Jehovah's Witness
No one must ever compromise any of the essential, life-saving truths from God, but to truly be part of the "one body" required of Christians, everyone must compromise some personal beliefs, preferences, interpretations, etc.
The Jewish Christians in Rome were commanded to give up the Mosaic Law. This was a task that was most difficult for them. It must have gone against their natural desire to continue under the law and its practices. To follow God's instructions, it meant great hardship for them and the Jewish community in which they lived.
But it was required of them in order to bring them toward complete unity under Jehovah. In spite of Jehovah's clear instruction, there were some Jewish Christians who were still unwilling to let go of the Law, and this caused disunity because of it. The matter was then brought to Jehovah's Governing Body in Jerusalem. Interestingly the Governing Body was made up of Jewish Christians. They affirmed Paul's teaching that the Mosaic Law and circumcision must not be a requirement for Christians. (Acts 15)
Should the Jewish Christians at Antioch have been upset because a few Christians in far off Jerusalem were forcing them to teach and follow a doctrine they personally strongly disagreed with? Weren't they also members of the "anointed" class? Wasn't Holy Spirit also guiding them? And yet they were in strong disagreement with the "governing body"! Should they have left the organization? (Some undoubtedly did. Some probably even wrote very convincingly about the "dishonest, unfair, Spirit-resisting" organization they had just left.) Should they have attempted to continue teaching their beliefs within that organization in spite of the "governing body's" clear decision to the contrary? Should they have been disfellowshiped if they continued to disagree publicly? .
IF the Watchtower Society today is guided by holy spirit and is truly God's organization on earth as it claims, then the governing body of that organization, even though composed of imperfect men from western countries only (so far) and based in far off New York, USA, has the right and the duty to make final decisions for all Christians worldwide. And all those Christians have the duty to obey that governing body unless it clearly goes against God's word in one of the eseential areas that mean eternal life! At that point a person must leave such an organization just as the Israelites should have rejected Aaron's Golden Calf (or Jeroboam's Golden Calves) and separated themselves from those whose hearts had returned to the false gods of the Egyptian culture they had known so well.
Moses, imperfect human as he was, was God's appointed leader of that vast congregation. What Moses taught them and what Moses did gave the Israelites (and accompanying Egyptians) ample evidence that God had appointed him. So, in spite of the apparent reasonableness of Miriam and Aaron's complaint about the absolute authority of Moses, they were punished by God for opposing that God-given authority. - Ex. 12.
The same goes for the apparent reasonableness of Korah and his followers (Numbers 16:3-11), but look at the consequences of that continued resistance (Num. 16:31-35). Even after those terrible consequences some of the Israelites blamed Moses' leadership for the permanent "disfellowshiping" (death) of those "people of Jehovah" (16:41) who they sincerely believed had been merely striving for justifiable, reasonable, loving changes in the leadership of the congregation. And look at what the result of that dissension was (16:42-49)!
The unity of Christians cannot be overemphasized. And this unity can be achieved in no other way than through obedience. When the Watchtower Society changed the elder arrangements, for example, they were changing a method (like Moses did) not an essential truth. And those many Christians who were stumbled by it (perhaps they were even correct that the old method was better in some respects) exchanged the much more essential life-saving requirement of humility and obedience to proper authority for the right to dissent in a "reasonable" and "just" cause.
Do we really have the right to criticize those spirit-anointed Christian leaders of the most high God JEHOVAH because their decisions seem "unloving" or "unreasonable" to some of us? All of us can find places in the Bible that seem "cruel" or "unreasonable" to us. Should we grumble against the authority of the Bible ? If we do, we have lost everything! If we do, we have become no different than Babylon the Great which has failed so completely to show the absolutely necessary oneness required by Jesus' prayer in John 17.
If there is no single organization on earth today being directed by God's spirit (which would certainly be strange since there was always one single such organization from Moses through New Testament times, at least, and these critical last days certainly demand it, also), then it would not be out of line to question and criticize the leadership of any religious organization. But it would also be a waste of time. Why try to change an organization if it isn't directed by God anyway? Why be any part of such an organization?
On the other hand, if there is a single organization being guided by Jehovah's spirit (as would be expected if the Good News is truly to be spread completely and properly - see Barclay quote above), we would certainly not want to put ourselves in Korah's place when he questioned the authority and methods of Moses with the "reasonable" statement that the entire congregation was being guided by Jehovah, and, therefore, the entire congregation (or at least all the chief representatives of the assembly) should have equal authority with Moses and Aaron. - Num. 16:3-11.
...OUTLAW
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