The General Priesthood—Christendom’s Forgotten Doctrine

“You are ‘ . . . a royal priesthood, a holy nation.’”—1 Pet. 2:9.

1. Why can the teaching of the general priesthood be called a forgotten and neglected doctrine?

THE Christian doctrine of the “general priesthood” is probably not one of those you learned about in school or Sunday school. In fact, to a great many this will be the first time they ever heard about it. It has, for good reasons, been Christendom’s forgotten and neglected doctrine. For centuries it was hardly mentioned from the pulpits, the young people did not learn about it during their preparations for confirmation, the students of theology found only a page or two about it in their voluminous dogmatics, and the layman could find very little or nothing about it in the religious sections of bookstores and libraries. Still, the first Christians knew it and lived it.

2. What change have the last years brought relative to the attention given to the general priesthood?

² The last years have seen a change in this respect. In theological circles worldwide, the old doctrine of the general priesthood has been taken out, dusted off and put uppermost on the agenda together with such important subjects as the nature and unity of the Christian church. “Today,” says a professor of theology, “there is hardly another subject that has been taken up with so much energy and seriousness both in the Roman Catholic Church, which is taking the lead, and the Evangelical Churches.” What, then, is the general priesthood? To put it short: It is the Biblical teaching that every spirit-begotten Christian is a priest. To understand the full scope of this doctrine, some historical background will be a help.

3. (a) What is a priest? (b) What is the Levitical priesthood? (c) What were the two basic priestly duties of such Levites?

³ A priest is a minister of God. In the nation of Israel a priesthood was provided for by law. “The priests the sons of Levi must approach, because they are the ones Jehovah your God has chosen to minister to him.” That is why that priesthood is often referred to as the Levitical priesthood. Its official services were twofold, and Moses summed them up by the words: “Let them instruct Jacob in your judicial decisions and Israel in your law. Let them render up incense before your nostrils and a whole offering on your altar.” So when the Levites were “teaching in Judah, and with them there was the book of Jehovah’s law; and they kept going around through all the cities of Judah and teaching among the people,” they were ministers of God; and when the Levite sons of Aaron offered the sacrifices of incense, grain and animals on Jehovah’s altar in behalf of the people, they were ministers of God.—Deut. 21:5; 33:10; 2 Chron. 17:9; Mal. 2:7; Leviticus chaps. 1-7 and Le 16.

4. (a) What was foreshadowed by the animal sacrifices of the Levitical priesthood? (b) Why did the Levitical priesthood come to an end, and how did Jehovah show this?

⁴ In the letter to the Hebrews it is explained how this Levitical priesthood with its high priest, sacrifices, teaching and ceremonies in connection with the temple service, as well as the temple itself with all its features, were a type of something greater to come. Most of the sacrifices, and especially what took place on the atonement day, were pictures of the great sacrifice of Christ Jesus in giving his life as an atonement for man. Consequently, when Jesus died, was resurrected and ascended to heaven and the value of his life was accepted by Jehovah God in heaven as a ransom, the Levitical priesthood had played its prophetic part for the last time. That this was so was shown by the fact that the moment Jesus died, the big curtain in the temple that separated the two rooms called the “holy” and the “most holy” was miraculously rent from top to bottom. By rending that curtain, Jehovah showed that the atonement sacrifices offered by the Jewish high priest were no longer of value and thus there was no need for the services of the Levitical priesthood anymore, because that house or temple was now abandoned.—Matt. 27:51; 23:38; Heb. 9:1-15.

5. How was an actual stop made to the services of the Levitical priesthood?

⁵ Not understanding this, however, the Levitical priesthood continued to serve also after the death of Jesus and to bring its sacrifices of animals into the temple, but it was without any legal basis; the law covenant had no value in God’s sight anymore, and in the year 70 when the Romans conquered Jerusalem, God showed how superfluous they had become by putting an end to their priesthood also de facto. It was killed or dispersed and its temple destroyed, and another Levitical priesthood can never be reconstructed, because no Jew today is able to say from which of the tribes of Israel he originates.—Col. 2:14.

A NEW PRIESTHOOD

6, 7. Did the removal of the Levitical priesthood show that there should be no priesthood at all on earth thereafter? Prove your answer.

