Who are the “Gifts in men?”

According to the ‘governing body,’ the answer is at once simple and emphatic: The ‘spirit appointed elders’. Can this claim though be biblically substantiated? “One body there is,” says Paul in Ephesians 4, “and one hope,” namely the heavenly, to which all of those addressed here belong, and to “each one of us” the undeserved kindness of being a ‘gift in man’ was given according to how the Christ measured out the free gift. So the ‘gifts in men’ are sourced only from the members of the body of Christ. In fact, each and every member of the Christ is such a gift to men, not by official appointment from their peers, but by virtue of their receiving this individual gift of service to the body at large, through their anointing held in common with all.

The purpose of constituting each and every member a unique gift was with a view to the readjustment of the holy ones, for the building up of the body of the Christ, so that from him as the head, all the body being harmoniously joined together and made to cooperate through every joint that gives what is needed, according to the functioning and gift of each respective member in due measure, make for the growth of the body, for the building up of itself in love.

Just as the expression “some as shepherds and teachers” precludes all from being such, so “some as evangelisers” of necessity implies that not all are evangelisers, but that all such functions are by the Holy spirit, working as a unique ‘gift’ in them, which then also may be officially recognized by the body at large.

Since Christ’s body is synonymous with the congregation, there are at present only about 8000 members left of the Christian congregation. In the first century, when there were whole “congregations of the holy ones” everywhere, the functioning of the body, as represented in each local ‘congregation,’ was made possible as such through the assembling of its many members, as was their custom, and as enjoined by Paul. Did they get a written outline for their meetings from the ‘governing body’ back then? Or did they instead rely on Christ’s Spirit in them, so that when they came together, one had a psalm, another had a teaching, another had a revelation, another had an interpretation, for the upbuilding of all? Just where on earth can such meetings be found today?

So the children of God have in most places no contact with each other at all, cannot ‘consider one another to incite to love and fine works’ and are solely relying on the head to supply the growth that God gives through his spirit. Adding to the dilemma, in the local ‘congregation’ of non-members of Christ’s body, elders who are sourced from such, have been ‘appointed’ over them to shepherd them – how can that be? Is the body of the Christ to be readjusted and build up by people who don’t belong to it, as is happening today among ‘Jehovah’s witnesses?’ Shall we then “take the members of the Christ” and join them to another body of non-members to have control over us?

Through its ‘theocratic’ policies, the ‘governing body’ has in effect appointed spiritual “strangers” and “foreigners” over “the priests of Jehovah,” when such were supposed to be looking after our flocks and dress our vines! What an astonishing situation has been brought to be in the midst of all the spiritual land of Jehovah! Remember, according to Paul, the body was to “build up itself “ through the ‘gifts in men’ of “each respective member,” male and female, old and young.

Further, “one body there is,” the body of Christ, and it cannot be that a small part of it is separated off into forming another body, called ‘governing body,’ because Christ’s body is governed by its head alone, which is none other but Christ himself! So for the ‘Governing body’ to come back under the headship of Jesus, it has to reintegrate itself with the one and only body of Christ’s anointed disciples that he is exclusively dealing with today, the members of which are known, and whose function as slaves of Christ is to provide spiritual food at the proper time to the collective household of faith; and to encourage and facilitate such functioning of all the anointed is the obligation of ‘those who seem to be something,’ the ‘governing body,’ if you will.

The distributing of spiritual food to the household of the Lord was not to be the special prerogative of a self-appointed ‘governing body,’ arrogating to itself a virtual monopoly as it were, but to be shared in by all who are of the slave class; the unmediated and sovereign anointing from Jehovah surpasses any appointment from men, though such be based on qualifications received under inspiration.

As pointed out by the Watchtower, when Peter received counsel from Paul, he received food at the proper time from him as a faithful fellow slave, and when he wrote his letter to the scattered chosen ones he distributed food at the proper time to the household of faith; who appointed who over whom? But this interchange of feeding is just not happening today because of the hierarchical position and functioning of the ‘governing body’ as it has isolated itself from the body of Christ, pursuing a corporate, Theo-political agenda, aloof to the collective mind of Christ which it ignores to its own peril and to the detriment of the whole body of Christ, not to mention the sighing and cringing of the six million sympathisers associating with us.

Paul counselled the Colossians to cling, not to the elders and apostles in Jerusalem, but to hold fast to the head, the one from whom all the body is being supplied and harmoniously joined together in unity. Human nature, with its predilection for hierarchical structures, has no place in the body of Christ, the new creation, where all are one in Him, who is the sole hierarch and leader. In the human body, can the hand be in charge of the feet, or the eyes under the authority of the ears, or the arms ignore and do without the rest of the body? Can some members act as ‘governors’ over the rest of the body, as is the case among us? A body where such conditions exist is by definition not the body of Christ, where its members should have the same care for one another, and where there should be no division of the body into ‘governing’ and non-governing members.

In the first century, the apostles and older men in Jerusalem, were appealed to in only one recorded case in about 30years of Christian history, and then only acting as administrative chair, expressing the common consent of the entire, and rather informally grouped multitude of assembled older men, not because there was a shortage of mature ones to express the mind of Christ on the matter at hand, but because at that time the original apostles directly appointed by Jesus, being still alive, were to lend their weight to the already predetermined divine decision. To say that the apostles and older men in Jerusalem formed an electively appointed ‘governing body’ to distribute spiritual food to the congregations of the holy ones is just not true. That the body of Christ is to “build up itself,” excluding as it does the building up of it by outsiders, precludes also the building up by it of anything else, to the dereliction of this, its primary task.

Instead of building up a corporate empire to rival that of Jerusalem, where in the end not a stone was left upon a stone, and in view of the fact that we do not have here a city that continues, but are to look to the spiritual, eternal organization having real foundations, the more pressing task of Christ’s body is to build up itself, with solid spiritual food, with tables spilling over, which will automatically result in great blessings for those who are not sitting at the table of Jehovah yet as his children.

If the slave wants to be found faithful and discreet by the master at his future arrival for inspection, he has to be found in the act of feeding the domestics not only their food, but also at the proper time! A slave that feeds Christ’s domestics not “their food,” but unsuitably watered down spiritual skim milk meant to feed others, is neither faithful nor discreet in fulfilling his duty.

And isn’t it now the “proper” time to dish up all the prophecies dealing with the coming denunciation of Jehovah against us for all our transgressions, that we have so self-servingly relegated to the historical dustbin of 1914/18, or threatened against Christendom? “The overflowing flash flood, in case it passes through will not come near or reach as far as us” is a familiar catchphrase of “the braggarts,” the “rulers of this people,” that imagine themselves to be on good terms with the modern-day Assyrian, little realising that he will not be dealt with until Jehovah terminates all his work in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, in the day when he binds up the breakdown of his people and heals even the severe wound resulting from the stroke by him! Seeing that the “kingdom that cannot be shaken” is one “that we are [yet] to receive,” it becomes obvious that ‘Jehovah’s visible organization,’ as one of the “things that have been made,” will disappear in “the removal of the things being shaken,” when Jehovah “will jiggle the house of Israel among all the nations, just as one jiggles the sieve, so that not a pebble falls to the earth. By the sword they will die – all the sinners of my people, those who are saying: ‘The calamity will not come near or reach as far as us.’” Sounds familiar to readers of the Watchtower, doesn’t it. What may not be familiar to Jehovah’s witnesses is that the expression “my people,” uttered, as it is by Jehovah, unequivocally refers to us! Instead of walking ‘by sight,’ as in seeing the visible organization, shouldn’t we be causing people to ‘walk by faith’ in the coming kingdom to arrive with heavenly glory?