Ding: "WT has said that there is no need for the GB to know who they are ..."
Look at the first post on the first page!
The Faithful and Discreet Slave - A JW Myth
by 00DAD 92 Replies latest jw friends
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compound complex
Thanks, OODAD and friends, for the food for thought.
The anointed remnant whom I knew and loved were special - TO ME. I've always been more emotional than logical. Interesting point about the largest rodent. When I was a proofreeder at Bethel, I remember that "ruffled grouse" came through on the galleys and we had to correct that and a host of other blunders.
I appreciate your thoughts - we really don't know.
CoCo
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00DAD
CC aka CoCo, Just curious, when were you at Bethel?
Also, why do you sometimes sign "CC" and other times "CoCo"?
Inquiring minds want to know.
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thetrueone
Wasn't the GB sort of developed from the legal need as a non-profit corporation and
the expansion of the organization world wide, necessitated a need to spread the responsibility out among people ?
Actually there are other religious organizations that use this identify label (FDSL) themselves .
The increasing amount of anointed by the WTS's own counting has thrown a pickle in the jar. This number was suppose to decrease
as the time of the end rolled along, now they have to down play this number and say there are a lot who are partaking that are mentally imbalanced.
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TimothyT
00DAD you said this above, and i know exactly what you mean:
It's a "composite body" of about eleven thousand (give or take) but only seven of them really do any of the work. So what was the point of Jesus illustration/parable/prophecy again?
What a good point! According to them, the FDS is the entire lot of them and THEY are responsible for feeding the sheep. However only 7 men represent them to do that. Lets be honest, the other 11,000 or whatever is do naff all. They just live in the congs or at bethel homes and just serve as normal JWs with no particular role.
I just want to pick up on something though. It seems apparant, that many people would thank the GB members for all the hard work they do, CARING FOR THE DOMESTICS! However, it is from my knowledge that the elders from each congregation are the ones who stress out doing this. I have NEVER had any personal help from a member of the FDS apart from what i read in the literature... which was very little because id rather read the bible. Even as a JW, if i had any encouragement it came from the elders or the bible. They were the ones that did the hard work and cared. They were more faithful and discreet slaves than these self professed men sitting in Brooklyn!
Timmy xxx
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compound complex
Hi OODAD:
I was at Bethel late sixties, early seventies. Worked on Aid to Bible Understanding as well as the first major index in years: 1966-1970. That's where "ruffled grouse" almost got inserted as well as 'brothers serving with hardy purpose'!
CC/Compound-Complex/CoCo ... many identities for legal purposes and plausible deniability.
Yours Truly
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Timmy:
Response coming for you regarding the one-time reality of help from the anointed.
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thetrueone
They were more faithful and discreet slaves than these self professed men sitting in Brooklyn!
That might be because the GB are FDSL to the Watchtower Corporation in fulfilling the needs and responsibilities of this large publishing house.
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Ding
OODAD,
Thanks.
I was so busy reading the questions that I missed the fact that the quotation I was looking for was right in the original post...
As far as I am concerned, the fact that the GB admits that they neither know nor care who the anointed remnant are shows that they know the whole thing is bunk.
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Leolaia
It is somewhat illuminating to see how this belief arose in the first place. In the later days of Charles T. Russell, the "faithful and wise servant" was identified formally with the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society (1 October 1909 Watch Tower, p. R4483; 1909 Souvenir Notes of the IBSA Convention, preface; 1 February 1910 Watch Tower, p. R4562), and informally with Russell himself (1 April 1907 Watch Tower, p. R3974; 15 February 1908 Watch Tower, p. R4142; 15 May 1909 Watch Tower, p. R4402; 15 August 1910 Watch Tower, p. R4670; 15 June 1914 Watch Tower, p. R5486; 15 October 1915 Watch Tower, p. R5790; 15 November 1915 Watch Tower, p. R5804; 1 January 1916 Watch Tower, p. R5828; 15 April 1916 Watch Tower, p. R5888), with Russell asserting at least once his role as "God's mouthpiece" (15 July 1906 Watch Tower, R3822). No communication between earthly parties was needed: Russell wrote the literature and the WTB&TS published it; thus Russell's own writings were the "meat in due season" in the parable (15 May 1907 Watch Tower, p. R3992; 15 December 1909 Watch Tower, p. R4532).
