During our nearly five years there, we saw the fall of four separate governments and in April of 1965 experienced a war that centered around the capital where we were located. Most Americans and other foreign residents fled the country. Our missionary group felt no inclination to abandon the Dominican Jehovah’s Witnesses and our assignment, and so we learned what war-time life is like.
Army tank across the street from the missionary home.
Nights were filled with the crack of hundreds of rifles, the rattle of machine guns, the boom of bazookas and other heavier weapons. Lulls came in the fighting during the day and we were able to get outside and carry on some activity, though sometimes almost pinned down by the eruption of gunfire. To this day I have wondered just how close bullets must come for the distinct buzzing sound like that of angry bees to be heard as they fly past your head. One soldier comfortingly told me, “There’s no need to worry about those. You won’t hear the one that hits you.”
The remaining fifteen years of full-time service were quite different, as they were spent at the international headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. My reason for describing in some detail the earlier years up to 1965 is that their content seems to be more of the fabric (though greatly inferior in quality) of the experiences the apostle focuses on in setting forth the evidence of the genuineness of his service to God and Christ, saying:
We prove we are servants of God by great fortitude in times of suffering: in times of hardship and distress.
In the words that follow, he makes no mention of his speeches, gives no figures of great audiences he addressed, cites no examples of organizational feats in building up large numbers of believers.19
I make no claim that what I went through was any more than what many others have experienced, either as missionaries of Jehovah’s Witnesses or of other religions. The record is simply set out for the reader to decide upon its relative worth, particularly as regards assessing the validity and integrity of the information supplied in the rest of this publication.
CIRCUMSTANCES AND CONSEQUENCES
We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.
— Acts 4:20, Revised Standard Version.
What I saw, heard and experienced during the next fifteen years had a great impact on me. Whether the reaction of the reader will coincide with mine, I have no way of knowing, but one thing is certain and that is that no one could understand what brought me to a crisis situation without knowing these developments. The proverb is apt: “When anyone is replying to a matter before he hears it, that is foolishness on his part and a humiliation.”20
The year before the war in the Dominican Republic, and following an attack of dengue fever which left my nerve endings hypersensitive, I had attended a ten-month course at Gilead School.21 At the close, the Society’s president, N. H. Knorr, asked me to leave my missionary service in the Caribbean and come with my wife to the international headquarters (called “Bethel”) in Brooklyn, where I would serve in the Writing Department. Though doubtless this would have been viewed as an honor by others, I frankly had no interest in leaving the place where I was. Speaking to Brother Knorr in his office I explained how much I enjoyed my current assignment, enjoyed the people, enjoyed the work. This apparently was viewed as a lack of appreciation for the opportunity offered; he seemed visibly offended. I then told him I simply had wanted him to know my feelings, my love for missionary activity, and that I would accept the change of assignment.
A few months after our arrival and after I had done some work in writing, President Knorr showed me into an office containing a table piled high with stacks of typed papers and asked me to undertake the development of a Bible dictionary. The papers were the result of assignments that had been parceled out to 250 men around the world. Those assignments, however, were generally made on the basis of the person’s organizational position (as Branch Office personnel, factory overseers, and so forth). Few of the men had writing experience and fewer still had either the experience, the time or the library facilities for doing research. I believe it can be conservatively said that at least ninety percent of the submitted material was not used.
I began with “Aaron” and continued with “Aaronites,” “Ab,” “Abaddon,” and so on but the impracticality of one writer undertaking the task soon became obvious. First, a director of the Watch Tower Society, Lyman Swingle, was assigned to aid in the project; shortly thereafter Edward Dunlap, the Registrar of Gilead School was also assigned. Eventually Reinhard Lengtat and John Wischuk, of the Service and Writing Departments respectively, joined the project group. Others shared intermittently for varying periods but the five persons mentioned carried the project through until the 1,696-page reference work, called Aid to Bible Understanding, was completed five years later.22
Near the start, President Knorr made a statement that proved a key factor in our approach to the project. It was not intended the way we understood it but that undoubtedly was fortuitous. Talking to those of us then assigned, he said, “We just want to present what the Bible says; there is no need to look up everything in the Society’s publications.”
His intent in saying this, as we realized later, was so that the project could get done quickly and so that it would produce something relatively small, a “handbook” as he later expressed it. By just restating what was in the particular Bible verses relating to a subject, with very little additional clarification, there would be only a minimal amount of time needed for research.
We misunderstood him to mean that we should strive always to present what the Bible actually said rather than feel obliged to present things the way the Watch Tower publications presented them. A considerably different kind of publication resulted than would otherwise have been the case. The material sent in by the 250 men almost without exception presented information according to the “accepted viewpoint” of the Society’s publications. Our research often revealed differences.
