Does Jehovah's Faithful and Discreet Slave get leftover New Light?
If a spokesman is chosen and appointed to speak on behalf of another in an official capacity
we would expected all "breaking news" to emerge from that outlet. Wouldn't we?
We would find it odd and even a refutation of a claim of special selection if that self-styled
spokesman were the LAST to publish the news, certainly.
Yet, time and again, the Watchtower Magazine has failed to release New Light before any other religious person or body. How can that be?
May 15th, 1995, Watchtower magazine carried a two-part study article recounting instances in the history of the Society when "New Light" flashed before them as the mouthpiece of God.
The Subject of Christmas celebrations and the new understanding of its pagan origins was revealed:
“Shortly thereafter, a flash of light caused the Bible Students to stop celebrating Christmas. Before that time Christmas had always been celebrated by the Bible Students worldwide, and its celebration at Brooklyn headquarters was a very festive occasion. But then it was discerned that the observance of December 25 was actually pagan and was chosen by apostate Christendom to make it easier to convert pagans.”
“Shortly thereafter” is in reference to the year 1926. This New Light must have come first through
this select body of True Believers, right? Wrong!
Alexander Hislop had published his peculiar book, The Two Babylons, a whopping 75years prior to the time the Bible Students suddenly flashed on this revelation about Christmas, in which Hislop painstakingly sought to build an argument about the Babylonish character of Christmas.
Three quarters of a century delay? How embarassing!
What else did this 1995 Watchtower article identify as New Light channeled through Jehovah's specially "selected channel"?
“For many years the Bible Students made the cross prominent as a symbol of Christianity. They even had a “cross-and-crown” pin… For decades this symbol also appeared on the cover of the Watch Tower magazine. The book Riches, published by the Society in 1936, made clear that Jesus Christ was executed, not on a cross, but on an upright pole, or stake.”
Yet, in 1858 Alexander Hislop used the same reasoning and examples to put forward the same conclusions as the "New Light" of 1936 in the Watchtower. Why fail to credit Hislop's jump start on this conclusion? Why claim it as their special revelation?
The plot thickens, however!
Even in their own errors about the "meaning" of scriptures the Watchtower fails to be first in releasing and understanding either New Light or its later revised "correction"!
“A bright flash of light was seen in 1962 in connection with Romans 13:1…The early Bible Students understood that “the higher powers” mentioned there referred to worldly authorities. They took this scripture to mean that if a Christian was drafted in wartime, he would be obligated to put on a uniform, shoulder a gun, and go to the front, to the trenches. It was felt that since a Christian could not kill a fellow human, he would be compelled to fire his gun into the air if worst came to worst. The Watchtower of November 15 and of December 1, 1962, shed clear light on the subject…”
This 1962 flash of light corrected--not the Bible Students understanding--but, the wacky false New Light by Watchtower Society's President J.F.Rutherford!
Commenting on Romans 13:1 in the July 1st, 1931, Watchtower, Rutherford said:
“Until quite recently God’s people understood…that this scripture has reference to worldly ruling powers. Those who have withdrawn from the Society still hold this wrongful view. Now, however, the faithful remnant clearly see that this scripture has no reference to any part of Satan’s organization but does apply exclusively to God’s arrangement in his organization for his own people. Those who refuse to see this truth and who oppose the statement of The Watch Tower concerning it have seized upon such as an excuse and have dropped out and have gone into the dark.”
Wow! A double whammy of error and never the first to get it right!
Let's review another instance of real foot-dragging coming to a flash of New Light.
Until 1973 Bethel did not prohibit smokers from becoming baptized Jehovah’s Witnesses.
That changed with a flash of light. Watchtower’s new light classified casual smokers in the same category as practicing fornicators, greedy persons, idolaters, revilers, drunkards and extortioners, which were the sorts of persons the inspired apostle said, should be removed from the congregation.
The Mormon leader Brigham Young, however, beat Jehovah's Anointed channel to this New Light in 1833's Words of Wisdom revealed by the Lord Himself!
Add to this the fact the Pastor Russell merely adopted 2nd Adventist's peculiar theories that Jesus
had already returned invisibly and Pyramidologist's crackpot ideas about the Great Pyramid revealing 1914 as the Armageddon of the bible!
Should we feel embarassed that the Faithful and Discreet Slave do NOT give Jehovah's domestics "food at the proper time" because they only serve LEFTOVERS?