Then when Russell died, the notion that he was the "faithful and wise servant" became official (1 December 1916 Watch Tower, p. R5998; 1 January 1917 Watch Tower, p. R6027; The Finished Mystery, 1917, p. 3; 15 November Watch Tower 1917, p. R6170; 1 November Watch Tower 1918, p. R6349), and this belief was even stated dogmatically: "Therefore fulfilled prophecy, or physical facts, and the circumstantial evidence are conclusive proofs that Brother Russell filled the office of that faithful and wise servant" (1 March 1922 Watchtower, pp. 72-73), "Those who have seen, held, and taught present truth most assuredly have believed that our late beloved leader, Brother Russell, held that position of steward. And this we most certainly hold, both as a fact and as a necessity of faith" (15 December 1922 Watchtower, p. 396). This notion however would prove to be problematic for Rutherford: He was publishing his own books through the Society (such as The Harp of God, 1920) and he was radically changing Russell's doctrinal system, leading to increasing defections of Bible Students who recognized Russell alone as "that servant". Rutherford then fell back to the view that the "faithful and wise servant" is really the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society:
"In modest phrase Brother Russell here clearly indicated that it was thought that the Society, as organized in an orderly manner, would carry on the work begun by him and finish that which had been committed to him personally. Often when asked by others, Who is that faithful and wise servant? -- Brother Russell would reply: 'Some say I am; while others say the Society is.' Both statements were true, for Brother Russell was in fact the Society in a most absolute sense, in this, that he directed the policy and course of the Society without regard to any other person on earth. The word Society as used herein is a generic term applied to the body of consecrated anointed Christians throughout the world engaged in the work of representing the King and the King's interests on earth. It is an organization for the purpose of doing the Lord's work in an orderly way. This organization has its officers elected in an orderly manner" (1 March 1923 Watchtower, p. 68).
This argument allowed Rutherford to claim he had the same role and status as Russell had. Just as Russell had been the Society in the most absolute sense, so in his day Rutherford would have to be the Society in the most aboslute sense, directing the policy and course of the Society (so again there is no need for communication between earthly parties). This gave Rutherford the authority to change what Russell had taught; the authority invested to the "faithful and wise servant" did not die with Russell but lived on in the organization. In addition to blurring the difference between the "Society" and the "president of the Society", Rutherford also blurred here the difference between the "Society" and "the body of consecrated anointed Christians". By generalizing the term "Society" to refer to all consecrated Bible Students, Rutherford as the chief officer of the Society would claim for himself the role of guiding the whole body of anointed Christians spiritually through the organization. At the time, Bible Student ecclesias were independently organized and could elect to defect from the Watchtower Society (which at this point was only a legal corporation, not the church itself); in the 1920s whole concregations of Bible Students were parting company and forming their own pastoral organizations. So if the Society was really the "faithful and wise servant" and if the Society was really a class, then the "faithful and wise servant" would have to be a class too. This was first stated explicitly in the Rutherford era in the 15 February 1927 Watchtower: "Since Jesus speaks of his body members as himself, and since the Scriptures definitely locate The Servant as The Christ, then the irresistible conclusion is that 'the faithful and wise servant' mentioned by the Lord is a class [italics original], made up of those whom he finds faithful at the time he comes to his temple [in 1918]....The Lord has made this faithful and wise class ruler over all his goods, or kingdom interests, on earth" (pp. 55-57). By making the entire body of anointed Christians the "faithful and wise servant" (which at the time accounted for almost the entirety of the movement affiliated with the Watchtower Society), Rutherford was also able to make the "evil servant" of the parable a class and claim that all those no longer affiliated with him were no longer part of the "faithful and wise servant" and were now part of the "evil servant" class: "Those who were once anointed and therefore in the Servant class, and who, since 1918, have refused to participate in announcing the kingdom, and who engage in smiting their fellow servants, and fellowship with the world, constitute the evil servant class" (p. 57).
