JOHN BUTLER

You made important point. If someone can not defeat your arguments or evidences then they questioning your motives. So pathetic!!! 
"Yes, it can be how this what he said was happened, but WHY HE said this? ... because HIS MOTIVES are bad". 
And WHO are you? to judge my motives ! :)))  

Are you foreign that you do not understand English properly ? No disrespect if you are, but it would give me reason to know why you misinterpret  everything i  write.
It was / is the wicked angels, that is the devil and his demons,  that challenge God's sovereignty not me. I just stated the case....  
Hitler could not have done any of the wicked deeds without the majority of Germany backing him.  The  Germans may not have backed him because they wanted to, but maybe out of fear. Just as JW's serve the GB through the Elders, out of fear. 
Just as people come on here , this forum, but use pseudonyms, out of fear of being found out by the Elders.
Felix i see you are using the GB's idea of suggesting people are mentally unstable. Typical Watchtower doctrine. 
Sorry Admin but I'm just answering Felix. Perhaps Felix should start another topic of should i just ignore him ?  
But let's get back on topic. A question 
Is it a disfellowshipping offence to read Raymond Franz books, or to own them ? 

It is fact that God allowed Adam and Eve to become imperfect, and to continue living long enough to produce offspring which were also imperfect etc.. We know of course that God was facing the challenge from spirit beings, so it was not truly about us humans, but about God's right to rule.. 
As for blaming an Organisation for it's faults, of course we should. Hence I left JW Org. 
Sorry but i relate this once again to Germany and Hitler. Hitler could not have done it all on his own, hence i blame the German people. 
If members of an Organisation turn a blind eye to immoral things happening within, and if those members are too frightened to act against the 'bosses' or internal police, then yes I blame that whole Organisation. 
I blame the bosses and internal police for not running the Organisation properly and not policing it properly. And I blame the members for not speaking up, and / or leaving that organisation. 
You added the word society. Did you mean 'a society' as in a group that a person joins, or did you mean society that one is born into, a country of birth etc? 
An organisation is something you actually join deliberately. Hence many JW children, when they become of 'age', will leave the JW Org, which in fact they were never a part of, they were just children of parents that deliberately joined that organisation. The expression the Org uses is 'making the truth your own', before a youngster gets baptised. But many youngsters see the hypocrisy and lies in the JW Org and decide to be no part of it. 
It is fact that many youngsters state that being made to be 'part of the JW Org' actually ruined their young lives. They were not given choices, just ordered to do things by their parents. The GB made the rules, the Elders distributed these rules and policed the congregation, the parents followed the rules without question, and the children suffered for it all. 
So yes, blame the whole Organisation for its sins, if the sins are made known to everyone within.. Because an adult does not have to be a part of that Organisation and a child is not actually part of that Organisation. 
But I don't really know what your point was in relation to this topic. 

@The Librarian ,  @FelixCA is totally off topic once again.
I'd love to answer his dribble but maybe you can ask him to start another topic please. 
 

What did John the Baptist wear when telling folks to repent while he was in the desert? 
Oh, so lemming mentality is just fine with you? The Hare Krishna shave their heads like monks do, is that the same then? Should you be shaving your head because these guys do? 
 
Are you equating clothing and money extortion in God's house? I'm pretty sure I didn't read that part about Jesus making a whip to whip those in tight pants or who wore a beard......err wait, didn't Jesus wear a beard? 
 
Tell that to the beggars Jesus visited and ate with and healed. 

People always seem to harp back to 2000 years ago, to try to make a defence for the GB. 
Different times, different situations.
Judas allowed himself to be misled by the devil, but it also seems it was necessary that the betrayer came from within. 
Maybe you should have quoted this bit as well. "Yet he gets kicked out by the other members of the GB for being an apostate."
Because it seems Raymond Franz didn't betray God or Jesus Christ.
Knowledge of such things is way over my head of course, so I don't know who was right in God's viewpoint.
But it does give a person reason to distrust the GB if RF wasn't found guilty of any real wrongdoing. 

