Let's pause a moment and consider the actual history of the Watchtower Society.
Until his death, Pastor C.T.Russell was the driving force behind the publication of the Watchtower. Russell controlled it and made provisions in his will for what would happen to the Watchtower in the event of his death. Russell's writings, theology, teachings, predictions and intentions were attractive to those who joined his Bible Students movement.
Fred Franz signed on as a baptised adherent of Russellism in 1913 because he was strongly attracted and persuaded by Russell's message.
Franz knew Russell for three years until the Pastor's death in 1916.
Franz was ambitious to become a Presbyterian minister. Russell had been reared in a Scottish Presbyterian household. Both Franz and Russell were attracted to logical arguments which deconstructed scripture into current event urgency for the impending fulfillment of prophetic apocalyptic ends.
Pyramidology, Dispensational charts and Gentile Times explanations appealed to both men in a strong and lasting way. There was a naive superstitious gullibility in their psychology. Russell laid out every piece of the jigsaw puzzle in his Studies in the Scriptures and planned to open up Revelation in the final volume. Fred Franz had studied New Testament Greek in college--but--due to Russell's prophetic predictions about the urgency of 1914--Franz dropped out of college and became a Full Time Pioneer.
This is noteworthy for two reasons.
Franz had been nominated as an outstanding student for a Rhodes Scholarship. Had Franz remained in college, this prestigious scholarship might well have been awarded to him. Yet, ambitious as he was, Franz's True Believer psychology drove him to warn as many people as he could in the colporteur (Pioneer) work that Armageddon was about to occur. (According to Russell's theology.)
Further, the uncanny excitement of being on the cusp of such a revelatory work while assisting the Faithful, Discreet Slave himself must have appealed mightily!
When Pastor Russell suddenly died on a train in Pampas, Texas before the final book was finished (Finished Mystery), it was 2 years past the designated date for Armageddon! 1914 came and went. Now it was 1916. Had Russell made some marginal error? Was there some missing element overlooked? Would the work continue?
Judge Rutherford stepped in and completely violated Pastor Russell's last Will and Testament. Russell expressly mandated that NO FURTHER WRITINGS were to issue from the point of his death under the ageis of the Watchtower. Russell listed who the men would be to succeed him in adminstering his writings and designated their office and duties. Rutherford pulled the rug out from under these men and set himself as the controlling agent.
Within the next 10 years, 78% of the Bible Students would leave never to return or to become (eventually) Rutherford's newly coined Jehovah's Witnesses. The thrust of the new message was mean-spirited, contrarian and insubordinate. It was provocative and brought down considerable backlash on the rank and file from imprisonments to deaths by medical refusal. Franz watch this unfold with approval and keen interest.
Fred Franz is among the very few who stayed and signed on in a show of solidarity with Rutherford in creating events that would publicize the new Religion and greatly stimulate the work of the Watchtower. It was a provocative religion of refusniks who dug in their heels and jeered at governments to come and get them. Supreme Court decisions were handed down and the waters seemed to part in the face of their obstinancy.
In the 1940's, brothers were receiving life sentences for refusal to accept draft notices in defense of America. Door to door work had to be licensed with peddler's permits. Suddenly, all this changed! Activism on the part of the Watchtower seemed to change day into night and water into wine. Fred Franz saw it happened. He knew what it meant. They could (with Jehovah's power behind them) dictate world events.
The Finished Mystery book had been released with ghost-written finishing chapters, theology and predictions wildly contrasting Russell's own temperment and policies. The manipulations in this book stirred up enough hatred against theologians, churches and governmental authorities that the society's leaders were arrested and placed in prison.
Wikipedia article:
Although Pastor Russell's expected seventh volume to his Studies in the Scriptures textbook series was not written during his lifetime, a seventh volume was published in 1917, and was advertised by the Watch Tower Society as his posthumous work. It was received with great skepticism by many Bible Students who felt that the tone and spirit of the book was overly harsh, as well as contrary to the spirit in which Russell had wrote during his ministry. Questions were also raised regarding predictions made in the book for the years 1918, 1919, and 1925. This seventh volume (entitled The Finished Mystery) included strong criticism of the Papacy and the existing Christian religious system and hierarchy. This prompted clergy pressure for government censure and in 1918 he served an imprisonment together with seven other associates in Atlanta, Georgia, for allegedly opposing the Selective Service Act of 1917 and the Espionage Act of 1917.
It is noteworthy that Fred Franz was undoubtedly impressed by what Rutherford was able to achieve in the face of such opposition.
Rutherford single-handedly wrested control of a religion away from its founder, superceded the theology of the founder, made predictions of his own, alienated christendom and brought the full retribution of the Government down own his head---yet--astoundingly EMERGED UNSCATHED!
Can there be any doubt Fred Franz drank this all in and made a mental "note to self" what could be achieved? It must have seemed absolutely obvious that Jehovah was the power behind world events which could BE PRECIPITATED by the Watchtower Society's own writings and activities on earth.
Franz must have determined he was the instrument by which Jehovah's will could be done and set his mind to briging it to fruition.
In latter years, Franz was much older and time was running out for him to see the fulfillments he'd long written about in his books and articles.
Is it any wonder he might step into the role of agent provocateur and stir the pot as he had seen Rutherford do?
Be mindful that Charles Taze Russell was the Faithful and Discreet Slave when Fred Franz dropped out of college to ride the whirlwind into Armageddon. Now, decades later, Franz had engineered the mantle of FDS onto a body of elders in the Governing Body itself which HE HIMSELF was the senior member and chief intellectual vanguard.
Franz had made it to the top of the "pyramid", so to speak and could now engender world events himself just as Pastor Russell had tried and Judge Rutherford had succeeded in doing.
Thus it was, Fred Franz became the architect of the greatest debacle in the modern history of Jehovah's Witnesses. He masterminded the run of hysteria up to the world shaking End of 6,000 years of Human History with his own slapdash chronology charts and "absolute" dates which made 1975 the threshold of Armageddon itself!! Franz, in effect, cut-and-pasted previous patterns into a seemingly improved one.
Franz himself woul make it happen by triggering the mad, impetuous worldwide proclamation of utter jack-assery. For this, he was rewarded some few years later with the Presidency of the Watchtower Society.
The manifest humiliation of the Society and the revelation of the Governing Body as nitwits who rubber-stamped a fiasco is his greatest lasting achievement.
Why?
It signalled to thousands of gape-jawed rank and file members that the FDS might possibly be full of hot air. This led to private investigations of the chronology and theology behind the Watchtower. Eventually, Franz's nephew Raymond would leave, be disfellowshipped and go on to write the most clinical exfoliation of Watchtower insanity the world had ever seen.
For this, at least, we can all be grateful.
...OUTLAW