February 15, 2010 WT: The Spirit and the Bride Keep On Saying "Come!"
Paragraph 7: "The members of the bride class--the spirit-anointed Christians--are the first to extend the invitation to come. To whom? Well, the bride is not saying "Come!" to herself."
Apart from the potential for less than appropriate humor that this statement invites, it directly undercuts the very notion of a "faithful slave" class. The Society has routinely stated that the Governing Body only "represents the slave". That the members of the slave class feed/teach each other. Logically, that would first require them to say "Come!" to each other, then individually submit to the teachings of the GB. This statement here implies that the entire bride class just showed up all at once, not requiring any instruction whatsoever from those who came before, and then invited the great crowd to "Come!" Bad logic, very bad, as evidenced even further in paragraph 8:
"The anointed followers of Christ have been extending this invitation since 1918."
Whoa, there! Supposedly, EVERYONE was anointed back then, right? The 'earthly calling' didn't clearly show up until 17 years later. The great crowd was considered a secondary heavenly class--this is well established fact, it's right in the Proclaimers book. So, who were the anointed extending this invitation to? Had to be themselves--they had no clear understanding that there was another group to invite anywhere. Except that that contradicts paragraph 7. No matter. Everyone's gonna be knocked out when this lesson is studied anyway, so they won't notice. It gets worse:
"In that year, the public talk entitled 'Millions Now Living May Never Die' offered hope that many will gain life in a paradise earth after the battle of Armageddon."
Now it's true that the book with a slightly different title (replace 'May' with 'Will') talks about the return of ancient patriarchs to earth. So maybe I should cut 'em some slack. Except that that description of the talk--and the book based on that theme--is a lie. If they accessed this news article, then they could look at the talk itself and see that. Someone knows that. It was a hope that would be realized in 1925, not some vague, uncertain matter. How can the 'bride' invite people to "Come!" using false predictions? Anyone who reads the book itself would know that this was not a case of individuals reading into its statements something that was not there.
Paragraph 12:
"How is God's holy spirit involved in extending the invitation to humans in our day?...He [Jehovah] uses the spirit to open the hearts and minds of the bride class to understand his Word, the [Watchtower--ahem--uh, I mean...]Bible. The spirit impels them to extend the invitation and explain Scriptural truths to those who have the prospect of living forever."
Okay. If this is true, then inevitably it means one thing: anyone who is not on the Governing Body does not need to pray for God's holy spirit to help them understand the Bible. That has already been done by the 'bride class', after all, since they're the ones who 'understand' the Bible. All the rest of us need to do is just read the Watchtower publications and believe whatever they say. I mean, just say it like it is! By the way, if holy spirit leads men to the kinds of errors strewn throughout the Society's history, I don't think I want to "Come!" to their conclusions.
This notion of 'you can't understand the Bible without us', couched in creative terminology, reeks of the very thing the Society rails against--the Catholic Church keeping the people from having the Bible during the Middle Ages! It's identical. In this case, the people have the Bible, but are not allowed to believe a word in it save what the Governing Body says they should believe. You may as well take the Bible out of people's hands. You've created MORE ignorance about God and the Bible, if anything, by making us all scripturally illiterate and painting God as self-centered and heartless.
I guess it's condensing the Revelation book down into one article, right? Pretty much. I'm done.
SD-7