Again, I bring you another heart wrenching experience. From the book In Search of Chritian Freedom, Raymond Franz, Commentary Press, Pages 353-356.
You new ones here, ask yourselves....Is this the kind of love that Jesus would have show man?
This is long. Please prepare yourself for what you are about to read.
You have been warned...
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Since all disfellowshiping actions are reported to the headquarters organization, it is not unaware of what is happening. The pathetic case of Percy Harding illustrates this, for it took place virtually on the international headquarters' doorstep. In 1910, when about twenty years old, Percy, a native of western Canada, began reading the writings of Pastor Russell and in six months had read some 3,000 pages of material. He resigned from the Protestant church of which he was a member and found himself totally alone in his new belief among his townspeople. He began "witnessing" and formed two groups in the area and held baptisms at a nearby river. He writes:
In 1918 I quit a good job to become a colporteur. My territory covered hundreds of square miles, mostly along the railways, from southern Alberta to the Pacific coast. I also covered the country territory on foot, carrying two small bags of books. Often I walked as much as 15 to 25 miles a day.
After seven years of this activity, on May 25, 1925, he went to Brooklyn, New York, to serve at the Watch Tower headquarters. After about four years, the attitude developing under the presidency of Rutherford, and the conduct of some exercising oversight left Percy disillusioned. In 1929 he terminated his work at the headquarters.
Despite this, he remained associated and active with the same congregation in Brooklyn for the following fifty-six years. Of what then happened he writes:
From May, 1925, until December, 1981, I remained in the same congregation until I was disfellowshiped for talking about God's Word to a few of my friends. This was unbelievable, and, so far as the Society is concerned, a disgraceful performance. The judicial committee had a letter from another board of elders in a different congregation. They had disfellowshiped a friend of mine. They questioned him at length about other people he had talked to about the Bible. He caved in and told them, mentioning my name among others. So this letter from the elders, including things I and others had said, was presented to me with a request that I comment on it. I told the committee that I had nothing to say, that what went on between me and my friends was strictly a private matter and was nobody else's business. They promised me a copy of the letter, but I never received it.
Then they started asking questions, the most important being, "Do you believe that the Society is God's organization and that it is bringing forth truth?" So I said, "There is nothing in God's Word to indicate that God ever used an ‘organization' to bring forth truth. From Moses, down through all the prophets to John and the Revelation, it was always an individual."
There were three committee meetings, the last being at Bethel. The night I was disfellowshiped, Harry Peloyan [a long-time member of the Watch Tower's writing staff] made a speech at the Kingdom Hall, bringing a charge that was not even discussed in any of the committee meetings, that of disrupting the unity of the congregation. He misused 2 John 10, 11, in instructing 175 people to cut me cold. After the meeting everyone filed out, passing me by like I was a leper.
Percy was 91 years old and in poor health. Whether one may consider his understanding of certain scriptures as correct or mistaken, the fact remains that the issue arose, not because he was creating a disturbance, one that was congregationally evident, but because of private conversations with friends. No one in the congregation had complained of his being an "agitator" and the matter became an issue only as the result of a letter from another congregation that initiated investigation and interrogation by elders into his private remarks on Scriptural subjects among personal friends. (Compare the accusation against the apostle Paul and his defense at Acts 24:5-13.) On a trip to the northeast in 1982, I visited Percy Harding at his home on 6th Street in Brooklyn. He sat, seemingly dwarfed by the large chair, a small, frail-looking man obviously weakened by age and illness.
I asked myself how anyone in his right mind could view a person like that, having no position or particular influence, as constituting such a danger that, despite his some seventy years of association, it was deemed necessary that he be disfellowshiped and cut off from all his lifetime associates. I thought that an organization must be extremely unsure of itself, feel an incredible sense of vulnerability, to ever consider such a frail, aged man as a threat. Concerning the effect the disfellowshiping had on his personal circumstances, he writes:
Before this there were two [Witness] nurses who visited me, almost every week. They did some things for me that I was unable to do for myself, and, more importantly, they were on call if I needed them. Since I will be 92 years old on August 18, who knows when an emergency may arrive? After I was disfellowshiped, I called one of the nurses. Her husband answered the phone and said, "Ann is not allowed to talk to you.” Let me say again that the only thing the elders have against me is that I talked to a few of my friends about the Bible.
In my conversations with Percy I found him to be a blunt-speaking man. He may well have been quite blunt in his discussions with the elders who judged him. But even if he had been more than blunt-had been caustic, even cantankerous-how could that possibly justify cutting off a 91-year-old man, single, ill, with no relatives within hundreds of miles, writing him off, along with his over seventy years of active association, as someone now to be ignored and forgotten? What heinous crime had he committed that could justify this? I find it difficult to understand how anyone claiming to be a disciple of the true Shepherd of the sheep, Jesus Christ, could be party to such an action, one that in my mind merits no less description than heartless. Yet, as stated, it took place on the very "doorstep" of the world headquarters of the Watch Tower Society.
Percy is now dead, having died in his sleep on February 3, 1984. During the twenty-five months following his disfellowshipment, not a single person from the congregation with which he had been associated for 56 years came to see him or inquire of his needs.
-Zev
-August 8th, 2001 - The day the lambs ROARED