So what were the 14 letters sent to WTS?
The real story on why The Watchtower society lost a Kingdom hall in Bonham ,Texas.!
by koolaid-man 49 Replies latest jw friends
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Violia
bttt
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donny
I knew Ralph Deal as he was part of our circuit and he was being watched carefully by many about a year before this incident occured. He came to our hall about 6 months before the Bonham incident and gave a talk in our congregation. I was a MS at the time and another MS and myself were instructed to sit on either end of the front row and if we received a "cut" hand signal from the PO, we were to ask him to step down from the platform and if he refused, physically remove him from the stage.
His talk was borderline but he remained within the Society's outline he was using. The closest he came to freaking the elders out was when he picked up his New World Translation and said "This is not the Word of God!" He then paused and then opened it and continued "what is inside is the Word of God!" He was clearly trying to push the Farmers Branch elders buttons.
He was a topic of discussion for some time afterwards and it was little surprise when we heard him and about 3/4 of the Bonham congregation decided to leave the organization. I remember helping build the replacement Kingdom Hall and how teh few that remained were clearly upset and sad since nealy all of them had family members that were now "apostate".
Donny
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donny
GB member Lyman Swingle came down to give the dedication talk in the new Bonham Kingdom Hall and he was really railing against the apostates who had "stolen our hall."
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Violia
Do you recall someone buzzing ( plane) during the construction? lol funny.
Donny, I was at that meeting where Ralph Deal gave that talk. I do recall that him saying that. It does not take much to freak out FB, however.
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agonus
I had heard Swingle, like Sydlik, was a little bit of an "apostate" sympathizer... I guess not...
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SixofNine
I've got a couple pages worth of transparency film taken at this KH build in a stack somewhere. I'll have to try to find them and scan and post them sometime soon. Maybe I've got a shot of Donny!
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donny
I had heard Swingle, like Sydlik, was a little bit of an "apostate" sympathizer... I guess not...
Swingle appeared to be sympathetic to the apostates of the 1980 Bethel incident. I asked him about what had happened to Ray Franze and he said that "Ray understands the Bible a bit differently than us" and you could tell he still had some affection for him.
As for the Bonham incident he appeared to be more mad about the loss of the real estate than he did with their doctrinal issues. he was actually one of the nicer GB body memebers I had met while I was in.
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Justitia Themis
I had heard Swingle, like Sydlik, was a little bit of an "apostate" sympathizer... I guess not...
He was. Did you know, had I made a different decision, he might have become my uncle-in-law?! Long story re: his nephew (Terry Swingle) in Salt Lake City.
We had a big "apostate" deal there too. When I asked him about it, he said that there are lots of sides to stories...at the time I thought that a very odd response.
Terry...are you on this board by any chance? Are you still partaking?
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agonus
"Lots of sides to stories"? Holy shit, can you conceive of such a statement coming from the mouth of a Losch, a Splane, a Herd, a Pierce, etc...