by badboy 31 Replies latest jw friends
A VERY well-known, respected, District Convention talk-giving local elder recently told me something like this:
"Be ready for Armageddon to come tomorrow, but make plans for it not coming in your lifetime."
I was speechless. He was definitely around for the 1975 hysteria. How many lives would have been better lived if the Watchtower had said something like that all along?
Dude is a hard-core company man on most other things though.
Open Mind
"Be ready for Armageddon to come tomorrow, but make plans for it not coming in your lifetime."
I have heard that from a circuit Assembly Platform
In the 70s at Bethel it was chic for Bethel Elders to express their private views on certain doctrines such as the 144,000, 1914, 1975, and many other subjects. I overheard Fred Rusk tell several brothers that it's okay to have "different opinions" but we must recognize that when it comes off the "sixth floor" (pressroom) that something was officially truth. Knorr was known to voice different opinions. Many of the older "anointed" brothers disagreed with not only policy but some doctrine. Fred Fredean daily grumbled about leadership and policy, and he was a Bethel Elder and a former Circuit Overseer at Bethel, with his wife April. Fred Franz was an outright REBEL against any new "rules" at Bethel introduced by the younger members of the GB, because he hated that shift in policy (listen to his 1975 Gilead talk, I was there in the audience. ) I even remember my own Circuit overseers and local elders being the same way. There was a lot more freedom at Bethel back then. Come 1979, it all disappeared and everuyone was assigned jackboots! :-))
Randy
Bethel cartoons from 1979:
http://www.freeminds.org/bethel/toons/quak.htm
and
Cabeen's Secret Book:
Unfortunately no. I was never in the habit of associating with members of the JW clergy. But I did know of some elders who suddenly DA'd and often wondered why ... maybe the doubts got to them?
I remember one elder from the platform said "sure the idea of dying for your brother sounds nice, but would anyone actually do it? I doubt it."
I saw like three elders, reach into their briefcases, take out a notebook, write something down and the next Sunday we had a new Watchtower conductor
Never personally to me, but I have on very good authority about an elder I know thinking some of the society's prophetic speculation is seriously flawed.
In our circuit was a very prominent elder. He was used at every DC. He became the
substitute C.O. It looked like he was going to be appointed as a regular C.O..
Suddenly, he stopped going to the KH. He would be seen occasionally honking at the
JW's doing street work or say, "Hello" to someone at a grocery store.
They may have DFed or DAed him, but I never heard. He never went back.
A friend of mine became an elder and after about 6 months said, "I've had enough of this bullshit." The presiding overseer came to stand in the back of the Hall after giving the talk "A Godly View of Sex and Marriage" and commented, "This headship stuff is a load of crap." That's when I knew it was time to fade. I didn't want to give a talk and then have to suck it up and act as if it was true or ok. W.Once
I had an elder tell me that he disagreed with the shunning policy and did not practice it. At one time he had been the PO, but his health was poor and so he stepped down from that position, but was still an elder at the time he told me this. His wife was always one to have 6 or 7 types of backup for all the study articles, she really researched, and was always up on all the current events to tie them into prophecy. They both must be close to 80 now. I wonder how they like this new KM information.
Sherry
As an elder, I have had other elders confide things here and there, but never actually cross the line of apostatedom. I do have a very close friend who is still an elder who knows that it's all BS, but will never give up being elder. He has never SAID it, but it's how he feels.
