Hi all, I had to share this little tidbit I just learned of this week.
My elderly and disbaled father in law as you may remember is married to one Grade - A bitch of an abusive wife/regular pioneer. She has been going three times per week to a variety of different local churches and collecting bread from their food-for-the-poor programs. Now she is not poor. She stuffs the bread into her freezer and hoards the canned goods into boxes and has them in all the closets, storage, garage and is now cluttering even the living spaces of their home with the food. When she told me and my wife to go with her, we told her no thanks, because we are not so poor that we need to take food out of the mouths of people less fortunate than ourselves for the purpose of hoarding.
My father in law has been opposed to this behavior since he learned of it and she has ignored his requests, demands, and orders to stop. His argument is not so much that they don't need the food, as it is the idea of her going to the temples of Babylon the Great to get the bread and other foods. He tells her but she justifies it saying that the elders' wives go so it is ok. He has cited scripture and even publications that discourage and even forbid the touching of anything of the unclean thing.
Anyways, they took a trip out to the coast on Sunday and spent some time at a congo that his 92 year old father attends. He was discussing the wt study and other things with the wt conductor when she asked if the elders knew of any food closets she could visit before their return home. Well my FIL told her that if it isn't appropriate to go to them at home, it is much less than appropriate to do so as a visitor. She got up on her hind legs and made a scene at the hall. My FIL remained calm and cited the scripturesagain and then used page 266 paragraph 26 of the Revelation book. She got mad and just seethed at him.
Then the wt conductor piped in and told her, "Sister, your husband is right. He is right because he didn't give you a personal opinion, he cited what the fds has written down for us." My FIL told me this and didn't even consider how powerful a statement the elder had made. I redirected his attention to it and he was a little lost for a moment when I pointed out how I thought it was shameful that the elder didn't even mention the biblical references that he had made to back his side of the issue. What was important to the elder was the use of the written word of the fds.
Imagine that. The fds difinitively has more authority than the Word of Almighty God.
Another seed planted.......Any ideas on how I can take this to the next level?