Around 2013 the Governing Body announced that it alone, rather than the "annointed Christian remnant" was "the faithful and discreet slave" The 7/15/2013 Watchtower study article discussing this "Feeding Many Through the Hands of a Few" used Jesus' miaculous feeding of the large crowd listening to him as the basis for this change, in that only his apostles passed out the food to the crowd.
Since then, the statement has been made, verbally, and in print, that "Jesus did not say the slave would produce perfect spiritual food...". However, Jesus did not say that the slave would 'produce" the food at all, merely distribute it to the Master's household. On other occasions he said that man must not live on bead alone, but on God's Word, that his food was to do the will of his Father, and that his, to be sacrificed, flesh and blood was true food and drink.
This says to me, that the 'job' of the slave is to distribute the Bible, and the Christian message, not to issue directives and commands or to oversee the lives of the fellow domestics of God's household. The GB has said they are "spirit-directed" but not "inspired", but like so many things this is purposely kept vague with no clear explanation given.. One contoversial statement made was the " the Governing Body could be likened to the voice of Jesus...." (NO!)
This change was probably planned for a long time, as for years unclear statements were made that "The FDS was 'closely associated" with brothers serving at world headquarters, that there was 'no worldwide network' of annointed ones, and implications made that many professing being annointed were mentally confused. (Frankly, I always had a hard time believing that anyone in this day and age were annointed, in the sense of being selected for heavenly rulership with Christ.)
Although it's still being said the remainng annointed will eventually be gathered to heaven, the self election of the GB to being the FDS, essentially dismissed the idea of there being an annointed class on earth today.