⁶ By putting the Levitical class of priests so absolutely out of existence, did God want to show that there was no need for a priesthood on earth anymore? Not at all! All that had happened was that a type, a picture or symbol had been removed, as the time for the antitype, the real thing, had come. So when the Levite priests rejected Jesus as God’s high priest, although of another order, and when they refused to acknowledge that their time was up and refused to enter into greater privileges, they had to be removed by force.—Heb. 10:1.

⁷ Paul comments on the change in priesthood and its legal basis, the law, with the words: “If, then, perfection were really through the Levitical priesthood, (for with it as a feature the people were given the Law,) what further need would there be for another priest to arise according to the manner of Melchizedek and not said to be according to the manner of Aaron? For since the priesthood is being changed, there comes to be of necessity a change also of the law.” The high priest of that new priesthood according to the manner of Melchizedek, rather than Aaron, is Christ Jesus, and as such he has underpriests on earth.—Heb. 7:11, 12.

8. Who took the place of the Levitical priesthood in God’s arrangement? Prove it.

⁸ Who are those underpriests? Who was going to be the antitype to the Levitical priesthood? In chapters 7 to 10 of his letter to the Hebrews, Paul first draws the parallels between Aaron, the high priest of the old covenant, and Christ Jesus as the High Priest of the new covenant. Then in chapter 10 he turns to the underpriests, the Levites, and their services and shows how they would be followed by a priesthood that would bring no animal sacrifices, and says: “Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness for the way of entry into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, which he inaugurated for us as a new and living way through the curtain, that is, his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with true hearts in the full assurance of faith, having had our hearts sprinkled from a wicked conscience and our bodies bathed with clean water.” By saying “let us approach with true hearts . . . and our bodies bathed with clean water,” alluding to the Levitical cleansing ceremonies, Paul calls on his Christian brothers to enter upon the succession to the Levitical priesthood. It is, therefore, the Christian congregation that stands identified as a new priesthood, God’s new class of earthly ministers offering up spiritual sacrifices of praises and good works.—Heb. 10:19-22; 13:15, 16; Lev. 16:4; Num. 8:6, 7.

PARALLELS

9. How can it be said that the Christian is a minister like the Levite priest?

⁹ There are numerous parallels between the old and the new priesthood to confirm their relationship. The Christian is a minister of the Word of God just as the Levite priest was. “God . . . gave us the ministry of the reconciliation, namely, that God was by means of Christ reconciling a world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and he committed the word of the reconciliation to us. We are therefore ambassadors substituting for Christ, as though God were making entreaty through us. As substitutes for Christ we beg: ‘Become reconciled to God.’”—2 Cor. 5:18-20.

10. How does Peter show the parallel between the Levitical and the Christian priesthood?

¹⁰ It is, however, the apostle Peter, who, pointing to the parallels, directly calls the Christian congregation a priesthood. Making a comparison with the literal temple and the literal sacrifices of the Levitical priesthood, Peter explains to his fellow Christians: “You yourselves also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house for the purpose of a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. . . . you are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for special possession, that you should declare abroad the excellencies’ of the one that called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. For you were once not a people, but are now God’s people.”—1 Pet. 2:5, 9, 10.

11. (a) What are the “spiritual sacrifices” mentioned in 1 Peter 2:5? (b) What are the priestly duties for Christians mentioned in Hebrews 10:23-25?

¹¹ That those “spiritual sacrifices” offered by the Christian priesthood first of all are a ‘declaring abroad of the excellencies’ of God is corroborated by Paul, who calls them “the fruit of lips which make public declaration to his name,” in Hebrews 13:15, and he adds: “Moreover, do not forget the doing of good and the sharing of things with others, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” Note also how Paul, after having identified the new priesthood under Christ Jesus in Hebrews chapter 10, goes on in Heb 10 verses 23-25 and mentions at least three distinct priestly duties of that new priesthood: “Let us hold fast the public declaration of our hope without wavering, for he is faithful that promised. And let us consider one another to incite to love and fine works, not forsaking the gathering of ourselves together, as some have the custom, but encouraging one another, and all the more so as you behold the day drawing near.”—Rom. 12:1.

A DIFFERENCE

12. Why is the Levitical priesthood called a “special” priesthood?

¹² In one respect, however, there is a difference between the two priesthoods. The Levitical priesthood was not what is known as a “general” but, rather, a so-called “special” priesthood. There was nothing general about it. The office of priest was restricted by birth and sex, confined as it was to the male members of the tribe of Levi, the office of a sacrificing priest even being confined to the family of Aaron, the first high priest. By law the priesthood was put in a class or an order by itself, not only in regard to office, but also in other matters. The Levites received no inheritance in the land, and special provisions were made for their livelihood. Their tribe was not counted among the twelve tribes of Israel after it was set aside for priestly duties; the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph, made the number full. The Levites were thus a special class or state or order within the Jewish society. There was a definite distinction between priesthood and people. Israel’s was a “special” priesthood.—Num. 8:14; 18:20-24.

