I would be interested to hear Ray Franz' comment on the green handshake thing. I don't recall him ever mentioning it, but with the position he once held it no doubt happened.
Fred Franz, the Weird Speaker from Brooklyn
by VM44 31 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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ninja
I'd give them all a green handshake alright......just wait till I wipe my nose on my palms
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steve2
He might have had a lot of things to say to the Heavenly Father but the Heavenly Father had only three words to say to him: Go to hell.
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MissingLink
We once had a TWO HOUR watchtower study conducted by our PO who all the other elders were afraid of. Dude was old and losing it and completely lost track of the clock. Nobody had the guts to go up and tell him to sit down. Everyone stopped commenting out of protest, we all wanted to get out of there. The PO kept going, asking and answering all the questions himself. People were walking out. It was painful.
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Seeker4
I heard Freddie many times, from 1963 on. Even got to be on the program with him a few times. He was a god to most JWs, and certainly to me for many years. He was the WTS's resident genius, as far as most of us ere concerned. We were certain he would survive Amageddon.
He had a phenomenal memory. BUT, I was working in the Chairman's office as assistant at one district convention where we had Fred Franz as a speaker. The talk he gave was a big change at the time for WTS teaching. For the life of me, I can't remember the change, but it was a convention in Massachusets.
Fred gave his talk, and the Chairman and I were following along with the manuscript. I was next to the stage and supposed to fill in if Fred died or something.
Anyway, we realized that, though he may have memorized the manuscript, in fact, he skipped an entire page of the talk.
What were we going to do? The Chairman decided we'd do nothing, just wait for the WT to come out with the study article that covered the talk and let that handle things.
S4
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yadda yadda 2
I guess being a virgin all your life and not even being allowed to masturbate once in a while will make you a bit weird somehow.
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willyloman
"In the USA, under the present tax laws, a person can receive up to $10,000 in cash gifts per year from any other individual tax-free."
For the record, because of inflation this figure is periodically raised by the IRS. It is now $12,000.
And, yes, I'll vouch for the green handshakes. There are some circuits much in demand by COs because of the widespread generosity within. And in almost every circuit, there is at least one congregation where the CO can count on a large infusion of cash from someone, or several someones. Some gigs are much better than others, as you might imagine.
One CO I knew well served a circuit in one of the western states in the U.S. in which congregations almost competed to outdo one another in terms of gifts. One took him skiing at all the world class resorts. Another took him shopping and bought him new suits while sisters took his wife to high-end stores for clothes and shoes. And they had ridiculous amounts of cash bestowed upon them. It broke his heart to be transfered out to a much lower-income circuit in the plains states where they sometimes had to write home for money.
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truman
I once attended a talk given by Fred Franz. It was supposed to be a 45 minute event. He spoke for nearly 3 hours. I can't recall a single thing he said.
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Leolaia
I have a talk by Fred Franz on my computer, delivered in 1971. It is 113 minutes in length, just a few minutes shy of 2 hours.
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Leolaia
In minimus' "Welcome Newbies" thread, villabollo made reference to Fred Franz' talk about 1975 when through some tortured logic he started talking about bestiality. How did Freddy wander from talking about Armageddon and 1975 to bestiality to Adam having a male companion in Eden to Jesus' ransom sacrifice? I wrote up a transcript of that portion from the crazy talk (from February 1975 at the LA Coliseum) for your edification here:
We're not saying that by the end of this year 1975 all these things cannot take place, that God cannot bring all these things about. He can. He's Almighty. And this Omnipotent one can bring this about in a hurry if he wants to so. But in view of what the Scriptures inform us, are we warranted in expecting so much to occur by September 5, 1975? Does September 5th at sundown when the year 1976 will begin, lunar time, mean that it is the time for the Thousand Year Reign of Jesus Christ to begin? And accordingly, does it mean that we are 6,000 years advanced into the seventh creative day, the rest day of Jehovah God, his rest day? No. Not according to this book and what has been published since. Why do we say that? Well, all this book says is that 1975 marks the end of the six one-thousandth year of man's existence. That period of time, those six one-thousand year days which man has survived till now, began when? They began on, on the sixth creative day of God. They began when Adam was created, the first man.