Are you foreign that you do not understand English properly ? No disrespect if you are, but it would give me reason to know why you misinterpret  everything i  write.
It was / is the wicked angels, that is the devil and his demons,  that challenge God's sovereignty not me. I just stated the case....  
Hitler could not have done any of the wicked deeds without the majority of Germany backing him.  The  Germans may not have backed him because they wanted to, but maybe out of fear. Just as JW's serve the GB through the Elders, out of fear. 
Just as people come on here , this forum, but use pseudonyms, out of fear of being found out by the Elders.
Felix i see you are using the GB's idea of suggesting people are mentally unstable. Typical Watchtower doctrine. 
Sorry Admin but I'm just answering Felix. Perhaps Felix should start another topic of should i just ignore him ?  
But let's get back on topic. A question 
Is it a disfellowshipping offence to read Raymond Franz books, or to own them ? 

Who inspected the tightness of their trousers ?  No one. 
Who asked them if they masterbated and told them not to ? No one.
There were more important issues then. 
It seems as if there are no really important issues now, so the GB are making things up to keep themselves  busy. 
 
 

Are but who's choice of modesty ? Oh of course the GB's and the Elders.  
Maybe what Jehovah wants of every one is a bit of individuality.    
Are I've just noticed you say 'JW' standards, not God's standards. 

Then why is it asked in a judicial committee for apostasy if you believe that the gb is the faithful and discrete slave? 

Apparently, you must not have known the Franz’s as well as you claim including other governing body members. However, having read Raymond books, I can unequivocally state I reject the claims about the organization. Therefore, your argument is incorrect. Here is a man that found confusion with cynicism. Who put him up to it?
One area which is true would be how the POPE saw itself. In the beginning, they saw themselves as equal to Christ, thus being incapable of doing wrong. This, of course, is ludicrous since no one made the pope perfect. It doesn’t take Raymond’s books to bring to light something that should be already known to Christians. Therefore, a poor example.

Then you challenge God’s sovereignty and superiority. I would have to ask, who are you to challenge God? Are you Satan as the inference implies? Hitler was an evil man as a youth. That darkened heart continued to increase over the embarrassment of having his country lose a war and having Jews gain some control over the motherland. Therefore, the Hitler analogy is inadequate in how someone would blame an organization or society. Seems like an overreach bordering on mental instability.
 

Are you saying you don’t know why Judas was handpicked?
 Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. 69 We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
70 Jesus replied to them, “Didn’t I choose you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” 71 He was referring to Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son] one of the Twelve, because he was going to betray him.  John 6:68-71
 
While they were eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.”
22 Deeply distressed, each one began to say to him, “Surely not I, Lord?”
23 He replied, “The one who dipped his hand with me in the bowl—he will betray me. 24 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for him if he had not been born.”  Matt 26:21-24
 
His role was instrumental in fulfilling prophesy, and God who reads the heart thoroughly, could see clearly that Judas had already chosen his path, which was destruction. Are you equating this to the GB, or Raymond Franz as being “handpicked by Jesus” to do good, or evil?
We have full evidence that the disciples were inspired by Spirit. John 20:22;  Rom 8:5,9; 1 Cor 2:10  We don't have that evidence with the GB who must alter teachings continually.   We don't hear how the Spirit directs them, but that they are not "inspired"; so, instead, we hear how the GB put their heads together to come up with new decrees.  There is no comparison to the apostles.  Why make it?  
 
 

Getting back to the topic. I think R.Franz is a curious case in point. I do blame him for some of the child abuse problems because I think he was the person who would have invoked the two-witness rule into judicial matters that are too difficult to figure out through external knowledge and common sense alone. He seemed to have been the one assigned to most of the congregational judicial issues related to immorality. Didn't mean it was his decision, but he was the one assigned to find scriptural defenses for the way the rest of the GB had voted to handle things. He should have had the wherewithal to either speak up or leave the organization. Yet he stayed, and remained an elder, a JW in good standing, even after he was asked to resign from the Governing Body.

Point taken. Sorry. 