13. (a) What is a “general” priesthood? (b) According to Peter, is the Christian priesthood a general or a special priesthood? How does Peter support your answer?

¹³ Not so with the new priesthood. Peter says: “You are ‘ . . . a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for special possession.’” He calls the Christian priesthood a nation. It is the new “Israel of God.” Priesthood and nation are identical. There is no division into “priesthood” and “people” within that nation. Every member of that nation is a priest. That is a “general” priesthood.—Gal. 6:16.

14. Give further proofs of the fact that the Christian priesthood is a general one.

¹⁴ The idea that there is no distinction between Christians is not new. We meet it in the picture of the Christian as a member of the body of Christ, in which “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor freeman, there is neither male nor female”; and we have it in the sonship of God that the Christian attains to and by virtue of which each Christian has direct access to his heavenly Father through the High Priest, Jesus Christ, with no man as a mediator or priest, because Jesus Christ is the Mediator himself.—Gal. 3:28; 4:5-7; Heb. 4:16; 1 Tim. 2:5.

ORIGIN OF GENERAL PRIESTHOOD

15. Who instituted the general character of the Christian priesthood? How?

¹⁵ It was Jehovah God himself who very forcefully established the general priesthood in the Christian congregation from its very beginning. On the day of Pentecost he poured out his spirit on the first ones who became members of the congregation. By receiving that spirit they were anointed to be underpriests and were helped to start performing their priestly duties right then and there, because under its influence they began offering up spiritual sacrifices by preaching about God and his purposes. Notice, God did not choose a few of those about 120 persons present to be a clergy or priesthood to do the preaching and the rest to be the listeners or laity, but “they all became filled with holy spirit and started to speak . . . about the magnificent things of God.”—Acts 2:4, 11.

16. How did Jesus prepare his followers for the duties of the general priesthood even before the day of Pentecost?

¹⁶ It is evident in many ways that the teaching of the general priesthood was understood and practiced in the early congregation. They were called upon to follow in the footsteps of their High Priest, Christ Jesus, and during his ministry on earth he not only performed the duties of the new high priest himself, but he made the priestly duties general by teaching his followers to do the same.—Luke 10:1-12.

17-19. How do we know that the missionary commission given by Jesus and recorded at Matthew 28:19 was not only for the eleven apostles?

¹⁷ Some call attention to the fact that when Jesus, for instance, gave the famous missionary commission, as recorded in Matthew 28:19, only the eleven apostles were present, and they therefore contend it was given to the apostles alone. But it is also understood that “upward of five hundred brothers” were there also. (1 Cor. 15:6) It is true that the apostles more than anybody else were busy establishing new congregations in many countries, but they were certainly not alone in that work. Everybody was helping. When Paul came to Rome for the first time, it was not to establish a congregation, for there was already a congregation there, and the brothers came out to meet him before he entered the city.—Rom. 1:8, 13; Acts 28:14-16.

¹⁸ The apostles themselves did not understand the missionary commandment to be for them alone. Notice Paul’s commending words to the brothers at Thessalonica: “The fact is, not only has the word of Jehovah sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith toward God has spread abroad, so that we do not need to say anything.”—1 Thess. 1:8.

¹⁹ Titus and Timothy were teachers, but they were teachers of teachers; they were not ministers who were sent to teach a laity. Paul wrote Timothy: “The things you heard from me with the support of many witnesses, these things commit to faithful men, who, in turn, will be adequately qualified to teach others.” (2 Tim. 2:2) This is in harmony with what we read in Revelation 22:17: “The spirit and the bride keep on saying: ‘Come!’ And let anyone hearing say: ‘Come!’” When the Hebrews were slow in making progress to the point of actively participating in the general priesthood’s duties, Paul was disappointed: “For, indeed, although you ought to be teachers in view of the time, you again need someone to teach you from the beginning the elementary things of the sacred pronouncements of God.” No laity was tolerated in that congregation.—Heb. 5:12.