But by broadening the "faithful and wise servant" to everyone who remained loyal to the Watchtower Society, this blurred the distinction between the "household of faith" and "that servant" in the parable (it was this very distinction that led Maria to originally apply the title personally to her husband in 1894), and it allowed for the notion that any individual anointed person could come up with "meat in due season". So Rutherford tried to have it both ways and still insisted that only the Watchtower Society was the assigned channel for advancing "present truth"; he claimed that the Society was the "visible part" of God's earthly organization directing the work of the "faithful and wise servant" class. Rutherford wrote that "we believe that the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society is the visible organization of the Lord on earth" (15 June 1928 Watchtower, p. 187), and in 1930 he claimed that it could be "confidently stated" that the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society "forms a part of God's organization to carry on his work, and that it is the only visible part of his organization now on the earth" (15 December 1930 Watchtower, pp. 373-374). The majority of Bible Students who had been with the Society in 1918 had left, leaving a "remnant" after the harvest siftings which Rutherford claimed would remain a small remnant until Armageddon (15 September 1927 Watchtower, p. 280; 15 November 1930 Watchtower, p. 342; 1931 Yearbook, p. 57; 1 February 1939 Watchtower, p. 37). "They see their numbers growing less and they also see the zeal of the remnant greater than ever and that the smaller number is accomplishing more than ever before (1 June 1928 Watchtower, p. 108). "That remnant makes up the wise and faithful servant class which gives the witness against the enemy and to the name of Jehovah. For this reason that class becomes and is the worst foe of Satan on earth, hence he wars against them....Those who make up the faithful servant class, otherwise designated the remnant, must engage in the battle against the powers of evil" (1 January 1928 Watchtower, p. 4). The anointed continue to be referred to as a "remnant", but often because they are putatively a group decreasing in number due to old age.
The movement began to grow again during the Great Depression and rather than having the remnant increase, Rutherford siphoned these new members into a new class, the "Jonadabs", who join hands with the anointed earthly organization but do not form a part of it (Vindication, Vol. 3, 1932, pp. 79-83, 155); the Jonadabs instead would be saved by their association with the "faithful and wise servant" class. At the time, Jehovah's Witnesses were still dominated by anointed spirit-begotten members but the rapid growth of new converts led Rutherford in 1935 to identify this class with the "great multitude" of Revelation 7. Prior to this, the "great multitude" had been thought of as being those held in bondage to Christendom who would later be purified and attain heavenly life (15 August 1935 Watchtower, p. 245), but like the Jonadabs were also dependent on the anointed remnant, for "the 'great multitude' on earth must get their light through the 'remnant' who are faithful to their commission" (15 January 1928 Watchtower, p. 30). The conflation of the Jonadabs with the "great multitude" in 1935 eliminated Russell's old secondary spiritual class and allowed the movement to grow while keeping the number of the "remnant" relatively small, justifying a new international mission to gather the "great multitude" from all nations and tongues. Meanwhile in 1938 the Watchtower Society took control of church organization at the congregational level (as administering the "Theocracy"), as the culmination of Rutherford's effort to remove elected elders faithful to Russell's views, as previously the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society had limited control over how congregations were run. From then on the organization claimed theocratic authority in appointing servants and overseers at the congregational, circuit, district, and zone level (15 June 1938 Watchtower, p. 182), with servants installed via "appointments by the Watch Tower Society" (p. 181). Rutherford was the president and general manager of the "earthly" part of the Theocracy: "The Theocracy is at present administered by the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, of which Judge Rutherford is the president and general manager" (4 September 1940 Consolation, p. 25). Rutherford was still regarded as the channel for divine revelation of "new light": "Judge Rutherford couldn't write these things unless he were used of God". (Golden Age, 23 October 1935, p. 50). In 1943 Fred W. Franz under oath described Rutherford as having edited the Watchtower under the direction of Jehovah, the divine Editor of the magazine:
"Q. At any rate, Jehovah God is now the editor of the paper, is that right? A. He is today the editor of the paper. Q. How long has He been editor of the paper? A. Since its inception he has been guiding it. Q. Even before 1931? A. Yes, sir.... Q. Did you find that the editorial committee was in conflict with having the journal edited by Jehovah God, is that it? A. No. Q. Was the policy in opposition to what your conception of an editing by Jehovah God was? A. It was found on occasions that some of these on the editorial committee were preventing the publication of timely and vital, up-to-date truths and thereby hindering the going of these truths to the people of the Lord in His due time. Q. After that, 1931, who on earth, if anybody had charge of what went in or did not go in the magazine? A. Judge Rutherford. Q. So he in effect was the earthly editor-in-chief, as he might be called? A. He would be the visible one to take care of that. Q. He was working as God's representative or agent in running this magazine, is that right? A. He was serving in that capacity" (Olin Moyle Transcript, 1943, pp. 866-867).
