Writing the Aid drove Franz closer to the Bible and he was haunted by the theme of grace-a theme incongruous with the typically legalistic emphasis of the cult. Ray Franz was considered one of the best Bible scholars in Brooklyn and worked on the Aid with four other men. The encyclopedic Aid is the authoritative JW commentary on what the Bible means. When he persisted, Franz was shot at.Īfter more than 20 years of arduous service, Franz went to Brooklyn and began work on the Aid to Bible Understanding. He once visited a Kentucky coal mining camp with other JW missionaries and was told to leave the camp. He served in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Raymond Franz graduated from high school in 1940, and the same month went to the mission field to win converts for Jehovah God. But the recent disfellowshiping has spurred Franz and his friends to tell more of his story. He chose not to comment on any of the problems he had with the cult (CT, Dec. Franz thinks it is difficult not to talk to (or eat with) the man who is your boss and who owns the land on which you live.Īfter his resignation from the governing body in 1980, Franz was mute.

But Gregerson, who disassociated himself from the cult after having been a JW since the age of three, is Franz’s landlord and employer. The premise for the disfellowshiping was that Ray Franz had dined with a man who left the cult only months before.įranz does not deny that he had dinner at a Gadsden, Alabama, steak house with Peter Gregerson. He resigned under pressure, and last December 31 Franz was disfellowshiped (the JW term for excommunication). Until his resignation, the younger Franz was a member of the elite governing body, a group of about 15 men who oversee national JW activities from Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn. In the eyes of his 88-year-old uncle and other loyal JWS, Raymond Franz is as a dead man. Now he has been excommunicated from the cult. Raymond, 60-year-old nephew of JW president Frederick Franz, climbed high in the JW structure until he was removed from the Watchtower in 1980.

That sounds very much like Saint Paul’s own litany of suffering, but the list belongs to one-time Jehovah’s Witness (JW) Raymond Franz. “ 40 years of full-time service …, I endured privation, poverty, hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fever, dysentery, jailings, dangers of mob violence, of gunshots and war, the risk of life and liberty in dictatorial lands, along with constant toil.…”

Bible study led to the ouster of a top Jehovah’s Witness.

Ray franz book