Did Christ Appoint the Faithful and Discreet Slave in 1919? The Scriptures and the Record Examined

“That faithful slave is the channel through which Jesus is feeding his true followers in this time of the end. It is vital that we recognize the faithful slave. Our spiritual health and our relationship with God depend on this channel.”¹

Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that this claim is exclusive. “...one small group of faithful people was emerging as the only body of genuine Christians in a vast field of imitations.”²

Seen from the inside, the case is compelling. By 1914, the Bible Students had already rejected hellfire, the Trinity, and the immortal soul, doctrines nearly every church on earth still taught. They had pointed to 1914 for decades before it arrived. Since 1891 they had urged people to leave the churches of “Babylon,” and for more than thirty years they had poured their money and strength into preaching. When Christ began his inspection, the organization says, he found “a small group of zealous Bible Students” whose wheat “had not been choked by Satan’s weeds”.³ Witnesses don’t claim the group was flawless. They openly admit the disappointment, the internal division, and the “fear of man” of 1914-1918. But they say that “as a whole they willingly responded to Jesus’ cleansing work”,⁴ exactly like the refining Malachi 3:2-3 describes. Then, in 1919, came what looks like vindication: the leaders released from prison, the Cedar Point convention, a fresh call to preach from house to house, and a century of worldwide growth that followed. To a believing Witness, no other group comes close.

There is a key concession here, though. While the Governing Body claims exclusive appointment, they admit that they can err in doctrine. “The Governing Body is neither inspired nor infallible. Therefore, it can err in doctrinal matters or in organizational direction.”⁵ This matters because if the channel can err in doctrine, a reader can’t treat disagreement with it as disagreement with God.

Malachi speaks of God sending a messenger who “will clear up a way before me.” God comes to his temple and is “like the fire of a refiner” (NWT), purifying and testing those whom he finds there. This scripture doesn’t supply the date either, but the “messenger” here is interpreted by the Watchtower to refer to Charles T. Russell and his associates in the decades leading up to 1914.⁶

Revelation describes two witnesses who prophesy for “1,260 days” dressed in sackcloth, and then, killed, lie dead in the street for “three and a half days,” and are resurrected. Watchtower literature treats the 1,260 days as a literal 42 months and starts the count in December 1914, running it to June 1918. Then to bridge the gap from June 1918 to “the early part of 1919” the Watchtower reaches for the second number in verse 9, the “three and a half days” the witnesses’ bodies lay in the street, and treats it as symbolic, stretching it out to cover roughly nine months.⁷ There’s no rule given for why the first number is literal and the second one is symbolic, other than that treating them this way gets you to 1919, and treating them any other way doesn’t.

A vision is given to Ezekiel of a valley full of dry bones. They are then brought back to life as flesh is put back on them and God puts breath back into them. Until 2016, the organization taught that this prophecy applied to the Bible Students who were imprisoned in 1918 and then released in 1919. It was said that they became “just like that of the dry bones” then were revived in the spring of 1919.⁸ This scripture was paired with Revelation 11: the two witnesses who were dead for 3 ½ days. In 2016, the beginning of this captivity to “Babylon the Great” was pushed back to the second century C.E. In the new reading, Christianity fell into apostasy shortly after the apostles and was not revived until Charles Taze Russell and the Bible Students.⁹ The start of the captivity moved by about 1,700 years, but the end date stayed exactly at 1919. Everything before 1919 is negotiable; 1919 itself never moves.

Daniel 12 is the closing chapter of Daniel’s final vision. An angel tells Daniel of a “time of distress,” the archangel Michael standing up for God’s people and the dead awakening. Then he answers the question “how long?” with three cryptic time periods: “a time, times, and half a time” (understood as 1,260 days), 1,290 days, and 1,335 days. Pay Attention to Daniel’s Prophecy! reads the 1,260 days as running from late 1914 to the leaders’ imprisonment in mid-1918, and the 1,290 days as beginning in early 1919, the year of their release and the organization’s revival.¹⁰ But this timeline was fitted to the history after the fact. Russell read the same numbers as years ending in 1874. Only in 1929 were they recast as literal days matching 1914-1926,¹¹ and the 1918 hinge date has since shifted from April to June. The prophecy didn’t point to 1919; it was refitted around it.

To follow their reasoning, it helps to know that Witnesses judge faithfulness at the level of the organization, not the individual. Membership in the right organization, and good standing within it, is what separates a follower of Christ from someone in “Babylon the Great.” So when Jesus said his disciples would be known “by their fruits,” Witnesses apply that test to organizations.¹²

There’s a further problem, and it may be the most important one. If Christ appointed a new faithful and discreet slave in 1919, the men supposedly appointed didn’t know it. In April 1920, a year after the appointment supposedly took place, the Watch Tower asked its readers to affirm that the Lord “chose as an earthly representative to serve the household of faith one wise and faithful servant whom he made ruler over the household, and that the person so chosen was Charles Taze Russell.” It added that “no one in present truth for a moment doubts that Brother Russell filled the office”.¹³ This wasn’t a single stray remark. In 1923 the magazine criticized those who once accepted “Brother Russell as that servant” but later denied it,¹⁴ and in 1925 it stated plainly that “Brother Russell was that favored servant”.¹⁵ Only in 1927 did the Watch Tower say the servant did not refer “to any individual person” and apply it to the anointed collectively.¹⁶ The current teaching, that Christ appointed a small group of men in 1919 who now make up the Governing Body, was formally stated in 2013.¹⁷ The people who lived through 1919 believed the faithful servant had died in 1916. The appointment they are now said to have received is a reading of their history written nearly a century later.

