Well, minimus and fleaman, the reason that Schroeder talked to me was because my parents, being his personal friends, asked him to. I was at that time (1992-3) trying to get my parents and the Society to answer a number of hard questions about JW teaching and policy, and of course, they were stonewalling. You know the drill. So I challenged my parents to set up a meeting between me and any Watchtower official they chose in order to see if the official could answer my challenges.
One official, Harry Peloyan, editor-in-chief of Awake!, simply refused to answer any of the questions on a list of about ten that I gave my parents (I was not aware until many years later that it was Peloyan who was given the list of challenges). Less than a year later I again challenged my parents, and with some advice from a good friend suggested that they try to get Schroeder to talk to me. Eventually he did, but he wouldn't meet me in person. He'd only talk to me on the phone, which we did for about 2 1/2 hours in late November, 1993. I was careful not to push any of his buttons, and only gradually worked up to some of the harder issues (but on a scale of 1 to 10 in difficulty, I never got past 5). Eventually he agreed to read over some material I promised to send him, along with a pile of references.
By the next summer Schroeder hadn't responded. My parents said that he was too busy -- yeah, right. So I called him in August and asked to meet with him in September, 1994, when I would be in New York on business. Again he refused, but suggested that I call him at his Bethel office on the Saturday after my business affairs were done. I called him in early September, and we talked for about 45 minutes. He claimed that he hadn't had a chance to look over the material I'd sent him 8 months earlier, but I knew that this wasn't quite true because he was familiar with some of it.
Near the end of our conversation I asked Schroeder why one very important scriptural warning couldn't apply to the JW organization, i.e., Luke 21:8, which essentially tells Christians to avoid anyone who proclaims in God's name, "The kingdom is at hand." He tried to avoid answering, but I persisted and he finally said, "You're not going to give up until I answer you, are you!" I said, "No!" He said, "It can't apply to us because we're God's people!" At that instant I knew, deep in my gut, that these Watchtower officials are blind by choice and thoroughly dishonest and corrupt, and there was no hope of convincing them of anything they didn't want to believe. Blind guides is what they are.
AlanF