When Rutherford died in 1942, the editorship of the magazine passed onto the board of directors of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, with Fred Franz taking a major role in writing content for the Society, while Nathan Knorr ran the business and administrative side of things. In 1944, the board of directors (which included Franz and Knorr) began calling itself the "governing body", viewing itself as modelled on first-century apostles "to guide all those who desired to worship God in spirit and in truth and to serve him unitedly in spreading these revealed truths to other hungering and thirsting ones" (1 November 1944 Watchtower, p. 328-333). No longer were the members of the board of directors elected by the shareholders; they were appointed as governing body members for life and the charter of the corporation was changed to accommodate this. The GB was made up of anointed officers of the Watchtower Society and it was through them that the "faithful and wise servant" class would dispense Jehovah's directions and revealed truths: "The visible governing body of the Theocratic organization is and must be appointed only by Jehovah God the Supreme Ruler, and Christ Jesus the Head of His church. Its purpose is to issue directions and spiritual provisions to all God's people. Acting in harmony with the governing body, all the Theocratic organization and its associates act in unity throughout the earth" (1 November 1944 Watchtower, p. 330). It is this expectation of unity that accorded sole authority of the "faithful and wise servant" to the GB; an anointed JW could not disagree with the instructions and teachings of those leading the 'earthly' Theocracy and still be in harmony with it. The Watchtower Society thus claimed that its own directions had the same authority as that of Jehovah God:
"The Lord breaks down our organization instructions further and makes them more practicable by further instructing us through his 'faithful and wise servant.' He says, 'Let us assign the field, the world, to special pioneers, regular pioneers and companies of Jehovah's witnesses in an orderly way, sufficient for everyone to thoroughly witness therein, and let us place upon each one the responsibility of caring for the New World interets in these respective assignments.' He says the requirements for special pioneers shall be 175 hours and 50 back-calls per month, which should develop into a reasonable number of studies; and for regular pioneers 150 hours and as many back-calls and studies as can be properly developed during that time... And for company publishers he says, 'Let us make a quota of 60 hours and 12 back-calls and at least one study a week for each publisher.' These directions come to us from the Lord through his established agency directing what is required of us.... The Lord through his 'faithful and wise servant' now states to us, 'Let us cover our territory four times in six months [italics original].' That becomes our organization instructions and has the same binding force on us that his statement to the Logos had when he said, 'Let us make man in our image.' It is our duty to accept this additional instruction and obey it" (1 July 1943 Watchtower, p. 203).
So all along the extension of the "faithful and wise servant" to the class of all anointed JWs was from its inception in the 1920s on through the 1940s "in name only"; always the implied authority rested with the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society, not the anointed class itself. By referring to the F&DS class as some broader group that includes the Society as its "visible part", the Society was able to claim authority while at the same time shifting it to this phantom entity. Thus one would read that God's "universal organization" provides and uses the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society "as her earthly instrument" (1 October 1950 Watchtower, p. 347), but in practice this means that the theocratic organization "functions from Jehovah down, the earthly part of it from the board of directors of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society [i.e. the GB] through the branches to the districts, circuits, congregations and then the individuals" (1 June 1955 Watchtower, p. 330). "Christ, the Head, employs the organization that is his body to carry out his assigned work. His orders reach the whole of the organization on earth through the governing body, and on down through the Branches to the congregations.... To hold to the headship of Christ, it is therefore necessary to obey the organization that he is personally directing. Doing what the organization says is to do what he says. Resisting the organization is to resist him" (1 May 1959 Watchtower, p. 269). As for the provision of spiritual "food", the Society referred to the "collective congregation of anointed ones" — i.e. the broadened F&DS class — as Jehovah's "appointed channel of communication" and the Watchtower magazine as "the main instrument used by the congregation to dispense Jehovah's communications" (Informant, January 1956, p. 1). Although spiritual authority was thus indirectly claimed through the phantom F&DS class, the publications also would still make the claim directly. So the "central headquarters in Brooklyn, New York" was called "the very summit of Jehovah's visible organization" in the 15 April 1960 Watchtower (p. 249), and similarly we read of "the headquarters of Jehovah's visible organization" in the 15 January 1962 Watchtower (p. 63). The worldwide preaching work was indicated as "being done under the direction of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society" (1 May 1964 Watchtower, p. 283; see also 1 November 1970 Watchtower, p. 666).