I should mention that these comments I had made were never made to defend R.Franz. In fact, as I recall, these comments were made under a different topic, and someone apparently moved them here because I happened to mention R.Franz in my response.
But back to your question that starts out with the words, "So if Raymond was a proven liar." I'm not sure what you are referring to. I've never heard anyone claim that R.Franz was a proven liar. If anyone ever said that, I'd be very interested in what they were referring to. It might be very useful to point to something inaccurate* in his book. I'm sure the average Witness who never knew him could easily get the idea he was "liar," but I have never heard anyone who knew him at Bethel ever say that anything in his book was inaccurate. Quite the opposite in fact.
[I found a couple inaccuracies, by the way, such as when in CoC, he mentioned that the Pope and bishops can speak as if they are "infallible" in the minds of Catholics. He should not have said "and bishops" unless he was referring only to previous "bishops of Rome," which are the popes.]
And by the way, R.Franz was an apostate. So if there was even one inaccuracy in any of his books, don't you think the Watchtower Society, or someone at least, should have pointed it out? What he exposed caused a lot of controversy. Pointing out even one inaccuracy would have helped quell the controversy and defend the Society.
But the problem, as best as I can see it, was not that he said anything untrue, but that his motive was to expose the human side of the organization and its decisions. It was to show how the Governing Body worked together at that time, and examples of how decisions and changes were made. And it showed its very human side, with its faults, mistakes, and interactions of personality. If you worked inside Bethel at that time and worked closely with several of the people he speaks about, you'd already know that his descriptions made perfect sense as they matched everything you could know about these persons. What none of us could know about, however, was what it was like inside any of those meetings of the Governing Body. And it turns out that it, if he is correct in his descriptions, then this is exactly what we would have expected anyway, knowing the personalities of these brothers as we saw and heard them acting and speaking on a daily basis. He speaks very kindly and respectfully of many of them. You can tell they were friends, just as you already knew if you were at Bethel at this time. But it becomes easy to understand how key decisions could be delayed or swayed by more outspoken and stronger personalities on the GB.
I don't know what you might mean here. No accounts were ever challenged, as far as I know. At least not by anyone who knew him. Especially not by Fred Franz, who knew him very well. If you have evidence to the contrary you should share it, especially because, as Witnesses, we don't want to be known for making false accusations.
Not at all. I just share what I know and what I think. And you can share what you know and what you think. That's how we learn. That's how forums such as this work. I would never want someone to trust my words and my words only.

No. [on the topic of never wanting to admit fault]
That comes from R.Franz in CoC. But nothing in CoC has ever been rebutted, and I have spoken to one member of the Governing Body who said that just because everything he said in the book was true, it's still poison, because the intent is to expose weakness, while love covers a multitude of sins. Two members of the Writing Department, not Governing Body, have said approximately the same thing. One said he never should have written the book, even though everything in it was true. Based on these words of people who worked with him, I find the book to be very credible from a factual standpoint. Also a "Public Relations" office person at Bethel, and personal friend of mine, has talked to me about things he said to outsiders (related to slight admissions of guilt on the part of the WTS in the past) that resulted in problems for himself among "higher-ups" at Bethel.
Also, the person supposedly behind this idea in R.Franz' book is the same person behind the exact same sentiment on never admitting a mistake in the area of child abuse, and I do know for a fact that he, this same GB member (Jaracz),  pulled an article from a magazine on the subject after it had gone to the presses, resulting in a delay for the final publication of that same issue with the article replaced.
Also, I was a "special request" tour guide for Bethel tours requested by outsiders who were not JWs, and who therefore might have included reporters unbeknownst to us. Therefore, I was personally given instructions by D.Sydlik and D.Songer and G.Couch about how to respond to questions that might seem like they are coming from someone who has no right to the answer. These included questions about an expensive press that had lost us millions of dollars and which we had finally decided to scrap, a similar situation with the early computer expenditures, and some bad press that the local Brooklyn Heights civic associations were evidently spreading about pollution fines we had to pay. When such questions came up, I was to say I didn't really know anything about these, even if I did, and if they came up more than once, I was to ask the appropriate persons mentioned above if there was a better answer. On the topic of paying fines for pollution from factory smokestacks, I was to say according to one of the brothers mentioned, that all factories, no matter how careful, will go over the limits now and then, but that the Watch Tower Society was scrutinized much more closely because there are those who are looking for bad press to pin on us. (I had no personal knowledge of any pollution, but I had heard the rumors, and the question was actually being asked.) But another person who was on the GB (Sydlik), when he heard about the suggested answer, was livid that it admitted error of any kind.
And, of course, I have previously mentioned an experience, in a rehearsal for Bethel's "Family Night," while sitting approximately between Bert Schroeder and Merton Campbell, when they decided to make an old brother change the quote in his experience from many years earlier when he said that Bethel factories were once given an award for having the second cleanest factories in Brooklyn, with only Squibb Pharmaceuticals coming in first place. For the actual Family Night production, Schroeder had it changed to: "Both factories received a rating of 100%."
The last two or three paragraphs just go to the credibility, in my opinion, of the tendency not to want to admit even the slightest error. This also fits the sometimes comical ways in which we "adjust" and "clarify" past doctrines so that they are more correct, even if they were ridiculously false in prior explanations. In an article about why we were completely dropping over one-hundred former doctrines, the Watchtower described it in typical fashion:
*** w15 3/15 pp. 8-10 pars. 6-10 “This Is the Way You Approved” ***
Third, consider some of our recent refinements in understanding. For example, our clarified understanding of “the faithful and discreet slave,”. . . . As we might expect, over the years Jehovah has helped “the faithful and discreet slave” to become steadily more discreet.  