The Society’s vice president, Fred Franz, was acknowledged as the organization’s principal Bible scholar. On a number of occasions I went to his office to inquire about points. To my surprise he frequently directed me to Bible commentaries, saying, “Why don’t you see what Adam Clarke says, or what Cooke says,” or if the subject primarily related to the Hebrew Scriptures, “what the Soncino commentaries say.”
Our Bethel library contained shelf after shelf after shelf filled with such commentaries. Since they were the product of scholars of other religions, however, I had not given much importance to them and, along with others in the department, felt some hesitancy, even distrust, as to using them. As Karl Klein, a senior member of the Writing Department, sometimes very bluntly expressed it, using these commentaries was “sucking at the tits of Babylon the Great,” the empire of false religion according to the Society’s interpretation of the great harlot of Revelation.23
The more I looked up information in these commentaries, however, the more deeply impressed I was by the firm belief in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures the vast majority expressed. I was impressed even more so by the fact that, though some were written as early as the eighteenth century, the information was generally very worthwhile and accurate. I could not help but compare this with our own publications, which often within a few years became “out of date” and ceased to be published. It was not that I felt these commentaries to be without error by any means; but the good certainly seemed to outweigh the occasional points I felt to be mistaken.
I began to appreciate more than ever before how vitally important context was in discerning the meaning of any part of Scripture, and that realization seemed to be true of others of the group who were working regularly on the Aid project. We also came to realize the need to let the Bible define its own terms rather than simply taking some previously held view or letting an English dictionary definition control. We began to make greater use of the Hebrew and Greek lexicons in the Bethel library, and concordances that were based on the original language words rather than on English translation
s.
It was an education and it was also very humbling, for we came to appreciate that our understanding of Scripture was far less than we had thought, that we were not the advanced Bible scholars we thought we were. I personally had been on such a “treadmill” of activity over the previous twenty-five years that, although reading through the Bible several times, I had never been able to do such serious, detailed research into the Scriptures, in fact never felt great need to do so since it was assumed that others were doing it for me. The two courses at Gilead School I had attended were so tightly programmed that they gave little time for meditation, for unhurried investigation and analysis.
Having now both time and access to the extra Bible helps, the lexicons, commentaries, Hebrew and Greek concordances, and so forth, was an aid. But above all it was seeing the need always to let the context guide, always to let the Scriptures themselves control, that made the major difference. There was no overnight change of viewpoint but rather, over a period of years, a gradual deepening of appreciation of the crucial need to let God’s Word speak for itself to the fullest extent possible. I could see why those one-hundred and two-hundred-year-old commentaries in our Bethel library were comparatively timeless in their value. The very fact of their verse-by-verse approach more or less obliged them to stay within the contextual meaning and thereby considerably restricted them from taking excursions into sectarian views or interpretative flights of fancy.
Among the subjects assigned to me by Karl Adams, overseer of the Writing Department, were those of “older man [elder]” and “overseer.” All I received were those words; there was no accompanying instruction or recommendation as to the development of the topics. Note, then, how the Watch Tower’s 1993 organizational history book, Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, on page 233, represents the matter:
The picture here drawn is remarkably distorted to create a false impression. It speaks of the research that went into Aid to Bible Understanding as “being done under the supervision of the Governing Body,” and conveys the idea of smoothness of direction from a body of men motivated by intense concern to hold to the Scriptures. In reality, the Aid book project was neither initiated by nor supervised by any Governing Body of that time, but by the Watch Tower corporation president, Nathan Knorr. And though he initiated the project, any actual direction by him was a very detached and limited one, since any real direction was done through Karl Adams, the overseer of the Writing Department. Knorr neither developed the list of subjects to be included in the book nor supervised the assigning of them nor their development. All assignments of subjects were originated by and made by Karl Adams.
Adams was neither a member of the Governing Body nor for that matter of those called the “anointed.” Of those who shared personally and directly in the actual research and writing of articles for the Aid book, Lyman Swingle, from the corporation’s Board of Directors, was the only one who could be considered a “Governing Body member.” And his assignments came from Karl Adams and he worked under Adams’ supervision, turning in whatever he wrote to Karl for editing and approval, as was true of the rest of us working on the project. Nathan Knorr and Fred Franz eventually read some of the finished articles, but Knorr left it up to Karl Adams to select whatever articles Karl felt they ought to read. These were remarkably few.
Karl Adams
As stated, when the subjects of “older man [elder]” and “overseer” were assigned to me all I received in the assignment were those titles, nothing more. I was not then a member of the Governing Body and what developed was not the result of guidance by any Governing Body, nor even by Karl Adams. My uncle, Fred Franz, had some input, but only as a result of my personal initiative, and his subsequent actions seemed almost a denial of that input. It was quite evident that the result of my research was something unexpected, even viewed as not particularly desirable, by either Nathan Knorr or Fred Franz.