I think this use of the F&DS class as a dummy front for the Watchtower Society reflects also the increasing elite status of the "anointed remnant". During the Rutherford administration, the vast majority of JWs were anointed until 1935, and even after this year they were still predominant. But during the Knorr years the "great crowd" class grew by leaps and bounds (while the call to the remnant was viewed as closed essentially in 1935), leading to the present situation of 99.5% of JWs only "associated" with God's "earthly organization", making the anointed seem to the rest like a tiny mysterious elite like the GB is supposed to be. At the same time, it gives the rare anointed person at the local level an amount of prestige with some wondering if such a person has a special connection with Jehovah God that the rest do not have. This simply wasn't an issue in the Rutherford years when virtually everyone except the Jonadab newbies were regarded as "anointed". But this demographic disparity also cleared up the ambiguity between the "faithful and wise servant" and the "household of faith", as the vast majority of JWs were not part of the F&DS class and would be dependent on the F&DS for spiritual food. Then in 1971, the Society disentangled the GB from the board of directors of the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society (15 December 1971 Watchtower, pp. 755-762), and also restored some form of local organization via bodies of elders. At the same time, the literature began to refrain from referring to the GB as associated with the Watchtower Society per se, with greater emphasis given to its association with the F&DS class. Thus the 1972 Yearbook states that the "holy spirit has guided and directed the 'faithful and discreet slave' class and has blessed its visible governing body" (p. 256), and the 15 December 1972 issue of the Watchtower refers to the GB as "the administrative part of a 'faithful and discreet slave' or 'steward' class" (p. 755). Despite this, the GB was still made up of men who were longtime representatives of the Watchtower Society, who had worked for decades in its branch offices or world headquarters in New York. And congregational correspondence on pastoral matters was still signed by the "WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY". Although the literature was careful to refer to the F&DS as the real leadership behind Jehovah's Witnesses, occasionally it did blunder into admitting the truth that the Watchtower Society was really meant whenever the "faithful and discreet slave" was mentioned: "[A]bout a hundred years ago the 'faithful and discreet slave' class again began to come forward as a loyal advocate of God’s Word. With the years it has become ever more visible and noticed by the world. The facts show that today this 'slave' is identified with the Watch Tower Society" (15 March 1982 Watchtower, p. 21).
Nevertheless the literature most of the time characterized the relationship as one in which the Society was subject to the F&DS class as its "legal instrument", and the publications printed by the Society as really provided by the"slave" (1 September 1980 Watchtower, p. 23, 15 December 1982 Watchtower, p. 26, Proclaimers, 1993, p. 219, 1999 Yearbook, p. 153). Ray Franz revealed in Crisis of Conscience that there had also been a power struggle at Bethel between the GB and the office of the President, with the GB succeeding in establishing itself as the actual authority with the legal corporation (and the office of the President) being subject to it. By referring to the ambiguous theologically-defined entity "F&DS" instead of the concrete "Watchtower Bible and Tract Society", the GB was able to claim its own authority independent of the Society: "That faithful and discreet slave is represented today by the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which has as its publicity agent the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Most appropriately, that faithful and discreet slave has also been called God's channel of communication" (1 September 1991 Watchtower, p. 18 ). "God's answers to present-day problems ... come to us through the channel of 'the faithful and discreet anointed slave' class, which uses the Watchtower Society as its publishing agency" (Awake!, 8 October 1991, p. 13). In concert with this attempt to de-emphasize the Society's role, the literature began to instruct Jehovah's Witnesses to stop saying "the Society says" when referring to the official position on doctrinal matters:
"Of course, the legal corporation and 'the faithful and discreet slave' are not interchangeable terms. Directors of the Watch Tower Society are elected, whereas Witnesses who make up 'the faithful slave' are anointed by Jehovah’s holy spirit. In order to avoid misunderstandings, Jehovah’s Witnesses try to be careful about how they express themselves. Instead of saying, 'the Society teaches,' many Witnesses prefer to use such expressions as, 'the Bible says' or, 'I understand the Bible to teach' " (15 March 1998 Watchtower, pp. 18-19).
There still remained the fact that instructions for congregational pastoral care were sent by the WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY. This changed in 2001 when the existing corporations were reorganized such that pastoral matters were now handled via the "Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses" (Our Kingdom Ministry, January 2002, p. 7), a phrase that for many years was a synonym of the body of Jehovah's Witnesses as a whole (see Watchtower, 15 December 1959, p. 752, 1 October 1966, p. 587, 1 March 1974, p. 152, 15 September 1978, p. 31, 1 July 1994, p. 7, 15 November 1996, p. 27, 15 May 1999, p. 25). Although this entity was still a corporation that operates as a subsidiary of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the new name at least gives the appearance that it is a religious rather than legal body. The role of the Watchtower Society as organizing, instructing, and directing the religious body of Jehovah's Witnesses has also not really changed much. Contributions to help support the preaching work of Jehovah's Witnesses are still sent to the Treasurer's Office of the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania (see 1 November 2005 Watchtower, p. 28), and conventions, the training of missionaries, the building of kingdom halls, the publication of religious literature, etc. etc. are still directed by the Watchtower Society in much the same way as before. Although all this is attributed to the work of the F&DS class, it is still the legal corporations of the Watchtower Society that "visibly" accomplish this.