So what training have the elders had…as spiritual doctors, how many are busy running around the KH during the meeting, have not even prepared their own parts for the stage, spend most of their time in administrative duties at the conventions/assemblies believing that the information will be in the publications later or they already know this; or the elders that sleep in the back during the elder school, or the ones that have private conversations in the back because they feel they know all this stuff; or the schools that concentrate on the legal aspects of reporting or not reporting child abuse and helping the congregation has no place.
*** it-1 p. 893 Gate, Gateway ***
At the city gates the older men of the city sat in judgment. (De 16:18; 21:18-20; 22:15; 25:7) Even kings at times held audiences or sat in judgment there. (2Sa 19:8; 1Ki 22:10; Jer 38:7) Because the judges, the prominent men of the city, the merchants, the businessmen, and a goodly number of people were usually at the gate, prophets often went there to make proclamations.
(Blondie: not only financial matters were judged but matters regard the Law)
Those found worthy of death by the judges were taken outside the city gates to be executed. (1Ki 21:10-13; Ac 7:58)
(Deuteronomy 16:18) “You should set judges and officers for yourself inside all your gates that Jehovah your God is giving you by your tribes, and they must judge the people with righteous judgment.
(Deuteronomy 21:18-20) “In case a man happens to have a son who is stubborn and rebellious, he not listening to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and they have corrected him but he will not listen to them, 19 his father and his mother must also take hold of him and bring him out to the older men of his city and to the gate of his place, 20 and they must say to the older men of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he is not listening to our voice, being a glutton and a drunkard.’
(Deuteronomy 22:15) the father of the girl and her mother must also take and bring forth the evidence of the girl’s virginity to the older men of the city at the gate of it;
(Deuteronomy 25:7) “Now if the man finds no delight in taking his brother’s widow, his brother’s widow must then go up to the gate to the older men and say, ‘My husband’s brother has refused to preserve his brother’s name in Israel. He has not consented to perform brother-in-law marriage with me.’
*** it-1p.518Court,Judicial***
The local court was situated at the gate of a city . (De 16:18; 21:19; 22:15, 24; 25:7; Ru 4:1) By “gate” is meant the open space inside the city near the gate. The gates were places where the Law was read to the congregated people and where ordinances were proclaimed. (Ne 8:1-3) At the gate it was easy to acquire witnesses to a civil matter, such as property sales, and so forth, as most persons would go in and out of the gate during the day. Also, the publicity that would be afforded any trial at the gate would tend to influence the judges toward care and justice in the trial proceedings and in their decisions. Evidently there was a place provided near the gate where the judges could comfortably preside. (Job 29:7) Samuel traveled in a circuit of Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah and “judged Israel at all these places,” as well as at Ramah, where his house was located.—1Sa 7:16, 17.
The WTS as these judges would like to be able to have jw “wrongdoers” executed taking on the appointment as coming from God. I always wondered why then were not judicial committees public trials as the bible shows they were in Israel, before all the people in the gate openly rather than secret with out the elders and the accused alone. Even the “trial” of Ananias and Sapphira was in the open and there are not details of Corinth and the so-called df’ing there.
"Being limited by the laws of the worldly nation in which we live and also by the laws of God through Jesus Christ, we can take action against apostates only to a certain extent, that is, consistent with both sets of laws. The law of the land and God's law through Christ forbid us to kill apostates, even though they be members of our own flesh-and-blood family relationship. However, God's law requires us to recognize their being disfellowshiped from his congregation, and this despite the fact that the law of the land in which we live requires us under some natural obligation to live with and have dealings with such apostates under the same roof. Satan's influence through the disfellowshiped member of the family will be to cause the other member or members of the family who are in the truth to join the disfellowshiped member in his course or in his position toward God's organization. To do this would be disastrous, and so the faithful family member must recognize and conform to the disfellowship order. How would or could this be done while living under the same roof or in personal, physical contact daily with the disfellowshiped? In this way: By refusing to have religious relationship with the disfellowshiped."
Watchtower 1952 Nov 15 p.703
---------------------How does the WTS PROVE that judicial committees are scriptural, what scriptures? The term is not even mentioned until 1961 on the WT-CD.
If a “witness” to the badness is proved to be lying do they receive the same punishment as the accused….probably df’ing?
---------If RR still reads (and posts) perhaps he can describe how the Bible Students handle matters of “wrongdoing” in the congregation.