1. Jesus chose the Bible Students because they matched true Christianity.

2. How do we know what true Christianity looks like? Because they base teachings on the Bible, worship only Jehovah and make his name known, show genuine love, accept Jesus as Savior, stay no part of the world, and preach God’s kingdom.¹⁸

3. Why trust that list? Because it comes from the faithful and discreet slave, Christ’s appointed channel.

4. How do we know the slave is Christ’s appointed channel? Because Jesus chose them in 1919. (Back to step 1)

This is the parable of the faithful and discreet slave that the Witnesses believe applies to the group of men who gives them “their food at the proper time,” or who they believe gives them doctrinal guidance from Jehovah. If you look at the same telling of the parable in Luke 12:42-44, though, Peter asks Jesus just before the parable, “Lord, are you telling this illustration just to us or also to everyone?” (Luke 12:41, NWT). Jesus doesn’t directly answer his question, but he goes on to say, “Everyone to whom much was given, much will be demanded of him” (Luke 12:48, NWT), which would seem to indicate that the application is for everyone to whom much has been given. In 2013 the Watchtower itself moved the master’s “arrival” in Matt 24:46 from 1918 to the future great tribulation.¹⁹ By their own reading, the master hasn’t arrived yet, so the slave hasn’t yet been found faithful. That undercuts using this parable as proof of a 1919 approval.

The Bible Students applied this passage to Russell as the “messenger” who clears up the way and who precedes Christ’s refinement, but Jesus applies this passage to John the Baptist in Matthew 11:10, Mark 1:2 and Luke 7:27. The 2013 Watchtower agrees John the Baptist was the first fulfillment and argues for a “larger fulfillment”.²⁰ However, there’s no indication in scripture that there would be another messenger to prepare a new way.

The test is simple: if what the claimed channel says will happen doesn’t come true, it is not God’s channel. Jehovah’s Witnesses will commonly respond to this by claiming that Russell was never considered a prophet or claimed to be one himself, but the writings of the time paint a different picture. “Careful Bible Students have no difficulty in recognizing the fact that the prophet Ezekiel types Pastor Russell.”²¹ The claim isn’t only about Russell. The test applies to whoever claims to be the channel, and the organization’s failed dates (the 1874 presence, the 1914 expectation of being taken to heaven, the fall of the churches in 1918, worldwide anarchy in 1920, the resurrection of the ancient worthies in 1925) were published by the Society itself.

“Likewise, the Greater Moses, Jesus Christ, is not the Mediator between Jehovah God and all mankind. He is the Mediator between his heavenly Father, Jehovah God, and the nation of spiritual Israel, which is limited to only 144,000 members.”²²

Follow that through. The same teaching holds that the great crowd of “other sheep” “is not in that new covenant” and receives its benefits only by associating with the anointed.²³ If Christ is not their mediator, then their access to God runs through the anointed and the organization they lead, which is the very role 1 Timothy 2:5 reserves for Christ alone.

And what of the authority of the Governing Body? Jehovah’s Witnesses, when asked, will commonly say that they’re allowed to question things and “make the truth their own,” but in practice, Witnesses are told never to let curiosity lead them to critical material, and questioning the organization’s counsel is treated as a sign of pride. Their baptism study book says: “Those who are loyal to Jehovah have nothing to do with apostates. We would never allow curiosity or pressure from others to cause us to read or listen to apostate ideas.”²⁴ And the organization has addressed the exact argument this essay makes:

“Yet there are some who point out that the organization has had to make adjustments before, and so they argue: ‘This shows that we have to make up our own mind on what to believe.’ This is independent thinking. Why is it so dangerous? Such thinking is an evidence of pride.”²⁵

Finally, the Watchtower itself describes its message as different. In a 1980 article, it answers critics who point out that Christendom’s missionaries reached the world long before Jehovah’s Witnesses did. Its reply is that the Witnesses’ Kingdom preaching since 1914 “has been something far different from what Christendom’s missionaries have published.” A Witness might say that’s to be expected, since they believe Christendom is apostate. But the article goes further. It explains that the difference is that their preaching “has not been a witness concerning the kingdom mentioned in Colossians 1:13,” the kingdom Paul told the Colossians they had already been transferred into (Colossians 1:13). Instead, the article defines its good news as the Kingdom “having been established in the heavens in 1914.” A summary box then gives six reasons the message is different. Every one centers on 1914, 1919, the last days, or survival into the new world. None mentions Christ’s death for our sins or his resurrection.²⁶