"Who are you to judge the house servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for Jehovah can make him stand. ..So then each of us will render an account for himself to God" (Roma 14:4,12) That 's the freedom of Christian, which Ray Franz mentions about.
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To the question: Would he ever return . . .?Some people ask is there any possibility that Ray Franz might ever return to Jehovah's Witnesses? To one individual, who raised the question as to any possibility of him returning to the Witness organization if some major reform took place, he responded as follows:
. . . As for my contemplating any return to the Watch Tower organization, there is not even a remote possibility of their taking the radical action you describe, and even if there were I have no interest in becoming part of a religious system again. The foundational beliefs of the organization are seriously flawed and cosmetic changes will never alter that foundation. The spirit that has been developed by the intense and constant emphasis on organization is a very unhealthy one and one that diverts attention from God's Son and God's Holy Spirit, causing members to focus largely on the human element, to their own spiritual detriment. The arrogating to a human system rights and privileges which properly rest only in God's Son is probably the most serious wrong committed. Secondly, there is the depriving of the individual of a true sense of personal relationship with God and Christ, the usurping of the proper exercise of individual conscience as a consequence of the imposition of innumerable rules and regulations of purely human origin. This produces a situation like that described at Matthew 15:9, one disturbingly like that of the Pharisees of the first century. They could not make the fundamental changes needed without ceasing to be the organization they are. Christianity is, or should be, a brotherhood, not a structured society subject to a centralized administration.
Ray comments that he could always enjoy meeting with and talking with the people themselves in an atmosphere of freedom, but that he has no interest in ever forming part of some institutionalized religious system again.
Spanish translation
Portuguese translation
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Edited by - jwsons on 16 August 2002 0:0:27
Edited by - jwsons on 16 August 2002 5:1:6