20. How does history confirm the general priesthood of the early church?

²⁰ History confirms the same. Danish professor Hal Koch says in his Church History: “Only in the days of the apostles and the decades immediately thereafter, do we hear of real missionaries, occupied with the dissemination of Christianity as their task and vocation. Otherwise, it was quite ordinary Christians, merchants, workmen, slaves and whatever social positions there were, who drew new members to the congregation.” There is no doubt about it: The general priesthood was a characteristic feature of the early Christian church; every member was a priest who considered it his duty to preach and teach about God inside and outside the congregation, and they were supported by the spirit of God poured out on them. There was no laity in that church. How did it, then, ever come about that the churches of Christendom today hardly know anything but a pulpit-preaching clergy and a passive laity?

A DEVILISH CHANGE

21. Did the congregational servants of the early church make up a priesthood?

²¹ Since the early Christian congregation was a working organization, it was necessary to appoint some of the members to special services. To be appointed to such service position, one had to be a mature, older man or so-called “elder” (Greek: presbýteros). From among the older men, congregation overseers (Greek: epískopoi) and their assistants or ministerial servants (Greek: diákonoi) were selected. Because of what we have just seen about the general priesthood within the early church, they were not appointed to make up a priesthood; they were simply the servants of their Christian brothers.—Acts 6:1-7; Titus 1:5; 1 Pet. 5:2, 3; Matt. 20:25-28.

22. How did congregational servants later get to make up a priesthood?

²² Paul, however, prophesied truthfully: “After my going away oppressive wolves will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves.” One of the sad consequences of this rise to oppressive power of selfish men was the complete loss of the general priesthood. According to church history, during the second century the servants in the congregations were slowly but surely elevated to form a special priesthood. The congregational overseers or epískopoi put on the garb of a bishop, the elders or presbýteroi were changed from just being the mature, older men from among whom the servants could be selected, to be in the office of a priest, and the ministerial servants or assistants were made our day’s deacons. Men took to themselves positions by which they became a hierarchy that for centuries exercised a harsh spiritual and secular rule, lording it over a laity.—Acts 20:29, 30.

23. (a) What makes the Catholic clergy an outstanding example of a so-called Christian clergy that has changed from the general to the special priesthood? (b) Why was this change devilish?

²³ The priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church is a striking example of this. Not only does this priesthood make up a distinct, separate class elevated over the laity in power, education and appearance, imitating the arrangement of a special priesthood, but it has built literal temple buildings with literal altars and dressed its members in special garments to distinguish them from the common church member. To make the return to the special priesthood complete, it claims to possess by special consecration the power to call Christ Jesus down on its altars at will, to sacrifice his literal flesh and blood in the Roman Catholic mass. The switch from the general back to the special priesthood could hardly have been more perfectly made, if a Christian appearance was still to be maintained. By depriving the members of the church of their right to be God’s active servants preaching his Word, by maiming them into a body of ignorant, often illiterate, churchgoers, the clergy quenched the spirit of God in the church and stripped it of its original dynamic force for spreading the good news and thus stripped it of the right kind of regeneration, by which the truth about God and Christ should conquer the world. That change was devilish.

The General Priesthood Today

“I shall pour out my spirit on every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daughters will certainly prophesy. As for your old men, dreams they will dream. As for your young men, visions they will see. And even on the menservants and on the maidservants in those days I shall pour out my spirit.”—Joel 2:28, 29.

1, 2. Who is taking the lead in Christendom’s present drive for reviving the general priesthood, and what are the motives?

FOR centuries theologians in Christendom have known that the church organizations they upheld by having a special priesthood were unchristian, unbiblical; but not until this twentieth century have they started doing something about it. Now they talk much about the “general priesthood.” Strange as it may seem, considering her hierarchical structure, it was the Roman Catholic Church that took the lead in Christendom’s present campaign to put back to work that same “laity” that it so carefully had kept inactive for centuries.

² Let it be noted, however, that her motives for doing so are not so much a desire to see a change in church organization back to the general priesthood of the early church as it is a dire necessity due to a fatal shortage of Roman Catholic men who want to become priests.a This shortage threatens to frustrate the Catholic bid for world power, and therefore the Catholic laity must now be made active. That is the reason for talking about the general priesthood in a church that otherwise could not be interested in reminding anybody of that old doctrine.

3. According to Pope Pius XII, is there one general apostolate for all Catholics to share in, and will the laity acquire equality with the priesthood by participating in the apostolate?

