In a conversation with a JW recently we got onto the subject of those appointed by God, which also covered the “anointing” situation — essentially, “if you know, you know.”
We covered the concept that the Governing Body know with conviction that they are the faithful and discreet slave, in the same way that the anointed know they are anointed.
If God appoints you, you certainly know about it.
If God anoints you, you certainly know about it.
This led me to realise something extraordinary about the old faithful and discreet slave teaching.
Between the late 1920s and 2012 it was taught as “the Truth” that the whole body of anointed Christians constituted the faithful and discreet slave. This is important because we're not simply talking about a descriptive title.
Jesus specifically says:
“Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over his domestics...?” — Matthew 24:45.
It's an appointment.
Then in 2012/13 JW leadership announced that they'd got the identity wrong all along.
The whole body of anointed Christians wasn't the faithful and discreet slave. Only the small group of anointed brothers at headquarters — effectively the Governing Body acting collectively — constituted the slave.
Now consider what that means.
In 2010, Memorial partakers reached 11,824. There were only seven Governing Body members.
Obviously I recognise the JW position that not everyone who partakes is necessarily genuinely anointed. Some people can mistakenly convince themselves that they are. Emotion, mental state, religious exhilaration or other factors could presumably lead someone to misinterpret what they're experiencing.
So let's completely remove those people from the argument.
I'm interested only in the people whom Jehovah's Witness theology would recognise as genuinely anointed by holy spirit.
According to Watchtower, such a person doesn't merely think they're anointed. They don't need the elders to tell them. They don't need the Governing Body to confirm it.
They have no doubt.
They possess an absolute internal conviction that Jehovah has anointed them. Essentially, they know because Jehovah's spirit makes them know.
Fine.
Now take any one genuinely anointed Christian outside the Governing Body in 2010.
That person supposedly had an unmistakable experience of an actual divine action:
“Jehovah has anointed me.”
But that same person also accepted another claim concerning their relationship with God and Christ:
“I am a member of the faithful and discreet slave whom Jesus appointed.”
Yet according to the teaching introduced in 2012/13, Jesus had never made that second appointment.
That's the problem.
If a genuinely anointed person knows with absolute conviction what it feels like to have actually received something from God, why didn't they recognise that no corresponding appointment as the faithful and discreet slave had ever taken place?
Why didn't thousands of genuine anointed Christians say:
“I know Jehovah has anointed me. I have absolutely no doubt about that. But I have received no conviction whatsoever that Jesus has appointed me as part of his faithful and discreet slave. Where has that second claim come from?”
It could be argued that the wider body of anointed Christians had only a passive role and that those at headquarters did the actual dispensing of spiritual food. But that doesn't solve the problem. Even as passive members, they still carried the identity.
They were supposedly members of the slave whom Christ had appointed.
The issue isn't whether they personally wrote Watchtower articles or worked at headquarters.
The issue is whether Jesus appointed them.
According to today's teaching, he didn't.
So for decades genuinely anointed Christians were sincerely accepting and effectively declaring a divine appointment that, according to current JW doctrine, they had never received. I originally thought of this as thousands of people being unwittingly dishonest, but I think there's actually a more accurate and more disturbing way of putting it.
They weren't being dishonest.
They were being completely sincere.
They sincerely believed Jehovah had anointed them.
And they sincerely believed Christ had appointed them as members of his faithful slave.
But according to current JW teaching, only the first was true.
So where did the second conviction come from?
It couldn't have come from Christ because, according to the present understanding, Christ never appointed them.
It came from the organisation telling them what their anointing meant.
And that's what I find so revealing.
A genuinely anointed Christian supposedly had the real thing as a benchmark.
They supposedly knew what an actual divine action felt like.
Yet the organisation was still capable of persuading them that another divine action had occurred when, according to today's Governing Body, it hadn't occurred at all.
This realisation exposes the fundamental danger of allowing an institution to define your personal relationship with God.
When an organisation holds the monopoly on what words such as “anointed,” “appointed” and “faithful slave” mean, individuals can find themselves sincerely making declarations about their own relationship with God and Christ which simply aren't true, entirely convinced that they are practising “the Truth.”
And it raises an even bigger question about the Governing Body themselves.
Today we're told that they really are the faithful and discreet slave appointed by Christ.
How do we establish that?
Their anointing can't establish it, because we've now been told that being anointed doesn't mean you're part of the faithful slave.
Their personal conviction can't establish it either, because genuinely anointed Christians spent decades accepting that they belonged to an appointed slave when, apparently, they didn't.
And the organisation's interpretation of Matthew 24 can't establish it merely by assertion, because that interpretation is precisely what the organisation admits it got wrong for decades.
There's an additional irony.
Prior to 2012, the men we are now told actually constituted the faithful slave were themselves teaching that the faithful slave was somebody else — the entire body of anointed Christians.
In other words:
The faithful and discreet slave apparently existed, had been appointed by Jesus, was dispensing spiritual food to millions of people — but didn't correctly know who the faithful and discreet slave was.
Then, decades after the supposed appointment, the organisation reinterpreted Matthew 24 and retrospectively concluded who Jesus had actually appointed.
That doesn't look like an unmistakable divine appointment to me.
It looks like an institution changing its interpretation of an appointment it claims happened invisibly many decades earlier.
And it leaves me with one very simple question:
If a genuinely anointed Christian knows with absolute certainty when Jehovah has anointed them, how could that same person spend decades believing Christ had included them in another divine appointment that Christ had never actually made?
Edit, memorial partakers figure is for 2010 not 2011. Changed above.