That research revealed that the arrangement relating to elders and the congregational direction in Bible times was very different from the position then held by Jehovah’s Witnesses, where a more or less “monarchical” arrangement prevailed. Each congregation was under the supervision of a single individual, a “congregation servant” or “congregation overseer.” The term “overseer” applied only to him and any others were viewed as his assistants. The Scriptural arrangement of bodies of elders had been summarily ended in 1932 by Judge Rutherford due to a lack of cooperation on the part of some elders with the Society’s programs and policies.24 His position as President gave Rutherford the necessary authority to take such a stand and all congregations were invited to vote for the disbanding of bodies of elders and their replacement by a Society-appointed “Service Director.” For the next forty years there were no bodies of elders in the congregations. That is why the New World Translation of the Bible published by the Society in the 1950s regularly used the rendering “older men” rather than “elders,” a then officially discredited term.25
Somewhat disturbed by what my research revealed, I approached my uncle with the evidence. His response took me by surprise. “Don’t try to understand the Scriptures on the basis of what you see today in the organization,” he said, and added, “Keep the Aid book pure.” I had always looked upon the organization as God’s one channel for dispensing truth and so this counsel sounded unusual to say the least. When I pointed out that the Society’s New World Translation rendering of Acts, chapter fourteen, verse 23, evidently inserted the words “to office” in connection with the appointment of elders and that this somewhat altered the sense, he said, “Why don’t you check it in some other translations that may not be as biased.”26 I walked out of his office wondering if I had actually heard what I had heard. In future days I was to remind him of these statements on more than one occasion during Governing Body sessions.
Admittedly, that conversation strongly affected my approach to Scripture. I deeply appreciated the integrity toward Scriptural truth his remarks indicated. That made his later reaction to the final results all the more puzzling, disturbing.
After completing the subjects “Older Man” and “Overseer” I submitted these. Normally, President Nathan Knorr and Vice President Fred Franz would not have read the articles. However, Karl Adams, as head of the Writing Department, told me that upon reading the information he went to Brother Knorr and said, “I think you should read this. It changes a lot of things.”
Go back, now, to the presentation made in Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom. The second paragraph under the subheading “Gearing Up for Explosive Growth” is essentially a résumé of the content of the articles I submitted, as a comparison with those articles in the Aid book will show. (The only exception would be the emphasis this paragraph places on the concept of an “official status” of elders.) I would obviously not expect the writer or writers of the book to mention who wrote those articles for the Aid book. But from this paragraph and the start of the following one, the reader would understand that the articles led to a willing and almost immediate decision to bring everything into conformity to the Scriptural arrangement pointed to. What actually did happen?
As Karl Adams related to me, after reading the material, Knorr went into Fred Franz’s office and, with considerable vehemence, said, “What does this mean? Does this mean we have to change everything at this late date?” Fred Franz replied, No, that he did not think that would be necessary—that the existing arrangement could be continued without problem.
When Karl later passed this information on to me, I found it hard to believe, particularly in view of my uncle’s earlier expressions to me. I felt obliged to go to his room one evening to inquire about it. He confirmed that he felt no need to make adjustments. Knowing that the Aid book was to be released to the brothers in completed form that summer at the District Assemblies, I asked what effect he thought it would have on them to read the evidence that there were bodies of elders in the first-century congregation, that all elders served as ove
rseers, and then to find out that we had no intention of following this Scriptural example?
He said calmly that he did not think it would cause any problem, that the existing arrangement could be “accommodated” to the information in the Aid book. I expressed deep concern that this setting aside of the Scriptural precedent could be very unsettling to the brothers. Holding to his position, he related how brothers of earlier decades had reasoned that, since Christ had taken Kingdom power in 1914, there could rightly be changes in the way things were administered on earth. He added that he had believed and still believed that Christ Jesus would direct and administer the affairs of his servants earthwide by the use of, or through the office of, just a single individual, and that this would be the case until the New Order came. The tenor of these expressions seemed so different from those he had made on earlier occasions that I found it difficult to reconcile them.
Sometime later, however, the vice president prepared some convention material that indicated that a change in the congregational direction would take place. When the copy of this material reached Karl Adams he saw the implications and immediately contacted President Knorr, saying to him, “I think you had better talk with Brother Franz again. I believe he has changed his mind.” Brother Knorr did and Brother Franz had. And the forty-year-old arrangement changed as a consequence.
To present the development of this change as the book Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom does, representing a “Governing Body” as supervising the research and “careful study” of Biblical terms, their sole concern being how to “conform more fully to the pattern” set out in Scripture, “determined to continue to yield to divine direction,” and promptly “to bring the organization into closer conformity” to that pattern, is to present an idealized picture that is simply untrue. It either manifests ignorance on the part of the writer or writers of the material as to how matters actually developed, or else is duplicitous, designed to elevate the role of a group of men in the view of the membership. The reality reveals instead how heavily control was vested in a few individuals, and how one man’s rather idiosyncratic decision (that of Fred Franz) could affect the direction a worldwide organization could take.
Crisis of Conscience Page 4