"New Light" Question

[Jesus.defender]

Since the Organization has received "new light" regarding the 1914 generation, and completely changed their view on this, does this mean that all the former Jehovah's witnesses who were disfellowshipped years ago for the same view the organization is now teaching will automatically be accepted into fellowship again? Were these Ex-Jw's in fact disfellowshipped for truth and knew things that the governing body did not?
 

[Evacuated]

Posted 22 March · 

REINSTATEMENT No 4

If someone was disfellowshipped in the past for something now viewed as a matter of conscience, what is their current status; and what procedure should be followed if they wish to re-associate? 

No answers yet for this question posted earlier.

[Manuel Boyet Enicola]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 10:57 AM, Jesus.defender said:

Since the Organization has received "new light" regarding the 1914 generation, and completely changed their view on this, does this mean that all the former Jehovah's witnesses who were disfellowshipped years ago for the same view the organization is now teaching will automatically be accepted into fellowship again? Were these Ex-Jw's in fact disfellowshipped for truth and knew things that the governing body did not?
 

They were disfellowed primarily for not submitting to theocratic order.  Consider Miriam (Moses' sister), Dathan, Abiram and Koreh.  They all had valid reasons for their complaints. But they took matters into their own hands rather than wait on Jehovah; thus they were punished.  What Jehovah seeks is a humble and repentant heart with a waiting attitude.

[Jesus.defender]

On 4/4/2016 at 3:53 AM, Manuel Boyet Enicola said:

They were disfellowed primarily for not submitting to theocratic order.  Consider Miriam (Moses' sister), Dathan, Abiram and Koreh.  They all had valid reasons for their complaints. But they took matters into their own hands rather than wait on Jehovah; thus they were punished.  What Jehovah seeks is a humble and repentant heart with a waiting attitude.

Yes., the "theocratic order" that said that armegeddon was was to end in 1914.

 

The "theocratic order" was WRONG and made FALSE prophecies.

 

 

[Ann O'Maly]

On 4/4/2016 at 4:53 PM, Manuel Boyet Enicola said:

They were disfellowed primarily for not submitting to theocratic order.  Consider Miriam (Moses' sister), Dathan, Abiram and Koreh.  They all had valid reasons for their complaints. But they took matters into their own hands rather than wait on Jehovah; thus they were punished.  What Jehovah seeks is a humble and repentant heart with a waiting attitude.

*** w70 1/15 p. 38 Which Comes First—Your Church or God? ***

Notice that worship in “truth” is a must! It is therefore impossible to worship God acceptably without a deep love of the truth. The true Christian religion must be founded on the truth, not on traditions, creeds, dogmas and articles of faith that are often hard to understand because they defy all the faculties of reasoning with which God created us. Now what is the Christian standard for measuring truth? Is it not the Bible? So if there should prove to be contradiction between the tenets of a church that claims to be Christian and the plain statement of truth found in the Holy Scriptures, which should come first in your worship—your church or God’s Word, the Bible? What will be your answer if you sincerely desire to be “the kind of worshipper the Father wants” [referring to John 4:21-24]? 
 

When people of other religions stand up for what is objectively right or what they believe is right, JWs applaud them. E.g.

*** w05 9/1 pp. 25-26 Mennonites Search for Bible Truth ***

Facing Trials for the Truth
A few days later, the church elders came to the home of Johann’s family with an ultimatum for the interested ones: “We heard that Jehovah’s Witnesses visited you. You must forbid them to return, and unless you hand over their literature to be burned, you face expulsion.” They had had just one Bible study with the Witnesses, so this presented a formidable test.

“We cannot do as you ask,” replied one of the family heads. “Those people came to teach us the Bible.” How did the elders react? They expelled them for studying the Bible! This was a cruel blow indeed. The cart belonging to the colony cheese factory passed by the home of one family without collecting their milk, denying them their only source of income. One family head was dismissed from his job. Another was turned away from buying supplies at the colony store, and his ten-year-old daughter was expelled from school. Neighbors surrounded one home to take away the wife of one of the young men, asserting that she could not live with her expelled husband. Despite all of this, the families who studied the Bible did not give up their search for the truth.

How can you be sure that Jehovah wasn't using a congregation member to correct the Org. or elders? There are plenty of esteemed Bible examples who did just that and bucked against so-called 'theocratic order.'

[Manuel Boyet Enicola]

On 4/20/2016 at 2:35 AM, Ann O'Maly said:

How can you be sure that Jehovah wasn't using a congregation member to correct the Org. or elders? There are plenty of esteemed Bible examples who did just that and bucked against so-called 'theocratic order.'

Agree.  Jehovah even used a donkey!  And Jesus said, if needed, "the stones would cry out!" (Luke 19:40)

[Ann O'Maly]

7 hours ago, Manuel Boyet Enicola said:

Agree.  Jehovah even used a donkey!  And Jesus said, if needed, "the stones would cry out!" (Luke 19:40)

So then, if Jehovah was using a congregation member to correct the Org or elders, and the congregation member was punished for doing so, surely it is the Org or elders who need to repent of their actions and not the congregation member who was used by Jehovah, right?

[Manuel Boyet Enicola]

20 hours ago, Ann O'Maly said:

So then, if Jehovah was using a congregation member to correct the Org or elders, and the congregation member was punished for doing so, surely it is the Org or elders who need to repent of their actions and not the congregation member who was used by Jehovah, right?

Sure.  The key question is: What is Jehovah asking of us? Loyalty to him, period.  Humans sin, lie or deceive.  What we need is to stay close to Jehovah at all times....

[Ann O'Maly]

5 hours ago, Manuel Boyet Enicola said:

Sure.  The key question is: What is Jehovah asking of us? Loyalty to him, period.  Humans sin, lie or deceive.  What we need is to stay close to Jehovah at all times....

