Yeah, the WT GB certainly wasn't anythign like the heads of the worldwide chruch of God, that's for sure.
Can we get a copy of that commentary on James?
Commentary on the Letter of James
by lepermessiah 52 Replies latest jw friends
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JWoods
Ed tried to be a reformer. It didn't work.
Ray Franz, and a very few others too.
BTW, Ed told me at the time (1978 or so) that he was hoping the society would do a book like James on each book of the NT over time and get away from stuff like "Babylon the Great has Fallen", etc. Sort of a hope for a more fundamental writing style, and a simpler WTS doctrine.
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winstonchurchill
JWoods: 100% agreed. You confirm what I thought. It was always obvious to me it he (as many others) had growing doubts. And yes, it comes across as very honorable and loyal not to let those doubts show in the books. That speaks volumes of him.
That's my point: The books don't reflect a comma of 'apostate thinking'; they quarantined those two excellent books only because Dunlap wrote them. In my view they were not written by an apostate, but by a sincere JW wth doubts.
Ans yes, they are different because they are so non-WT. I'm convinced most JW's really enjoy the "the-end-is-near" "Satan-is-bad-God-is-Good" "do-more" "We-are-good" "the-rest-of-the-world-is-evil" Koolaid.
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TD
Similarly, Insight On The Scriptures in it's approach at least, was head and shoulders above anything the JW's had published at the time.
Weren't all three of those most directly responsible for this book charged with apostasy?
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JWoods
Quite so, WinstonChurchill - and you have to remember that this was done in the immediate post-1975 era, in which the JW world suffered several years of slowdown and growth reversal due to the failed Freddy Franz end prophecy.
People like Ed and Ray really thought that pulling back on the end is near, second prophetic fulfillment, hardline etc. stuff would be healing to an abused rank and file. In fact, they thought there was an opportunity to take JW-ism closer to a sort of purely christian theology. Ed, for example, while never a trinitarian - toward the end of his life had totally rejected the vestiges of Arianism and Jehovah-worship in the WT doctrine. He even made the comment that we should really not think of the YHWH god figure in terms other than what Jesus pictured in the NT. (in other words, he was moving away from the warlike JW Jehovah image).
But of course, there were too many entrenched GB people as related in the Franz COC to stand for any realistic reform of the society.
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marcopolo
it is strange that has not removed this book comment to Giacomo, with "auxiliary to understand the Bible" this write ray, them has did , been removed and put perspicacity,
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JWoods
it is strange that has not removed this book comment to Giacomo, with "auxiliary to understand the Bible" this write ray, them has did , been removed and put perspicacity,
I don't quite know what that meant, but IF it meant "why didn't the WTS just ban the commentary on James", I think that they were afraid to. I.E.- that they did not want to admit that they had released a book "while the GB was constantly under the spirit" which could be suspected of being apostate. Anyway, as was discussed above - the book itself really didn't say anything blatantly "apostate" - it was just pretty much a plain commentary on the book of James. We might also remind ourselves that the rank & file JW probably does not know that Ed wrote it - they have since the Rutherford days been very circumspect about who authored what. Most of us here only knew because of the "apostate underground" or books like COC.
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undercover
Ed told me at the time (1978 or so) that he was hoping the society would do a book like James on each book of the NT over time and get away from stuff like "Babylon the Great has Fallen", etc. Sort of a hope for a more fundamental writing style, and a simpler WTS doctrine.
I remember when it came out and there was some talk of starting a series of books in the same format. I liked it. I was looking forward to more. And then it never happened. It wasn't until I faded and started independant research that I learned some of the things mentioned in this thread about Dunlap and this book.
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Dogpatch
I was at Bethel when in 1979-era we had our usual Bethel Family formal Watchtower study, where in the evening (Mondays) we used to all get together, and a Bethel elder would handle it just like a Watchtower Study in the Kingdom Hall on Sundays. The Great Apostasy had begun under their noses, not by what Dunlap put IN the Commentary on James book that was wrong teaching, but by LEAVING OUT any distinction between the anointed and Great Crowd. This went unnoticed through proofreading and publishing simply because they all knew that there was nothing Biblically wrong with what the book said! It was that it OMITTED that all the wonderful promises were only for a few. No hints at apostasy or clever words. An evangelical Christian could read it and probably have no real objections, because it was so obvious that it matched the Bible.
The GB was PISSED OFF (especially Grant Suiter, who was leading the WT Study) because the Writing Dept. didn't catch the fact that Dunlap didn't give the ordinary warning that this applied only to the special anointed class! Very few in the Bethel family caught the meaning of Suiter's next slowly-but-spoken-very-intently statement, after a brother had read an assigned paragraph in the Watchtower study that echoed the same omission as the Commentary On James book, "And brothers, we all know that this applies to WHOM????"
I almost gagged on the spot because some of us knew EXACTLY what he was trying to counteract. You could hear a PIN DROP for about 3 seconds, then a brother raised his hand and said that it applied to the anointed only.
They were so paranoid that this was some sort of conspiracy to overthrow the organization, when in fact none of us wanted to leave or take over, just to accept what the Bible said and not all this old-man ego crap. ("We are the anointed, and you are our underlings, so keep the distinction straight." )
I lost all respect for these Governing Body members because they were acting like children in a playground, complete with bullying, name-calling and shunning. That's when I knew I had to leave Bethel. The leadership needed their diapers changed.
Dunlap speaks:
http://freeminds.org/category/6-mp3s-voice-podcasts.html
Freddy, Klein and the Apostate Books
Randy Watters
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TD
it is strange that has not removed this book comment to Giacomo, with "auxiliary to understand the Bible" this write ray, them has did , been removed and put perspicacity,
Is that, "Aid To Bible Understanding" forerunner of the Insight book?