The nation of Israel had a religious governing body just as Jehovah’s Witnesses do. But Jesus did not praise them for caring for the spiritual needs of the people. Instead, he condemned them publicly, calling them the Devil’s children.
“Why do you not understand what I am saying? Because you cannot listen to my word. You are from your father the Devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a murderer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks the lie, he speaks according to his own disposition, because he is a liar and the father of the lie.” (John 8:43, 44)
Wow! What powerful words. Jesus was definitely not afraid of speaking truth to power.
But there is a depth to his words that we can miss if we don’t look deeper.
You see, the devil is not only the father of the lie, but the master of lying. He knows all the tricks. One of his tricks is to portray himself as a source of light. His children have learned that technique from him as Paul explained:
“For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself keeps disguising himself as an angel of light. It is therefore nothing extraordinary if his ministers also keep disguising themselves as ministers of righteousness. But their end will be according to their works.” (2 Corinthians 11:13-15)
The devil is very crafty in portraying himself as a source of light. Learning from him, his ministers disguise themselves as righteous light bearers. But we will no longer be fooled by their clever disguise. Their works are being exposed like never before. Now we can see what truly motivates these men.
Of course, the leaders of the Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses have never applied the words of Jesus nor those of Paul to themselves. They have no trouble applying them to the other religions in Christendom, however. But the men of the Governing Body consider themselves to be the most righteous of men, even referring to themselves as our future kings, the Governing Body.
This trend of self-imposed righteousness continues in a talk posted on JW.org by Governing Body member Jody Jedele titled “The Path of the Righteous Grows Brighter and Brighter (Proverbs 4:18).
The timing of this video’s release is noteworthy, coming as it does on the heels of one of the most shocking reversals of Watchtower doctrine, the removal of the prohibition on blood transfusions.
Let’s take it apart bit by bit to see if it is truly a source of spiritual light. Because sometimes light is really darkness just as Jesus said:
“Be alert, therefore, that the light that is in you is not darkness.” (Luke 11:35)
How can light be darkness? When the light is fake light, lies disguised as light from God. Jody begins by introducing his theme text:
The outline of contents in our Bible mentions that Proverbs chapter 4, the chapter that our text is taken from, includes a father's loving advice to acquire wisdom, choose the right path in life, a path that gets brighter and brighter, and to safeguard our hearts. That's wise advice for all of us.
Jody is referencing Proverbs 4:18 and it is a very encouraging scripture, especially when you read the next verse as well.
“But the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light That grows brighter and brighter until full daylight. The way of the wicked is like the darkness; They do not know what makes them stumble.” (Proverbs 4:18, 19)
No offspring of Adam is born righteous nor do any of us achieve righteousness by hard work. It is by God’s grace through the sacrifice of Jesus, and by our faith in his name, that we can be declared righteous by God for life.
Those verses in Proverbs are not talking about the way that God reveals prophecy. Rather, they refer to the life course of one who walks with God. If the word of God lights your way, you become more surefooted as you walk through life.
There is nothing there that refers to an organization. It is referring to faithful servants of God. Yet notice how Jody subtly introduces his Organization into the equation.
So, for our discussion now, let's identify some lessons about Jehovah and how he shines light Both on his organization as well as how he helps each one of us individually, and what lessons we can learn. Let's turn first to Amos chapter three and verse seven. Amos chapter three and verse seven.
Jody doesn’t focus on how light gets brighter on the path of a righteous person. No, he is trying to find an excuse for the mistakes made by the Organization, many of which have cause enormous pain, suffering, and even death.
Notice what we learned there about the revealing or this brightening light. It says that for the sovereign Lord Jehovah will not do a thing unless He has revealed His confidential matter to His servants, the prophets.
Just who are the prophets in this modern-day scenario Jody is referring to?
Now the world today talks about transparency, being open to public scrutiny. Jehovah is open. He shares what He will do with His servants. He hasn't hidden His purpose. We also notice that it's Jehovah who is the source of the light. He reveals matters. He ensures that this path will get brighter and brighter.
Jody wants you to believe that Jehovah now reveals his confidential matter to and through the Governing Body of which Jody is a part. That would mean he now considers the members of the Governing Body to be God’s modern-day prophets. Can there be any other way we can view the meaning behind Jody’s words?
He is connecting Amos 3:7 with Proverbs 4:18, but is that a valid connection?
Look at the prophesies of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, Moses, and any of the other prophets. Can you find a time when one of them came forward and told the people, I have to make an adjustment to my prophecy, a clarification as it were? I didn’t get it exactly right. But don’t worry, the light is getting brighter and brighter.
Could the people put confidence in any prophet who kept changing his prophecy and blaming God for not giving him the whole picture at first?
Joseph acted as a prophet before Pharoah.
There will be seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. But I can't really be sure because my God doesn't always get things right the first time. It's called the light getting brighter, so who knows? Maybe he'll reverse the order.
Can you see the problem with Jody’s logic?
