THESIS: When someone who is given a responsibility mistakes that responsibility for authority, bullying is very likely to occur.
Jesus spoke an illustration recorded at Matthew 24: 45-51 which well illustrates this thesis.
Jesus asked, “Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over all his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time? Happy is that slave if his master on arriving finds him doing so. Truly I say to you, He will appoint him over all his belongings. But if ever that evil slave should say in his heart, ‘My master is delaying,’ and should start to beat his fellow slaves and should eat and drink with the confirmed drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day that he does not expect and in an hour that he does not know, and will punish him with the greatest severity and will assign him his part with the hypocrites. There is where his weeping and the gnashing of his teeth will be.”
Watch Tower teaches that Jesus was foretelling a time when he would appoint a faithful and discreet slave class over his followers on earth. However, nowhere did Jesus identify himself as the master.
There are two features which must be fulfilled for one to fit Jesus’ model of a faithful and discreet slave, and both features were fulfilled by Jesus before he ascended to heaven. First, the slave must give the master’s domestics their food at the proper time. Do you remember when Jesus told his disciples, as recorded at John 16:12, “I have many things yet to say to you, but you are not able to bear them at present.” Clearly, Jesus was giving his disciples spiritual food at the proper time for them. Still, when Jesus spoke those words he had not yet proven his loyalty to the Father unto death.
Second, after having been inspected and found to have fulfilled the first feature, that slave would be appointed over all the master’s belongings. Jesus also fulfilled this feature. After having proved his loyalty to the Father unto death and shortly following his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and as recorded at Matthew 28:18, “Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying: “All authority has been given me in heaven and on the earth.”
Since Jesus never identified himself as the master in his illustration, and since both features of a faithful and discreet slave find their fulfillment in Jesus, could it be that Jesus was pointing to himself as an example of a faithful and discreet slave? 1Peter 2:21 says, “In fact, to this course you were called, because even Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely.”
In the July 2013 Study Edition of The Watchtower, the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses presumptuously declared itself to be the faithful and discreet slave of Jesus’ illustration, appointed by Jesus, they claim, over the “household of faith” in the year 1919. Why do we say presumptuously? Because the very same article admits that the inspection to determine whether the first feature was carried out properly and the subsequent appointment over all the master’s belongings is yet future!
Does a slave typically demand obedience from those it serves, as the Governing Body demands from Jehovah’s Witnesses?
That 2013 Watchtower article arrogantly boasted that, “When Jesus comes for judgment during the great tribulation, he will find that the faithful slave has been loyally dispensing timely spiritual food to the domestics. Jesus will then delight in making the second appointment—over all his belongings. Those who make up the faithful slave will get this appointment when they receive their heavenly reward, becoming corulers with Christ.”
Do those sound like words declared by a humble slave? Or do they rather sound like the boasting of the evil slave which Jesus described following his description of the faithful and discreet slave?