Therefore, loyalty to Him may mean disloyalty to a religious leadership's actions or beliefs. 

 

 

[Evacuated]

1 hour ago, Ann O'Maly said:

Therefore, loyalty to Him may mean disloyalty to a religious leadership's actions or beliefs. 

How does 1 Samuel 24:4-7 sit with this?

[JW Insider]

On 4/4/2016 at 11:53 AM, Manuel Boyet Enicola said:

They were disfellowed primarily for not submitting to theocratic order.

This is a common judgment. We often say that they didn't wait on Jehovah, or they ran ahead of the organization. Ann has made a very important point, and the support she has presented from Watchtower material is just a very small portion of many other articles and ideas that support her point.

But, like any other judgment, it's a dangerous judgment to make. One can make a case that many of these persons were disfellowshipped for just the opposite. They were disfellowshipped because they DID submit to theocratic order. That's because "theocratic order" starts with Jehovah and his Son first - the heavenly part of his organization. If anyone submits to the earthly part of the organization first, when their conscience tells them there is a discrepancy, they have NOT submitted to the theocratic order.

These types of disfellowshippings are not as common as disfellowshippings for immorality. With immorality the person is often immediately repentant but a certain amount of time is required for disfellowshipping anyway, to show the person, the congregation and the rest of the world that we are serious about keeping the congregation clean.

But there are also many of these types of disfellowshippings that do happen when a person questions the Watchtower's teachings. Even if this is not as common as opposers have sometimes indicated, every such case is a very serious matter. In fact, the problem has been known since the beginning of the Watchtower's history. All you have to do is look up "Harvest Siftings" in the old Watchtowers, and you realize that most of the "sifted" persons who were rejected from the early Watchtower organization were rejected because they had rejected the most blatant of the early false teachings.

In the 1970's I have seen letters from many of these persons who sent questions in to "the Society" and these questions were invariably from persons who were very serious about congregational unity, prayer, Bible study and obedience to Jehovah. But they had made a discovery about a supposed discrepancy that the local elders couldn't answer and those elders had asked them to "write the Society." If it was about a particularly controversial question the local elders were often contacted privately by the Service Department to watch this person for signs of disloyalty. Sometimes a couple of elders would visit them to make sure they were not making trouble or making an issue of the topic. The Circuit Overseer was sometimes asked to make a shepherding visit, too. This often happened even though the "Society" had not yet answered the question or even sent a response to the person who had the original question. I hope this practice has stopped, because the person who asks if made to feel very disturbed or guilty for even asking.

I have often been particularly interested in the "controversial" questions that come up here and there precisely because I have felt so badly about persons who left the organization due to the treatment they got for asking a question. They often end up feeling "marked" for having questioned the "faithful and discreet slave." A fairly good friend of mine, a Bethel elder, was disfellowshipped in 1980, not even 24 hours after Brother Sydlik had been involved directly in a multi-day inquisition of the brother and his wife and another couple. I said "hello" to him after the first day, and he said that I shouldn't be seen talking to him. Because he was a good friend, I asked him how things were going the next day, and he said he felt better because Brother Sydlik had told him he wouldn't be DF'd because he was trying to do the right thing, had never tried to convince anyone else, and that he obviously really loved Jehovah. My friend was almost crying, he was so happy. I was happy about this too because I believed (and confirmed later) that his only issue was our then-current view about 1935 and the possibility that there was still an open call to many Christians to partake of the emblems. He felt that some who believed they were anointed were being discouraged from being openly happy and rejoicing about such a calling due to the expectation that they very likely were not anointed, since Jehovah was only replacing those who had proved unfaithful since 1935. But my friend had also come to believe that the other sheep were the "Gentiles" and the "little flock" was a reference to the Jewish Christians who were the ones Jesus went to first, before opening up the fold to persons of the nations. He said the "verdict" was going to be that afternoon, and he was very hopeful (and thankful) that he would not be DF'd. But he was called back and everything had changed in just a few hours. He was called a worm, a cancer, a dog who had returned his vomit, and other names. They were both dismissed, and I was sure I would never see my friend again.

But what made this such a concern to me was the fact that I already knew that Brother Sydlik believed exactly the same about 1935 and about the meaning of the "little flock" and the "other sheep." I knew it from others but also had first-hand knowledge of it, because I had an opportunity to speak to him about it in his factory office just a couple months before I left Bethel. (This may have been related to why Brother Sydlik had wanted to reassure the couple that they would not be disfellowshipped.)

I won't push one way or another for a final resolution of this issue, but I realized it wasn't fair that serious elders who have quietly questioned specific beliefs, like 1935, had to be disfellowshipped by persons who believed the exact same thing - and also, I think, for the exact same reasons.

Brother Sydlik stated that "we don't want to be guilty of closing the doors to the kingdom of heavens." In my own discussion with him, I had said that I didn't think it necessarily made a huge difference in the long run, because Jehovah will place each vessel according to his own good purpose, and those who felt "anointed" would surely be used in the right place according to Jehovah's choice, which might end up being on earth, and those who felt "not anointed" would surely be used in the right place, just the same, even if it turned out not to be in heaven. After all, it is BOTH a new heavens AND a new earth we are awaiting. He kind of laughed it off and said that my suggestion was probably just as dangerous as his own, and the main thing is that we always guard the tongue, so we don't start any fires.

[Ann O'Maly]

1 hour ago, Eoin Joyce said:

How does 1 Samuel 24:4-7 sit with this?

It doesn't. I doubt whether anyone's seriously considering putting members of the Org's leadership to death.

It's interesting that David defected to Saul's and Israel's enemy, the Philistines, for a while (1 Sam. 27-29). How does that sit with the issue of loyalty?