1. Note on This Edition

Crisis of Conscience (1983)

Not a Watch Tower publication — Raymond Franz

Franz's account of nine years on the Governing Body (1971–1980): how its decisions were made, the debates over 1975 and the "generation" of 1914, disfellowshipping policy, and why he left. This is the text of the fourth edition (2008 printing) as reissued by NuLife Press in 2018, with its appendices; the publisher's foreword and epilogue and the page-number indexes of that edition are not included. The Watchtower and other Society publications have described former members who publish such criticism as apostates.

Raymond Franz (1922–2010) served at the Society's world headquarters and was a member of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses from 1971 to 1980; he was a nephew of the Society's later president Frederick W. Franz. He left the headquarters in 1980 and was disfellowshipped in 1981. His Crisis of Conscience (1983) describes how the Governing Body worked and why he came to disagree with it; the Society considers him an apostate.

Critical Works: Writings that criticised C. T. Russell, his successors or the Society, by contemporaries, rival Bible Student groups and former members. They are included because they are part of the historical record, and the Society answered many of them in its own publications, which are in this archive.

About the Related Works section

Note on This Edition

The body of this work is based on the 2008 printing of the Fourth Edition of Crisis of Conscience, by Raymond Franz with additional pages added to the Appendix from In Search of Christian Freedom written by Raymond Franz and the entire booklet “Where is The “Great Crowd” Serving God?” by Jon A. Mitchell. The ‘Table of Contents’, Index and the footnotes have been updated to reflect the added pages to the Appendix and current resources. Additionally a Foreword by David Henke has been added at the beginning of the book and The Copyright Owners Story at the very end of the book.

All rights reserved worldwide. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other – except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. | Scripture quotations marked JB are taken from The Jerusalem Bible © 1966 by Darton Longman & Todd Ltd and Doubleday and Company Ltd. | Scripture quotations marked NEB taken from the New English Bible, copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1961, 1970. All rights reserved | Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ | Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. | Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. | Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Wherever possible, and for the sake of authenticity, an effort has been made within this book to present quotations from other publications by direct photocopies. Since certain of these publications may go back over one hundred years in the past, the quality of the type may not always be of the highest standard.

Crisis of Conscience, Fifth Edition

Published by NuLife Press™

www.NuLifePress.com

HARDCOVER: 978-0-9994992-0-7

PAPERBACK: 978-0-9994992-1-4

EBOOK: 978-0-9994992-2-1

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