(Recycled old post [23. Oct. 2006]:)
W 01. April 1986 QfR: Do we have Scriptural precedent for taking such a strict position? Indeed we do! Paul wrote about some in his day: "Their word will spread like gangrene. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of that number. These very men have deviated from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already occurred; and they are subverting the faith of some." (2 Timothy 2:17, 18; see also Matthew 18:6.) There is nothing to indicate that these men did not believe in God, in the Bible, in Jesus’ sacrifice. Yet, on this one basic point, what they were teaching as to the time of the resurrection, Paul rightly branded them as apostates, with whom faithful Christians would not fellowship.
This is most fascinating. When the F&DS was supposedly appointed in 1919, the Watch Tower Society was still teaching that the Resurrection had begun in 1878 -- a teaching not altered until 1927 -- and which teaching the WTS now rejects as false. Does it not bugger the imagination to believe the Lord appointed over all his belongings an organisation that (by its own published standard) would be 'rightly branded apostate, with whom faithful Christians would not fellowship'?