³ To the Second World Congress of the Lay Apostolate held at Rome, Italy, in 1957, Pope Pius XII explained that within the Catholic church there are two apostolates: a ‘hierarchical apostolate’ and an ‘apostolate of the laity.’ The pope raised the question: “Does the layman entrusted with the teaching of religion, by the very fact that he has received a mission canonica (an ecclesiastical mandate) to teach, and whose teaching may perhaps constitute his only professional activity, pass from the lay apostolate to the ‘hierarchical apostolate’?” The answer was No. The actual power to teach is vested in the pope and bishops alone. “All others, whether priests or laymen, collaborate in the measure in which ecclesiastical authority trusts them to teach accurately and to guide the faithful.”b

4. How general is the priesthood in which the Roman Catholic laity is called on to participate?

⁴ In other words, in spite of all the talking about the general priesthood, we should not expect to see the Catholic church from now on abolish her orders and supply her laity everywhere with Bibles and study aids, so that every Catholic can fulfill his duty as a Christian preaching the Word of God to others. According to Pope Pius XII, “all Christians are not called to the lay apostolate in the strict sense.”c Only a select specially trained minority of the laity will be used for this, and such top-rank lay ministers the church is willing to pay a salary of up to $12,000 a year.d That, it could be argued, does not leave much of the generality.

5. Why do you think the pope is speaking of the laity as sharing in the apostolate in a “less correct sense of the term”? What are they expected to do?

⁵ What, then, will all the millions of Catholics do who are not ‘trusted to teach accurately’ the Catholic faith, but who are nevertheless called on to share in the “general priesthood”? Whereas they are “not called to lay apostolate in the strict sense,” they are encouraged to participate in an “apostolate of prayer and of personal example as an apostolate in the wider and less correct sense of the term.” Why it is called an apostolate in a “less correct sense of the term” is evident when looked at more closely. For these millions of Catholics there is no offering up of spiritual sacrifices to God in the form of ‘fruits of lips making public declaration to his name’ to identify them with the early church, no privileges of service along the principles of the general priesthood. Their work in the world is, according to Pope Pius XII, to form Catholic cells in workshops, to enter into public, economic, social and political life, to join trade union movements and cooperative associations of producers and consumers as well as international organizations like UNESCO, so as “to impart to it the mark of Christ.”e

6. What does the Catholic program, referred to as practicing a general priesthood, remind one of, and what has it been used to in the past?

⁶ All this smacks more of infiltration as used by certain political movements than of the work performed by the hard-preaching members of the early Christian general priesthood. The most important branch of the Catholic layman movement is the so-called Catholic Action, a semireligious movement that has often been used by the church the same way the Nazis used their SA-troops in Germany under Hitler, as, for instance, when Catholic Action in the years just before and during World War II in the United States and other countries was used by the church violently to break up religious meetings of Jehovah’s witnesses because she did not like the facts told at such meetings.f

7. (a) How well does the Catholic laity respond to the call to participate in the lay apostolate of the church? (b) Can it truthfully be said that there is no general priesthood within the Catholic church? What is lacking?

⁷ In spite of all efforts, there are lamentations because of poor results. Said S. E. Mgr. Valerian Gracias, archbishop of Bombay: “How explain the apathy of the vast majority who with their intellectual and moral gifts could have been active and powerful participators in the apostolate of the hierarchy, but unfortunately are not? Each man today, in the language of St. Paul, is seeking his own and not what is Christ’s. There is no fire in their hearts, but only dying embers. Most Catholics entertain the notion that the Church is a kind of society to which one just belongs; the idea of the Church being a living organism is foreign to their minds.”g All this goes to prove that the so-called general priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church is nothing of the kind, and that God has not added his spirit to her efforts.—Acts 1:8.

8. Do the Greek Orthodox churches share in Christendom’s present discussion of the general priesthood?

⁸ The Greek Orthodox churches are almost as hierarchical in their structure as the Roman Catholic Church, but, contrary to the latter, they have abstained from talking about the general priesthood to any great extent.

PROTESTANTISM AND THE GENERAL PRIESTHOOD

9. (a) How was attention called to the general priesthood after it had disappeared for centuries? (b) How did Luther explain the general priesthood?

