Posted by AF [AF] on April 06, 1999 at 10:59:44 {JK6FUAMFdMtWYktmF7cQdaOt1gg/Zk}:
In Reply to: *Why does a THEOCRACY nd REFORM posted by Friend on April 06, 1999 at 10:24:44:
: To my knowledge that explicit statement is still considered valid by the WTS.
Right, and it's as bogus now as it was then.
Whenever someone who doesn't have direct inspiration from God -- as in direct, miraculous manifestations -- thinks that his interpretations are so close to perfection that he's perfectly expressing God's will, trouble ensues. Such thoughts are arrogant in the extreme.
Watchtower leaders including Russell have been arrogant in the extreme, and they like to boast of their humility. Russell claimed that God had given him such complete understanding of the Bible that he didn't need to read it anymore by about 1908. He claimed that anyone who rejected what he wrote in Studies in the Scriptures went off into great "darkness" within two years. Yet here we have his successors, having rejected almost everything he taught. So much for merely "dispensing truth as the Master's gift".
J. F. Rutherford taught, and Fred Franz testified in court, that no man originated what was printed in The Watchtower. Franz even testified that Jehovah was the editor of the magazine that he and Rutherford and a few others wrote.
In truth Russell dispensed his own opinions about the Bible, and nothing more. So have all WTS leaders since.
The basic point of the JW reform movement, if you can call it a movement, is to get rid of this arrogant attitude. That can only come by humbly acknowledging that one's opinions are exactly that, and refraining from publishing one's own opinions as if they came from On High. That entails abolishing the disfellowshipping penalty for speaking publicly about opinions that happen to disagree with those of the WTS leadership. That will require a change in the attitude of the leadership that I don't see forthcoming. Far from making changes that show the theoretical humility that you'd like to see, current WTS leaders appear to be digging in. Only their deaths will allow for change. Once again, this has nothing to do with God.
AF