by highdose 16 Replies latest watchtower bible
a JW i know i very fond of telling people that he read apostate stuff in the early 80's and that when he later came into the turth it was proved to him that it was all lies ( the apostate info that is)
i've always wondered what it was he read, and how it could have been refuted by the dubs?
and no, i've got no way of asking him, not without landing myself in hot water
i know crisis of conscience was out, as was gentile times revisited. i don't know if anything else was out at that time. crisis of conscience was good, but gentile times is what really did it for me.
There were books like "Thirty Years A Watchtower Slave" and some books by Edmond Gruss I guess.
Bangalore
There were books like "Thirty Years A Watchtower Slave"
Ya I remember the jw's blathering on about this book. The typical mockery was, "Wow how stupid is he? It took him 30 years to realize he was a slave."
I haven't read "Thirty Years A Watchtower Slave", but I think it did more harm than good. My father said he read it before he was baptized (around 1978) and was still evaluating the watchtower objectively. He said that if this was the best rebuttal against the organization, then he was convinced even more that they must be "right".
tired,
:"Wow how stupid is he? It took him 30 years to realize he was a slave."
ROFLMAO!
missing,
Your father was right. To a point. Schnell was an uneducated and rather crude man. However, he admitted as much in the introduction to his book. Further, he made it clear it was HIS story and he did speak from the heart. He certainly wore his emotions on his sleeves and didn't hold back his personal feelings. I think his biggest mistake was discussing his own conversion to another brand of Christianity and branding the WTS as the "beast" and applying "666" to the WTS. It came off as pretty wacky.
That being said, Schnell was one of the very few people who worked closely with Rutherford starting in the 1920's who exposed Rutherford for the fraud that he was. One tidbit he exposed was that early on, Da Judge discovered he could print 10 convention badges for a penny and then sell them to his followers for a penny apiece for a ten thousand percent profit. There are a number of gems like that in his book, like his detailed facts on the German Magdeberg Branch of the society during its early years.
It is certainly a worthy book for any collector of JW memorbilia as it was the first major expose of the WT in book form.
Farkel
In 1969 an ex-Witness called Alan Rogerson (no relation to another author of the same name) published a book using Rutherfords "Millions now living will never die" as his title.(Constable London 1969)
The book was a history and expose of the dubs,by someone who had been brought up in it,and gave Assembly talks I believe,but went to Uni and learned the art of Critical Thinking.
From my memory of its contents I think it would have been difficult to de-bunk by Witnesses,so this is probably not the stuff being referred to as "Apostate"
The strange thing is,I read this book ,over 20 years ago,and still did not wake up, I think if I was able to re-read it now I would agree with all of it.
sadly it is out of print, S/H copies cost £95.00 !!
Love
Wobble
I read some in the 80's which strengthened my faith {so I thought}.....here are the main points...."Russell lied in court" which the Watchtower pubs defended, Russell sold miricle wheat and was immoral argued not true.....all nonsense stuff when compared to the late 90's when I read Ray Franz book....after reading that I was out!
in the 80's a "apostate" man, asked for WT (during house service) and asked to come inside his home.
he had dozens of old copies with highlights and I still remember him showing me beth-sarim and I was ignoring him and looking like
"so what?". i was brainwashed
I remember Rogerson's book, wobble...and thought it was a very balanced sociological study of the movement. But as I recall he was never baptised so I rather doubt he gave Assembly talks. I would certainly recommend it to Witnesses and had it on my bookshelf at Bethel (in the 70s) without comment.