So for us then, if we don't fully understand a matter, we don't need to worry about it. Jehovah is the one who will shine the light on things. This ties closely to another lesson: Jehovah will cause the light to get brighter when it is needed.
Jody is redefining and minimizing the problem. “If we don’t fully understand a matter, we don’t need to worry about it.” Is he being serious?
The old blood policy was not something Jehovah's Witnesses “didn't fully understand.” We understood it perfectly well. We were told in no uncertain terms that accepting these blood components violated God's law, and we understood that teaching well enough to put our lives on the line for it. The issue isn't that the Governing Body lacked additional light. The issue is that it gave a definite answer and now it has reversed itself. This isn’t light getting brighter. This is about reversing course.
And instead of accepting responsibility for this, they are blaming Jehovah. Yes, I mean that. Think it through. Did God shine light telling the Governing Body in 1944—way back during the Second World War for the love of Pete—that blood transfusions were a sin? Apparently, if we are to believe Jody Jedele’s explanation. So, it took Jehovah God over eighty years to realise that He had to shine a brighter light to tell his “servants, the prophets” to cancel their prohibition on blood transfusions?
Jody wants you to accept his words as truth. He wants you to believe that changes are proof of God’s guidance. It goes like this: Change is increasing light, Jehovah revealing truth. And that’s evidence of divine guidance.
[change → increasing light → Jehovah revealing truth → evidence of divine guidance.]
Those are essentially his words. But we are not guided by his words, but by his works, or more specifically, the works of the Governing Body, and those works go back to 1919 and carry forward to our present day. They go like this: Human interpretation leads to an erroneous rule, which leads to consequences, and then a correction of error is necessary.
[human interpretation → erroneous rule → consequences → correction of error.]
The facts are that the Governing Body has made many prophetic interpretations that turned out to be wrong, and they want witnesses to believe that that is just how Jehovah works. So Jody is going to try to find some Scriptural account to support that belief. But there isn’t one, as we’ll see when we look carefully at what he says next.
Take, for example, the fall of Babylon and the return of Israel to their homeland. Now Jeremiah had prophesied that Jerusalem would be conquered and that it would lie desolate for 70 years.
Jeremiah's writing was completed by 580 BCE, more than 40 years before Babylon fell. But let's turn to Daniel 9:1-2 and notice when this was understood. Daniel 9:1-2.
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who had been made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reigning, I myself, Daniel, discerned by the books the number of the years concerning which the word of Jehovah had occurred to Jeremiah the prophet for fulfilling the devastations of Jerusalem, namely, 70 years. Now, looking back in time, we might have concluded that this should have been a simple thing of math. Jerusalem was devastated in 607 BCE. 70 years brings us to 537 BCE. We know the date.
In fact, it should have been on everybody's calendar back then. But what did Jehovah have Daniel record? Jehovah had Daniel record the aha moment and when the light became brighter. The moment came decades after it was written, sometime in 538 BCE or early 537 BCE. The point?
The prophecy had been in Scripture For some time, but the realization of its meaning came when it was needed.
It sounds convincing if you don’t think about it too deeply. That’s what he’s counting on. This is the commonly used logical fallacy of false equivalency. What happened to Daniel is not in any way equivalent to what has been going in with the Governing Body’s interpretations over the past century. Daniel didn’t come out with an interpretation of the seventy years that proved to be wrong and had to be corrected—sorry, adjusted—multiple times. He didn’t know, and then he knew. The light was off, and then it was on. There was no progressive brightening of the light.
So the lessons for us: we don't have to fear as a people if we don't understand something. Jehovah reveals matters when he decides and when it is needed. We don't worry or have to rush things. And it's nice that the light gets brighter when Jehovah's people can absorb Understand and follow through on it.
I see, so in 1961 we were not able to absorb, understand, and follow through on the idea that blood transfusions were a matter of conscience. For the past 60 years we had to disfellowship anyone who took a blood transfusion because that’s all we could absorb and understand. Yeah, okay.
Isn't it true when we have an adjustment today,
An adjustment, an adjustment! This is just a minor doctrinal tweak?!
we either hear or say things such as, well, it just makes sense, or my favorite, isn't that what we already thought?
“Hey, did you know that blood transfusions are now a matter of conscience and you can't be disfellowshipped for getting one?”
“Isn’t that what we already thought?”
Give me a break!
Now Jody is going to switch to a modern-day example, but this is where he really misleads his audience.
Jehovah often allows the understanding of prophecies to unfold progressively as they're fulfilled in world events. Let's look at a modern-day example of the light getting brighter. We spoke earlier of Daniel. He was inspired to record the prophecy of when Jesus would be installed as King in 1914. But Daniel didn't understand it, and he didn't need to.
No, Daniel was not inspired to record a prophecy of when Jesus would be installed as king in 1914 or any other year. That is utterly false. The prophecy recorded in chapter 4 of Daniel is complete unto itself. It was completely fulfilled in Daniel’s day. There is no secondary or antitypical fulfillment. There is nothing in that chapter indicating a secondary or antitypical fulfillment. King Nebuchadnezzar’s proclamation that went out to all the territories conquered by Babylon stating that Jehovah is the supreme God establishes clearly that the prophecy’s fulfillment was complete in that time.
