eyeuse2badub
Most of what you have written is theory,
but on ground level, nothing has changed pretty much for the partakers.
My comments:
After all, for nearly 100 years, all jw’s were
taught and we believed that all the ‘anointed’ on earth at any particular time
is what constituted the “faithful slave”.
Yes, all anointed were the members of the
faithful slave, but we were also thought that only a group of anointed was
involved in the “spiritual food dispensation” department. Never in the history
of the JW’s or the Bible Students have individual partakers apart from the President/BOD/GB were involved in
preparing and dispensing spiritual food.
Then suddenly and without warning, much of what
we had been taught to believe and what was an integral part of our core beliefs
for many, many decades all changed in just ONE Watchtower magazine.
Most of what JW’s believe has been changed this
way, through one Watchtower magazine and without warning. This is the only way
any JW doctrine changes.
Individual governing body members,
theoretically, had no more authority than the other members of the “faithful
slave” class.
Individual GB members/President’s had more
authority than the other members of the faithful slave. At least in preparing
and dispensing spiritual food. Right from Russell’s time.
Then came the stunning change. The governing
body decided, independently from all the other members of the “faithful slave”
class, that they, the governing body, they alone were the “faithful slave”.
This change was not stunning, because,
historically, all decisions were made independently of the other anointed ones.
In fact, if you go behind in history, only one person, namely the president
(Russell, Rutherford) made most of the decisions.
That, IMHO, was exactly like a governmental
coup.
I think, a coup is when one group seizes power
and authority from other group. In 2013, there was a titular change for all
anointed individuals. No anointed person, even an individual GB member would
tell that they are a faithful slave. Individually, all were now classified as
domestics. Regarding power and authority – individual anointed ones never had
any power or authority since 1879 and hence there was no question of seizure or
overthrow, hence I don’t consider this as a coup.
It was a seizing of power and authority in a
most visible way.
I am not sure how this was visible, rather than
being printed in the Watchtower. What visibly changed for an anointed member in
a local congregation?
I really wonder how the rest of the ‘anointed’
truly feel about their being stripped of their “faithful slave” class
designation without their consent or input?
There are hundreds of protest letters written
to the WT. Some of these can be found on the internet and this forum. But its
almost rare to find any such protest letter from a disgruntled anointed one who
left the JW’s because of the change in 2013. In fact, in 2012, there were
12,000 partakers, while in 2017 there are 18,000 partakers. Such a drastic coup
should have decreased the numbers, but it’s become the opposite. More and more
are joining the ranks even after the GB feels that some of them are mentally
unstable.
