Thirty Years a Watch Tower Slave

by Londo111 24 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Londo111

  I just finished reading this and enjoyed it. However, if I was newly awakening or on the verge of awakening, I don’t think this book would have helped me a great deal. Brother Schnell has some good thoughts, however, he is short on detail and description, and even shorter on proof and documentation.

  It is interesting reading about the transition of the Bible Students from a small group of independent noncomformists into an Organization characterized by total conformity. Rutherford experimented first in Germany, and then more slowly implemented his vision in America.

  It was interesting seeing history I’ve read about in the publications…but from another angle. Reading about the caning of protestors at Madison Square Gardens was jaw dropping. In the 30’s and 40’s, JWs were thrown into harm’s way for the purpose of raising publicity, appearing to be persecuted, and taking cases to court. Oftentimes, the Watchtower seemed to bait towns and public officials for their own agenda. The “opponents” would fall for it and play into the Watchtower’s hands. Thus, they would win. That is food for thought…often, I wonder if we need to be on guard so that we do not repeat these same mistakes.

  I would have loved more detail around the tactics used against Schnell and his book business in the late 40’s. The topic of spying, of course, is brought up much earlier, but in particular, the threats and harassment he faced seem comparable to what goes on in Scientology today. Many people say that Scientology is the Watchtower on steroids…maybe the Watchtower was equally as vicious at this time.

  Schnell briefly mentions those in Ohio who were disfellowshipping and reinstated, this in the late 30’s. Therefore, evidently disfellowshipping was not a later invention.

  Does anyone know what became of Schnell after 1971?
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  Xanthippe

  I don't know what happened to him Londo. I read it in 1974 when I wa sixteen, my mother was horrified. All I remember was that he seemed to be very bitter but then I was a born-in mind controlled JW. Obviously I wish I had left then.
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  Still Totally ADD

  The only time I heard of the book was in the late 70's. I was out in field service and the householder brought out this book and ask me what I thought of it. I looked at the title of the book and told the householder the person must not of been very smart if it took him 30 years to figure he did not want to be a JW. Then I told him every religion has people who are not happy in what they are in. This was at a time I was a total robot of the JW cult and I was very happy with my answer. If I only knew back then. Things would have been diffrent. I would think the person who wrote the book has died by now if not he is very old. That's all I know. Still Totally ADD
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  minimus

  I read his book decades ago. I never thought he sounded as bitter as some have suggested.

  Google him for more info.
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  designs

  William Schnell also wrote- Into The Light of Christianity.

  People like he and the Cetnar's seemed to never get over religion's pull.
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  Londo111

  I'm such a rebel on this forum...that’s one thing I appreciated about the book.

  Of course, I didn’t agree with all his views. For instance, that the Watchtower is the Wild Beast. I find it hard to believe he literality believed that or simply was using that as a trope. I did wonder if it were from the idealism eschatological viewpoint.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism_(Christian_eschatology)
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  edmond dantes

  Way back when that book was written there was hardly any hard information about the errors and damage that the Watchtower Org. created I first saw it in our local Library and I was warned off reading it but thankfully I did manage to read it and its contents made me realise the Watchtower was not all it claimed to be.

  The book that clinched it for me was another book he wote called INTO THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIANITY not that I agreed with everything he expounded but it certainly started me thinking that all was not well in Watchtower land .

  I think he died of a heart attack eventually around about the 1970s.
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  minimus

  I brought back William Schnell's thread , now on this page, by Kenneson.
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  Londo111

  E-gad! Browsing his second book online, I see he became a proponent of eternal torment. He seems to take a fundamentalist approach, leading to atrocious thoughts.
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  Bungi Bill

  " Thirty Years a Watch Tower Slave" is not excactly a great work of literature,to put it diplomatically.

  Certainly, if I was a "still in" JW and reading that for the first time, it would have motivated me not at all.

  If there is such a thing as the proverbial "hate-spewing bitter apostate", then Schnell would have to be it. (Either that, or he did a bloody good job of acting the part of such a personage!)

  As to what happened to W. Schnell:

  -admittedly this is hearsay, but I was told in the early 1980s that he had recently died "in a psychiatric hospital."

  Of course, to the JWs who passed on this news, the location of his death somehow completely negated everything he had written in "Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave."

  My greatest criticism of this work is its lack of documentary evidence to back up Schnell's claims and accusations. Anybody can get up and say anything, but proving it is another matter. This is particularly important when the writer is obviously bitter in the extreme. That, coupled with the complete lack of documentary evidence to their claims does make you wonder as to the accuracy of some of their more extreme statements.

  (A Japanese proverb goes something like this "If you are starting to believe everything that is written, then it is time you gave up reading!")

  Interestingly, W.C. Stevenson, in his 1967 work on JWs "1975 - Year of Doom", held Schnell's work in low esteem. (As well as having held such positions as "Circuit Servant" while a JW, Stevenson had also majored in English at one of the Oxbridge universities in England. He therefore would have had a fair idea of what constitutes a good work of literature - and of what constitutes something indifferent).

  Bill.