at least if it appeared so, I did not mean that. My point was that anyone can do good or evil, no matter what lofty position they have, and no matter who they are picked by. Jesus could have chosen a different path if he had wanted to, and of course the most infamous example is of Satan, who was originally a perfect angel. So my point was that we should not be surprised if someone we previously considered good turns bad. With regard to RF, that is of course a matter of opinion whether he was good or bad. I do not believe however that Judas was "destined" to be bad, as that would have deprived him of the freedom of choice that has been given to all intelligent creatures in heaven and on earth. 

Freedom of choice ? I mentioned in a topic that i started, about predestination, that a few people seem to have been chosen to do things before they were even born. Jacob being an example, chosen over his brother whilst still in the womb. 

[Srecko Sostar]

53 minutes ago, Anna said:

Jesus could have chosen a different path if he had wanted to, and of course the most infamous example is of Satan, who was originally a perfect angel. So my point was that we should not be surprised if someone we previously considered good turns bad.

 

54 minutes ago, Anna said:

I do not believe however that Judas was "destined" to be bad, as that would have deprived him of the freedom of choice that has been given to all intelligent creatures in heaven and on earth. 

This can bring us to interesting discussion with interesting people. 

[JW Insider]

1 hour ago, FelixCA said:

Can we also say you don’t have proof Fred Franz didn’t?

That's true. I have no proof that Fred Franz didn't. But if Fred Franz really had challenged the book in any way, that surely would have been huge news. Some Witness somewhere would surely have made a note of it. Interesting, however, that some Witnesses have said that they first heard about certain controversial issues (re: WTS history) in this book by R.Franz, and believed that some of these things could not really be true. But then Frederick Franz gave a talk in 1985, about two years after the book CoC came out, and confirmed many of the same controversial issues out of his own mouth. You can hear it here:

https://archive.org/details/DecisionMyLifeStoryByFredFranz

It's a 1 hour and 33 minute talk, but you can find about 10 minutes of excerpts from it in shorter versions on YouTube. Obviously, Fred Franz didn't mention the book, but he surely had a chance to challenge something in it, and instead he either purposely or inadvertently expresses agreement with many details that some Witnesses had first seen in R.Franz book, and had found difficult to believe.

But the main point, of course, is that your "redirection" above sounds like evidence that you didn't have any specific examples after all. Until you offer any, I'll assume that you found no evidence of inaccurate details in the book.

1 hour ago, FelixCA said:

I’m not mentally challenged spiritually to accept apostate literature that you seem to want to promote.

I'm not trying to promote the book. I don't know his motives for writing it. I only know what he claimed, and those claims might be true, and they might be untrue. If his claimed reasons are true, then it is very understandable why he felt it necessary to write the book. If they are false, then we can probably impute all kinds of wrong reasons for him to write such a book.

1 hour ago, FelixCA said:

This person angered over being overlooked for president is a classic case of narcissism.

Maybe he was. I don't know of anyone who had evidence that he was being overlooked or if even if he was actually being considered the prime choice after Fred Franz. I was handling assignments for Brother Albert Schroeder at the time Schroeder was involved in a kind of campaign against R.Franz, and I did get a very strong sense that Brother Schroeder did not want to be overlooked for the office of President. So it is possible that R.Franz was like him, too. I only knew R.Franz through reputation and his 15 minute comments when it was his weekly rotation at "morning worship."

I can tell you that among many serious Bethelites, including many Bethel Elders in the late 1970's and up until 1980, there was a lot of talk that R.Franz would be the most likely candidate for next president after his uncle died. This was one of the reasons that news of his resignation from the Governing Body, and news of his leaving Bethel shocked so many brothers and sisters. There was even a lot of crying, and a line of people waiting at his door to say good-bye to him and his wife the day they left Bethel. But just because a person has a humble and loving reputation, you still don't know what is going on in their heart.

[Anna]

17 minutes ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

As for faithful followers of Christ.

What do you mean by that? Literally please.

[JOHN BUTLER]

@Anna  I quoted from FelixCA  " If you’re a person that is looking for excuses to fade or leave, promote this book if you must, just keep the Watchtower and faithful followers of Christ out. Perhaps JW only would be more suitable to discuss this among yourselves since no one will be able to refute misguided understanding." 

[Anna]

40 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

expresses agreement with many details that some Witnesses had first seen in R.Franz book, and had found difficult to believe.

I can see that it would have been difficult to challenge some of these things, because by themselves, if stated completely factually, without any emotion whatsoever, they were unchallengeable. What was disputable though (in my opinion) was the tone and implication of the things that RF wrote, that could be, and were, misleading.  He was definitely not without bias, and I could point out a number of statements he made that were 'twisted'. (I would have to look for this again because I do not think I made a note of them, and if I did it was quite a long time ago, so I don't think I could find them that easily, but I do remember there was quite a number).

My point is; I think that if  Fred Franz would have made some effort in pointing out these obvious biases and subtle misrepresentations he would have had to do so by writing a book himself, as a kind of rebuttal, rather than talking about them. And you and I both know that this is not an option the GB consider.