⁹ It was reformer Luther who brought the teaching of the general priesthood back into daylight. He was a keen Bible student and soon saw how far the Catholic church had removed herself from the early church by her special priesthood, and in his fight against the papacy he made diligent use of what he had found. “We were all consecrated to be priests at our baptism,” he emphasized, and he mocked the pope for thinking he could make priests out of already baptized Christians by an ordination ceremony. “That the pope or the bishop anoints, tonsures, ordains, consecrates and dresses a person differently from the laity,” he said, “may well make a hypocrite or a fool out of him, but it will never make him a Christian or a spiritual man.”h

10. (a) What did Luther consider the principal duty of the Christian? (b) What did Luther do after rediscovering the doctrine of the general priesthood? What were the results?

¹⁰ Then Luther, with great zeal, set out to practice the general priesthood in his newly formed church, teaching that the most important work of a Christian, a work that incorporates all the other priestly duties, is to “teach the Word of God.”i In this he suffered defeat, however. He had to learn that the common people had been spiritually so neglected by the Catholic church that the general priesthood and its duties were beyond their apprehension. Luther’s work in this respect was never followed up by his successors. It faded out.

11. Who else have tried to practice the general priesthood? With what results?

¹¹ Already such pre-Reformation movements as the Waldenses in Central Europe and the Lollards of Britain had tried to live up to the general priesthood. After the “reformation” a movement in Germany known as “Pietism” and our generation’s Oxford movement have to some extent tried to do the same, but all these efforts were evidently without the support of God’s holy spirit, because they all came to nothing, and even within the Lutheran church today the situation has not changed since Luther’s time: The doctrine of the Christian general priesthood is recognized in theory, but not practiced.

12. (a) How do some Protestant clergymen claim to have a general priesthood in their churches? What are the facts? (b) How is it evident that, for instance, the Lutheran State churches of Denmark and Sweden do not have a general priesthood?

¹² Nevertheless, many nonepiscopal Protestant clergymen, including Lutherans, claim they have the general priesthood and that their ministers are just servants taken out of the flock for a special task. In theory, it is said, any member of the congregation could function as such, just as the settlers in America chose the most suitable layman among them to be their minister, wherever they settled, until they could get a “real” minister, or just as sea captains are often considered ministers to their crew and passengers. The fact is, however, that the Protestant churches, including the Lutheran, have a special priesthood. The fact is that ordinarily nobody can preach or perform ceremonies in their churches without a special ordination. Normally, nobody gets ordained without special academic training, and they dress differently from the rest, at least when officiating. Any exceptions are so rare that they only emphasize the rule. In Protestant churches it is not as in the early church, where, according to Norwegian professor Hallesby, “all ceremonies of the church could be performed by any Christian.”j Therefore, honest Protestant ministers, whose churches teach the general priesthood, admit that they actually do have a special priesthood.k

FRUITLESS ATTEMPTS

13, 14. How do we know that Protestant Christendom is not content with its present situation relative to the general priesthood?

¹³ This so pitifully fell short of imitating the early Christians in living up to the doctrine of the general priesthood, that the knowledge of what ought to be done and the inability to do it could, of course, only prey on any church calling itself Christian. Therefore, when the World Council of Churches was founded in Amsterdam in 1948, it was equipped with a “Department on the Laity,” the aim of which is “to keep before the churches their responsibility for helping the laity to be the Church in the world.”l

¹⁴ In the reports from the assembly of the Council in Amsterdam we read: “We need to rethink what it means to speak of the Church as ‘a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people’ (1 Peter ii, 9), and as the ‘Body of Christ’ (Ephesians iv, 16) to which every member contributes in his measure.”a And in the reports from its assembly at Evanston, U.S.A., in 1954: “The phrase ‘the ministry of the laity’ expresses the privilege of the whole Church to share in Christ’s ministry to the world. We must understand anew the implication of the fact that we are all baptized; that, as Christ came to minister so must all Christians become ministers of His saving purpose.”b Finally, Protestantism is awakening to what it means to be a Christian, that it should have the general priesthood, that it does not have it, and that something ought to be done about it.

15. (a) How does the Protestant laity in general respond to the call for a general priesthood? (b) What does practicing the general priesthood require?

¹⁵ Just like the Catholic church, the Protestant clergymen everywhere complain about lack of progress in their efforts toward realizing the general priesthood. “Laymen who voluntarily and free of charge participate in the Christian preaching work are for example far fewer than some decades ago. Christians that participate by free, spontaneous testimony and in prayer are also on the decrease. It is often difficult to find people who are willing to take responsibility and carry burdens,” complains a Norwegian minister commenting on the situation in his country,c which brings to mind Romans 9:16: “So, then, it depends, not upon the one wishing nor upon the one running, but upon God.” What Christendom needs to be able to practice the general priesthood is nothing less than what it took in the early church—an outpouring of the spirit.

