WATCHTOWER APPOINTS
NEW GOVERNING BODY MEMBERS

The Watchtower Society has added four members to its Governing Body, whose numbers had dwindled to nine after the death last summer of member Lloyd Barry.

The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses has shrunk steadily in recent years. Current members are elderly and the society has been slow to name replacements. At one time, this body consisted of 18 members.

Barry died of a heart attack while speaking at the “God’s Prophetic Word” District Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses on July 2 in Hawaii. He had served on the Governing Body since Nov. 28, 1974, when eight new members were appointed.

The Governing Body’s new members were announced last October at the Watchtower’s annual meeting in Pittsburgh. They are Samuel Herd, the body’s first African-American member; Guy Pierce; Steve Lett; and David Splane.

One possible factor contributing to the Watchtower’s delay in appointments is the society’s requirement that members belong to the “anointed class,” those 144,000 believers who will live in heaven. The society teaches that all other believers — the great crowd — will spend eternity on earth.

The Watchtower Society claims the 144,000 reached its total number in 1935. Today, the sect’s membership stands near 5.6 million. Fewer than 8,800 members of the “anointed remnant” are alive today, according to the Watchtower. Jehovah’s Witnesses born or baptized after 1935 have been taught that their only hope in the next life is as part of the earthly “great crowd.”

Faced with a shrinking pool of “anointed” people from which to draw members of the Governing Body — and the fact that the body’s new members all are too young to have been baptized in or before 1935 — the society says these four attained “anointed” status when a previously “anointed” follower proved unfaithful, lost his (or her) heavenly calling and forfeited the position.

Another factor may be younger leadership devising new strategy. According to David Reed, a former Jehovah’s Witness who is now a Christian writer, these people could take the Watchtower Society in a new direction. “What the organization is doing now is turning in the direction of mainstreaming,” Reed said in a recent lecture at the annual Witnesses Now for Jesus Convention in Pennsylvania. Reed cited The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a prime example of how a sect that denies biblical truth can present itself as another “Christian church” down the street.

—MKG

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