We turn to Genesis, chapter 1. And our morning text is right to the point; it quotes Genesis 1:26, where God speaks to his companion workmate and he says, "Let us make man in our image according to our likeness." That's what the morning text says. But the verse 26 goes on to say: "And let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens, and every moving thing that is moving on the earth." And verse 27 proceeds to say: "So God created man in his image according to his likeness, in male and female," not male alone, but male and female he created man, "and God blessed them and God said to them, 'Become fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens, and every moving thing that is living on the ground." So God produced male and female and married them, gave them their commission, and this occurred when? On the sixth creative day, because the last verse of Genesis 1, verse 31 says: "After that," after all of this creative work, "God saw everything he made, and look, it was very good," which meant that it was a work perfectly done, his activity is perfect, Deuteronomy 32:4 says, "Look it was very good," and everything he created up to then included male and female of the human species. And then the closing sentence of the first chapter says, "And the evening and the morning came to be, the sixth day."
So it isn't as it used to be thought, that Adam was created on the sixth day and when he was created the sixth day end and then Eve was created in the beginning of the seventh day. No, the Bible doesn't put it that way. That both female and male were created on the sixth thousand year day of Jehovah God. But the point is this -- were the male and the female created instantly at the same time, simultaneously? If they were created simultaneously at the same instant of time, then 1975 would mark the end of the sixth one thousandth year day of human existence, including the existence of Eve, the woman, the female, as well as Adam, the male, the man. But is that the case? No. To find out whether Adam and Eve, the male and female, according to Genesis chapter 1 were created simultaneously, we have to turn to the second chapter, and there we are given more details on the matter. Verse 7 goes on to say that "God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man came to be a living soul. And God took the man whom he had formed and put him in the Garden of Eden," the paradise of pleasure, "to and to cultivate it," he gave him a job to do. Now this account shows us that the man, the male, was all alone for a while. The only human occupant of the Garden of Eden, the paradise of pleasure.
And we know this to be the case, because it says that after that God caused all the animals to be brought before Adam, to name them. So to name them, characteristically, he had to observe them and their habits, their appearance, and give them a fitting name. And the Bible says, "And whatever Adam called that animal, that was its name." That took time, wouldn't it? It wouldn't be done in a day, this bringing of all the animals before the first man and his inspecting them and giving them an appropriate name, it must've taken time. It doesn't necessarily mean that God brought before Adam all the varieties of every species of animals and flying creatures. No, it doesn't necessarily mean that but it means that he brought him specimens of each species of animalkind. And when he was naming the specimen, he was naming the whole species, like the dog family and the cat family, and so on. And how long did this take? Not necessarily a very long time, all depending upon the speed with which God brought the species before Adam to deal with. In the case of Noah, he was told to bring all the animals into the ark, wasn't he? And he likewise to take specimens of the animals, of many varieties, but he took specimens of all these animals kinds into the ark, and it only took him a week to do that.
And so possibly Adam could have likewise named all of the animals inside of a week, getting fully acquainted with them. But the Bible is not specific on how much time it took. But it comes to this conclusion: That Adam, after he had named all these specimens of animals brought before him found in none of them a suitable companion for himself. And likely he felt lonely, and he desired a companion. True, he was having companionship with God, but God was in the invisble realm, and they had a loving family conversing between themselves, the Father speaking out of heaven to his son Adam, and Adam replying from earth to his unseen heavenly Father; there was a close loving bond between them. But yet right here on this earth visibly there was no suitable companion for man. And man in his holiness, his innocence, his righteousness was not disposed to commit bestiality, which the Bible condemns -- sexual contact of humans with the beasts of the earth.
And God saw the state of affairs, and therefore he proceeded to say, "It is not good man to be by himself alone. I will create a helper for him, a complement of him." So God proceeded to create something, the sixth creative day was not yet ended. What did he create? He could have created another man, another perfect man like Adam, and that man would have been a fine companion for Adam to have, he could have had pleasant conversation and communication and association between themselves. But in that case, if the earth was to be filled with humans, God would have to make a direct creation of each additional man until the whole earth was filled. And then if there was sin that entered into the world, if all these men -- inhabitants of the earth -- were sinning, God would have to provide an individual ransom for each and every one of those sinful men.
Classic Freddy, huh?