There have been a few posts here over the past few days, from Alan F, and others, on the lack of leadership in the WTS. I hadn't really thought about that too deeply, but I think this is a significant point. We are at a genuine turning point in WTS history, and my take on it is that it will do nothing to advance the organization.
The Society is at this point essentially a reactionary organization. Why? Because there is no genuine leadership. The gov. body has been steadily shifted out of its total power position, and the legal department has taken on greater authority. Will a new sense of vision and mission come from legal? Hardly.
We have the older GB members either senile or very elderly, the younger men that have been brought in are there because they didn't rock the boat - not because of their scholarship or sense of vision. Will a new visionary arise there? No.
And what would happen to anyone in a highly placed, responsible position who genuinely tried to take the lead in making reasonable, scriptural changes? They would garner a boatload of enemies for their presumptuousness, and would quickly get the heave-ho.
The idea at this time is that Jehovah is directing things, and not working through a man in the sense that he "did" tnrough Rutherford or Knorr or Franz. So the WTS actually feels that it really doesn't need any visionary leaders. That person would seem to be putting themselves in Jehovah's or Jesus' position, and it would be considered wrong.
Where does that leave them? In a position where they imagine no harm will come because they've got God or Christ at the helm. In reality it is a ship with a crew but no captain, no one in command. The decks will be spotless, the brass polished, the engines humming as smoothly as ever, but no one manning the captain's seat, no navigator.
Is that an iceberg looming out of the fog?
S4