Thank you John. I caught it off my husband, he is better now, and it's his turn to take care of me now 😁 . No, no. No visitors, I wouldn't want them  to catch anything!

I hope you get well soon and I hope some Sisters are visiting you to give you help and give you practical and spiritual support.
I've never owned a laptop, not would I. I'm sort of old school, I can only work on a big desktop computer with a big keyboard, and a nice size monitor. As for mobile phones / cell phones, mine only does calls and text, it again is 'old school'. I could never use one with lots of apps etc. I keep saying I'm a simple man of poor education, just being online is a big step for me.
Anna, keep up your prayers to God, and get well soon. 

I hope you get well soon and I hope some Sisters are visiting you to give you help and give you practical and spiritual support.
I've never owned a laptop, not would I. I'm sort of old school, I can only work on a big desktop computer with a big keyboard, and a nice size monitor. As for mobile phones / cell phones, mine only does calls and text, it again is 'old school'. I could never use one with lots of apps etc. I keep saying I'm a simple man of poor education, just being online is a big step for me.
Anna, keep up your prayers to God, and get well soon. 

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24
Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” John 11:40
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Mat 17:20
Then the apostles said to the Lord, “Give us more faith.” Luke 17:5
:))))) 

@JaocbI never thought about the option of providing several interpretations. That would have been a good idea. Do you have some in mind?
Personally my main worries with this new understanding is that it seems like a grasping at straws, a carrot on a stick, and an actual devaluation of Jesus' admonition to be ready at all times. It'seems putting a date (although it's not a literal date, it is a specific closed time period, so still really concerned with time) is making it easier for people to worship Jehovah for a 'date'. I for the life of me do not understand why the GB found the need to 'reinvent' this interpretation again. For the third time if I'm not mistaken. When this idea first appeared in broadcasting, with br. Splane 'masterfully' explaining it, I asked myself why?? Were many of the friends asking for an interpretation, therefor did the GB decide they have to come up with something? It didn't seem like it, because br. Splane didn't introduce it that way, and he would have done if it was the case. So why? 
This was really a pain to type as my phone keeps doing weird spell check in several languages. So I'm going to stop there, although it's driving me crazy, because I like to respond 
 

I'm not responding coz I'm sick in bed, and can't use my laptop coz it would mean I would have to unplug it, and the battery is dead so it would take ages to reboot and update. And so I am on my phone and its really a pain to type. So I'm just reading everything for now. You just wait! 😀

Oh very well. Wait for him to tap you on the shoulder, make that request, and then say “Okay.”

I am very very close to liking one of Jack’s contributions. However I note that the ‘tight pants sinful brother’ looks somewhat like his profile pic. I need some time to process that.