Simon,
Thank you again, and again, for watching over this board. Sarah and I read here often. We are becoming enlightened from the wisdom of the experienced ones writing here, which reminds us that in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom. We are enjoying our association with your board very much.
I saw this week wise words coming from this board regarding the tragic Bryant case. Thank you for allowing many of us to comfort and accompany each other in these sorrows. May those elders responsible stand before Jehovah in judgement against themselves. The unnecessary pain of this brother and his family, including the pain of hundreds of thousands of other mistreated people from all parts of the earth, cries out for justice.
I would like to voice my concerning for the mistreatment of people by congregation committees of Jehovah's witnesses world-wide. Before voicing my concern, I would like to add that in contrast to the mistreatment of people by elders misguided by WTBTS policy, Sarah and I think your board is contributing to the saving of many lives, for which we commend you Simon, by allowing us to support one another through grief.
Now as I was saying, mistreatment of the sheep is nothing new. We have examples in the Scriptures of the Pharisees and Saducees' hypocritically plotting deaths of righteous ones. One example is when they expulsed the blind man who gained sight, after Christ miraculously healed him. Christ applied his words in Matthew chapter to them in the strongest of language. Christ words in this chapter labeled these men who mistreated God's sheep as hypocrites and blind guides.
In contrast, how differently Christ treated God's sheep. In tenderness, he lovingly and kindly received the sheep who were knocked about, who had sinned and had come to him for help. An example is the tax collector who was stealing monies from the people he taxed. He told Christ he wanted to give it all back to them with interest. He followed Christ's leading.
Christ invited the sheep to come to him and he would help shoulder their burdens, not push them away. Come to me all you who are toiling and loaded down, he said, and I will refresh you. Take my yolk upon you, and become my disciples, for my yolk is kindly and my load is light.
The Pharisees were binding unbearable loads upon the people, commands of men as doctrine is what Christ called their teachings. Men's commands made the people spiritually sick. Christ came to heal them.
How can the modern doctrine of disfellowshipping or shunning in anyway be Christ-like? In the Scriptures we are told that if anyone does not want to walk with us, we are to greet him as a man of the nations, like we would anyone. We talk to people. People are free moral agents. Let them do what they want to do. Let them be.
Disfellowshipping is on par with what Christ condemned the Pharisees for in Matthew 23. The Pharisees acted corruptly. They had left the weightier matters of the law, such as love and mercy. They played the game of politics.
Of interest is Christ's usage of his words addressing the anointed ones in the seven congregations in the book of Revelation. His warnings to erring anointed ones were to help them, he wanted to lead them to repentance. That is how people needed to be addressed when going before elders. The Christ-like question is, how can the sheep be helped? Let me tell you how elders in another Northern California congregation, near Oakland, helped a sister..
This sister, in the truth since the age of nine, a well respected witness, and a pioneer many years, went before a committee of five elders. A victim of multiple sexual molestations as a child, thinking she had done something wrong, she asked to meet with elders. She explained that a brother had forced himself on her, against her will, sexually. She had refused his advances. He disrepected her. She also was an eye-witness to this man exposing himself in public. The elders turned on her. Let me explain what position this man held in the congregation.
This so-called brother accused by the sister belonged to the good ole boy club in the congregation, the same one the elders belonged to. He was a ministerial servant. He translated the Watchtower magazine into Ukranian for the Canadian branch. He did this work out of his own house in Northern California.
Tha PO threatened the valiant sister with disfellowshipping. She fought the guy off, went and told the elders and the sister was threatened with expulsion. And the wrong doer? He lied his way out of her accusations, bold faced.
The moral of the story is, if you come forward and tell the truth in the congregation you will be made a subject for Gehenna, just like the Pharisees of old did. Like modern Pharisees, there are elders not going into the Kingdom and to make sure no one else goes in either they kill off the sheep. The sister went to a private detective and to someone connected to the FBI to look into this person's background. He had immigrated from the Ukraine, but there was a blank wall in his record from the time he had begun living in Chicago in the 1950s. He had no history. There were no records.
This faithful sister is being blessed many times over for telling the truth before men whose ears were stopped up and whose eyes were pasted shut. She separated herself from an organization that still holds onto Babylonish doctrine, such as shunning. She will not have another thing to do with the WTBTS.
Thank you, Simon, for giving my family and me the pleasure of expressing ourselves here. We wish everyone well who has been beaten up spiritually, emotionally and made ill physically by an evil slave who in his heart says the master is delaying. Watching the evil slaves's showdown with Christ Jesus will be something we will not want to miss. Stay alive, everyone. Fight to do what is right, everybody. Our prayers are with you all, many times daily. We are your family in California. Keep up your courageous stand for what is right. It is wonderful meeting you all, from all nations and languages. OUr hearts go out to you. Be faithful, stand firm, grow mighty. We are with you. Your brothers, Sarah and
