I remember a talk that a good friend of ours gave when he became an Elder back in the late eighties early nineties . He said in part of that talk " We serve Jehovah not an organization " and he alluded to a sentiment that if one day the organization began to make claims it was more important than God or wanted us to do something contrary to God's word , than we had to be ready and prepared to know that was wrong and only worship Jehovah . It is something that stuck with me because at the time I just could not imagine what he meant ...I mean Jehovah's directing the Organization right so why would they ever steer us wrong .... (.sorry I just gagged a little ) But here is the thing ....this was back when he was a new fresh idealistic elder , do you think he ever thinks back to those words now ? I really have been wanting to call and ask him .
I bet talks now a days don't include such statements . Those words began ringing in my ears over the years like when the baptism questions changed , when the magazine came out showing the break down of acceptable blood fractions and non acceptable ( where is that in the Bible ?) and when I started noticing at conventions how much emphasis was put on following the FDS instead of Jesus . When the Elders informed me the society's function was not to help out in social ways such as helping the poor, But only the preaching work , I just felt that put the final nail in their coffin for me.
Do they still say things like that anymore ?