“God said to Samuel, "Anoint me a son"

Sam say, [after reviewing Jesse’s seven and coming to skinny David]  "Man, you must be puttin' me on"

God say, "No, " Sam say, "What?"

God say, "You can do what you want Sam, but Next time you see me comin', you better run"

Sam said, "Where do you want this anointing ' done?"

God said, "Out on Highway 61"   (With apologies to 1 Samuel & Bob Dylan)

Samuel went through seven of of Jesse’s sons. All were promising candidates to him. All seemed like they could knock it out of the park. God said, ‘Maybe they look good to you, but not to me:’ 

“Do not pay attention to his appearance and how tall he is, for I have rejected him. For the way man sees is not the way God sees, because mere man sees what appears to the eyes, but Jehovah sees into the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:9)

I don’t know about the ones who have moved on to who knows where, but of the ones who stay, surely a universal truth acknowledged is that there are two hopes among Christians, the heavenly and the earthly. 

Those with the heavenly hope are the ones who will serve as kings and priests over the earth in the new system. (Revelation 5:10) So are we to think they sit on their hands now?

Unless the entire structure of the JW organization is a crock—highly unlikely in view of its unbroken chain of succession since at least Rutherford and its accomplishments in laying down infrastructure for the united worldwide spread of the good news—then the anointed Christians today represent God’s chosen means of governing his people today.

But—but—could not a newbie or an outlier just say, ‘Hey, I’m anointed!,’ thus promoting him or herself to potential power? It’s not going to happen with those operating in the full-time service structure of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Decades of lowly service will have weeded out any pretenders. There is nothing so meriting God’s curse than ‘partaking unworthily,’ so you know the veterans are not going to be doing that. God’s means of directing his people could not be more clear.

This outrageous demand of one grouser that we are to scrutinize the GB and give each a thumbs up or thumbs down—where is the counterpart in Scripture for that? It is no wonder the fellow parted ways, seeing as he has come to conflate Thomas Jefferson and John Locke with the early apostles.

Now, looking at the current Governing Body, if God swooned over intellectuals, do you think these are the guys he would have chosen? Some of them are an acquired taste to listen to. In fact, you can ask yourself, if the present helpers were instead taking the lead, would they select current GB members for their helpers? As with Samuel, God sees what men do not. 

I’m convinced (on admittedly incomplete evidence—so just put it out there as a hunch) that this is what bothers those intellectuals who depart. Here they are in a heady world of intellect, interacting with others of that world. How can guys who may not even know what words like ‘exegesis’ mean possibly be running the show? Why can’t you put smart guys in there—giants of intellectualism who can knock the socks off any university professor?

They’d better get used to it. Near as I can tell, it is no accident on God’s part. It is deliberate. For a God who says ‘the wisdom of this world’ is foolishness with him, is he not tipping his hand? For a God who says, “he catches the wise in their own cunning,” is he not showing how he does it? For a God who says, “if anyone among you thinks he is wise in this system of things, let him become a fool, so that he may become wise,” ought they not do it rather than revere this generation’s intellectual output? (1 Corinthians 3:18-19) Remember, the lowly of the world, whom the Bible constantly makes clear are the ones whom God favors, have no problem whatsoever with any of these men.

The ‘unlearned and ordinary’ leaders of the first century congregation ever remain ‘unlearned and ordinary.’ They don’t raise themselves up from by their own bootstraps to tower with the intellectual pillars of a world that’s going down the tubes. If God didn’t laugh at this world’s wisdom with its phony status, he would have had his Son born at the Jerusalem Hyatt, not the Bethlehem Manger. There is no reason He could not have done it; He knows a lot of people. He chose the manger—as a way of telling the drivers of this system of things, usually top-heavy with intellectuals, what he thinks of them.

(Photo from Pixabay)

Best develop a sense of humor, because God has a great one. The greatest drama under creation, the preaching of the gospel to the nations by ordinary people, “the most uninformed and clownish of men,” said Celsus, incorporates scenes alternately noble and ridiculous:

“Don’t you have another suit jacket?” said the circuit overseer to the lowly publisher who, wanting to look his best for a special week of activity, had ironed his suit but then got distracted and attended to something else before righting the iron. It’s a good thing that CO wasn’t an intellectual. He would have wilted with the grass from embarrassment. 

***  The bookstore