17. Appendix A. Chapter References

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

Appendix A. Chapter References

APPENDIX A:

Chapter References

For Chapter 3

The preceding document is the Will prepared by Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Watch Tower Society and its magazine, as published in the Watch Tower of December 1, 1916.

For Chapter 5

Following are paragraphs from the May 1, 1996, Watchtower presenting a reversal of position regarding the “alternative service” issue discussed in Chapter 5.

For sake of comparison, sample portions of the 14-page memorandum I submitted to the Governing Body in 1978 are here reproduced. This is, obviously, only a small fraction of the evidence presented then, some 18 years before they finally acknowledged that alternative service should be a matter of conscience.

For Chapter 10

As noted, the approach of the year 2014, marking 100 years since the prominent Watch Tower date of 1914, certainly presents a problem for the organization and its concern to maintain a mindset of date-related urgency among its members.

What appears to be an attempt to introduce a new time-factor that will serve that purpose appears in the December 15, 2003 Watchtower (shown on the following page) which contains major articles that seek to draw a parallel between conditions in Noah’s day and leading up to the Flood and the conditions existing from 1914 on up to the final time of judgment.

As can be seen in the photocopied material, reference is made to the period of “120 years” at Genesis 6:3 and this is followed by the statement, “What about us? Some 90 years have passed since the last days of this system began in 1914.” It requires only elementary arithmetic to discern that 90 subtracted from 120 years leaves 30 years and that 30 years added on to the year 2003 (when the article was published) would lead to the year 2033. Hence, if the parallel drawn had basis in fact and held true, the final act of God’s divine judgment upon the world would be due to occur by that date. Though the publishers of the Watchtower magazine know, from their long experience with failed date predictions, that they should avoid saying precisely that this means that only 30 years remain before divine destruction, they clearly plant the seed for speculation, perhaps seeking to mitigate the effect of the approach of the year 2014, now just a decade away.

A former presiding overseer in Germany, had communication with a Witness who attended an annual meeting at the German branch office and said this man remarked that such implication was already being talked of. The former presiding overseer personally commented on this presentation, saying, “I don’t expect to be alive in 2033. But if I were and nothing happened to support the focus on that date, I have no doubt that a Watchtower article would soon appear, saying, ‘Now remember, it rained 40 days and 40 nights prior to the Flood. So, if we take the rule of “a day for a year” (Ezekiel 4:6) that indicates that we may expect the final destruction to come within 40 years.’ There is a certain viciousness that allows men to play with people’s hopes and lives in that way.

One effort to solve the problem resulting from the passage of time since 1914 is found in the February 15, 2008 issue of the Watchtower. With regard to Jesus’ statement in Matthew 24:34, an article in this issue says that, while people ‘who don’t have spiritual understanding’ think that there is nothing of “stunning observableness” as to the signs of Jesus’ presence, the faithful brothers of Christ, the present class of John, ‘recognize the sign and understand its real meaning.’ And that ‘as a group. those anointed comprise the present “generation” of contemporaries who won’t pass away “until all these things come to pass.”2

This change in the assigned identity of the “generation” of Matthew 24:34 is clearly one more attempt to hold on to the 1914 date and to cope with the approach of the year 2014. Remarkably, as shown in Chapter 10 of this book, this latest interpretation is one Albert Schroeder (now deceased) made some 30 years ago when on a trip to Europe. As shown in that chapter, on his return, he was reprimanded by the Governing Body and a Watchtower article was published reaffirming the traditional position.

The advantage of this latest interpretation is that it leaves the fulfillment of the Watchtower’s claims about 1914 with no definable terminal point, effectively open-ended. For example, among the members of the Governing Body (all of whom are classed as among the “anointed”) some were not even baptized until after 1950. More significantly, rarely does a year now go by without some persons among Jehovah’s Witnesses newly making profession of being of the “anointed” class. In this way this “class” and the organization’s application of “this generation” could extend almost interminably.

For Chapter 12

This is the letter sent in response to the citation for a judicial hearing by the East Gadsden Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses:

Following is the complete letter sent as an appeal from the decision of the Gadsden judicial committee to disfellowship me:

[End of the copy of Peter Gregerson’s letter. What follows is the continuation of my appeal letter.]

A copy of the appeal letter was sent to the Governing Body along with the following letter:

Following is my letter of December 20, requesting a change in the appeal committee selected by Circuit Overseer Wesley Benner:

Copies of that letter were sent to the Governing Body and to the Service Department along with the following letter:

I had now written to the Governing Body three times requesting some expression from them (on November 5, December 11 and December 20), as well as sending letters to the Brooklyn Service Department. In the eight weeks that passed from the time of writing the first letter until my ultimate disfellowshipment, none of these letters were answered. They were not even acknowledged.

1As stated, this is only a small sampling of the 14-page memorandum supplied each member of the Governing Body in 1978. Though not as extensive, several branch offices offered similar evidence. The Governing Body allowed the traditional policy to remain in effect for another 18 years, at a cost of years in prison for thousands of young Witnesses.

2A footnote at the bottom of the page says that ‘this indicates that some of the anointed brothers of Christ will still be alive on earth when the foretold great tribulation begins.

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17. Appendix A. Chapter References

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