Standard power struggle between kids in a fight:
"Oh yeah? WHO says so?"
"I say so!"
"Oh, yeah? Who are YOU to tell ME what to do?"
That's what the "Governing Body" scam consists of. It is supposed to be the answer to that last question: "Oh yeah? Who are YOU to tell ME what to do?"
The Governing Body is the voice of Jehovah, so to speak. You can't rassle with Gawd, you see.
The problem with a religion like Christianity is that it is all an upside down Pyramid scheme. The pyramid rests--not on a wide flat surface---nooooo,
it rests on one tiny point and has to remain perfectly, absolutely balanced or it will collapse under its own weight.
What is that point?
The BIBLE.
But, there is no BIBLE. That is to say, there is no original. There are no manuscripts at all. Not even scraps. There aren't any fragments or copies of the "originals".
You have smithereens (particles of ripped, torn, rotted, jumbled) of copies of copies of copies. And the sorry fact that they do NOT match is the biggesst conspiracy cover-up on planet Earth!
But, Christians pretend there IS a point on which all of it rests and remains balanced unshakably.
The Jehovah's Witness Empire is vested with INTERPRETATION of that mythical and mysterious book just exactly the same way the Catholic Church wields its doctrine of Majesterium.
WE SAY SO because GAWD is talking THROUGH us!!
This scam, this double-shuffle, this confidence game is only good when it is unassailable by any critic or it topples into rubble.
When the Watchtower demands loyalty to the word of the Governing Body it is reinforcing itself as the first and last LOYALTY demanded of a member.
Funny though how in early Christianity THERE WAS NO Governing Body remotely similar to the Watchtower version. Paul was teaching something entirely DIFFERENT from Jerusalem, wasn't he? Shouldn't Paul have gotten his teaching from the Governing Body instead of having to go to Jerusalem and explain his different teaching and correct Peter?
The doctrine is phony. Maria Russell dreamed it up. Russell embaressedly acknowledged it at first and later embraced it. Rutherford applied it to Russell at first and then spread it out to include a body (which was a fictional group making decisions, by the way, Rutherford was the ONLY ruler and the others were a rubber stamp committee).
The Governing Body today is a group of Jehovah's Witless pretending to be the bully boy in the school yard.
Terry