It was fourteen years ago, at the 2012 annual meeting that David Splane explained that creating an antitypical fulfillment where the Bible doesn’t do so is going beyond what is written.
Well, in recent years the trend in our publications has been to look for the practical application of Bible events, and not for types where the Scriptures themselves do not clearly identify them as such. We simply cannot go beyond what is written.
David Splane’s words killed the doctrine that Christ’s Invisible Presence started in 1914. Killed it because the entire basis for that teaching is that it is an antitypical or secondary fulfillment. Yet the doctrine continues to be taught. I guess you’d have to call it a zombie doctrine now. They don’t think things through, do they? It is just as the Bible says:
“The way of the wicked is like the darkness; They do not know what makes them stumble.” (Proverbs 4:19)
Verse 19 is the verse they should be applying to themselves, not verse 18. Verse 18 applies to the righteous—the day getting brighter and brighter. What applies to them is verse 19.
They created an antitypical fulfillment that was never meant to be. And now we can prove it beyond any doubt. How? Because tied to that 1914 doctrine was a generation that was not supposed to die off before Armageddon came to establish God’s kingdom and replace man’s rule.
That was how the Governing Body applied Matthew 24:34.
“Truly I say to you that this generation will by no means pass away until all these things happen.” (Matthew 24:34)
The last one of them died 24 years ago. So there’s the evidence that the 1914 doctrine is false.
But Jody doesn’t want you to believe that, so he says:
Jehovah's modern-day servants did need to understand that, and they did. Early issues of The Watchtower, for example, dated December 1879, July 1880, directed attention to 1914 as being a year of significant importance from a biblical standpoint. In 1889, the entire 4th chapter of Volume 2 of The Millennial Dawn, or later The Studies in the Scriptures, was devoted to that topic. We also learn something about Jehovah and the light getting brighter by what he didn't do in this prophecy. When Jehovah revealed the time of Jesus' enthronement, that it would be in 1914, the brothers were excited and they preached about it.
He is either lying or he is just inexcusably mal-informed. I have to believe the former, because even if he misspoke, the other members of the Governing Body or any of their helpers would know that what he said was not true.
The facts are that Russell believed what Adventist Nelson Barbour taught, that Christ’s invisible presence began in 1874 and that 1914 was supposed to be the start of the Great Tribulation. It wasn’t until 1969 that the Organization stopped preaching that the Great Tribulation began in 1914.
It did become very clear that Jesus was installed as King in 1914. But it also became very clear that the system didn't end and they weren't taken to heaven. They woke up the next day. So Jehovah adjusted their expectations by not doing what they expected.
Nonsense. They were wrong, totally wrong, and they experienced the consequences of their presumptuous prophetic interpretations. Jehovah didn’t adjust their expectations. He just let them experience the consequences of their presumptuousness.
Whether it's a new understanding or an adjusted understanding, it's all good. The light is getting brighter. The fact is, if there were never an adjustment, then we should be worried. That means the light wouldn't be getting brighter. So, if anyone ever asks or says, well, you know, you folks made another change, smile and agree.
What Jody claims here is a perfect example of what Isaiah warned us about.
“Woe to those who say that good is bad and bad is good, Those who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, Those who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20)
Jody claims that the light comes from God regarding prophetic revelation. So, if the light comes from God, and the brighter light comes from God, and the still brighter light comes from God, then Jehovah God is responsible for all the light. That means the first understanding that blood transfusions were a sin punishable by disfellowshipping was from God. Now the brighter light from God is that they are no longer a sin, but a matter of conscience.
The Governing Body has not admitted that they were wrong about blood transfusions. They claim there were simply following the light from God where it led.
When Jehovah God confronted Adam about his sin, he blamed Eve. Eve in turn blamed the Serpent. They did not repent. They did not apologize. That is the pattern to look for when trying to identify someone disguised as a minister of righteousness.
Think about this: Why didn’t Jehovah forgive Adam and Eve? Well, let’s start with this: Neither one of them asked for forgiveness. In fact, they blamed someone else. Adam blamed God and his wife.
“The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate.” (Genesis 3:12)
“I’m innocent,” cried Adam. “You gave me the woman, and she gave me the fruit.”
Well, Jehovah wasn’t buying any of it. He condemned them both, and he’ll continue condemning ministers of righteousness who refuse to apologize, acknowledge their error and take responsibility for what they have done.
I’ll leave you with that to mull over. I hope that you can come to a wise decision, even though it might cost you to do so.
But bear in mind these words of Jesus Christ. I’m going to alter it just slightly to make a point.
“Whoever has greater affection for father or mother than for me is not worthy of me; and whoever has greater affection for [the Governing Body] than for me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37)
Do you want to be worthy of the approval of Jesus Christ, or the Governing Body, because you cannot have both.