THE GENERAL PRIESTHOOD PRACTICED—A SIGN OF THE SPIRIT

16. What proves that Joel’s prophecy has been fulfilled on Jehovah’s witnesses?

¹⁶ When Peter on the day of Pentecost explained about the first outpouring of the holy spirit, he quoted the prophet Joel, saying: “‘And in the last days,’ God says, ‘I shall pour out some of my spirit upon every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy and your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams; and even upon my men slaves and upon my women slaves I will pour out some of my spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.’” The outpouring of the spirit in Peter’s day was only temporary and a small-scale fulfillment of that prophecy. In these last days of this old system of things, the promised, final, lasting and full-scale outpouring of the spirit has been fulfilled on Jehovah’s witnesses and not on Christendom’s Catholic and Protestant churches. The proof is that Jehovah’s witnesses not only understand and acknowledge the Biblical teaching of the general priesthood, but they are also able to practice it.—Acts 2:17, 18.

17. Since when have Jehovah’s modern witnesses had the right understanding of the general priesthood?

¹⁷ From the earliest beginning of their modern history, Jehovah’s witnesses have had the right understanding of that doctrine, as shown by an article published under the heading “The Royal Priesthood” in the very first issue of their official journal Zion’s Watch Tower (now The Watchtower) of July, 1879. After referring to the four key scriptures of the Christian Greek Scriptures about the general priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 1:5, 6; 5:10; 20:6) the article says: “The above scriptures clearly teach that a part, at least, of our work in the future will be to officiate as the priests of God. As the work of a priest is one of intercession and of instruction in righteousness, they as clearly prove that the glorious work of evangelization will go on . . . through the ‘age of the ages’. . . . We . . . shall go forth a royal priesthood, according to the order of Melchisedec, fully prepared to sympathize with the nations, to lead them to the paths of righteousness, and to encourage them in the way of life.”

18. When did the Witnesses start practicing the general priesthood to the fullest extent? How was this shown?

¹⁸ Looking back on their history, however, it is observed that, although the Witnesses understood the importance of every Christian being an active public teacher of God’s Word since 1879, it was not until 1919, and in particular 1922, that they found the courage and strength to organize and practice the general priesthood to the fullest extent according to the methods of the early church. From then on the endeavor was made to get every member of the congregation preaching from house to house, not merely by distributing free Bible tracts, but by direct personal speech to each householder and offering Bible magazines, books and booklets on a nominal contribution. Since then all of Jehovah’s witnesses, young men and old men, young women and old women as well as children, have ‘prophesied.’ To help them accomplish the enormous ministerial work of preaching the good news of God’s kingdom to all the world, they have been given a “great crowd” of people of goodwill who are desirous of assisting the anointed royal priesthood in its temple service, just as the Nethinim and Gibeonites were happy to assist the Levitical priesthood.—Luke 8:1; Acts 17:17; 20:20; Rev. 7:9, 10.

19. How is the general priesthood seen in the congregations of Jehovah’s witnesses?

¹⁹ Also in the congregational life of Jehovah’s witnesses, we notice the general priesthood. Although in every congregation a number of its members are appointed to do special services, such as having oversight, taking care of statistics, literature and money, assigning territories for the preaching work and presiding at Bible studies, corresponding to the pattern of the early church, these members are servants of their brothers and not a clergy, and the rest are not a laity. At the congregational meetings all present participate in the oral discussions. Because he is a minister, any competent male member is called on to perform funerals, baptisms and weddings, and to conduct the service in annual commemoration of the Lord’s death. After appropriate training, given to everybody, all qualified males are assigned to teach and preach from the platform, which is possible because the subjects to be taught in a congregation of all ministers are so manifold and varied that there are assignments for all degrees of teaching and preaching ability. Thus, as in the early church, ‘all ceremonies are performed by any Christian.’—Phil. 1:1; 1 Tim. 2:12; Eph. 4:11-13.

20. Why do Jehovah’s witnesses meet more often than others, and how does their meeting attendance compare with that of other churches in general?

²⁰ It is evident that with every member a public teacher, the demand for instruction and meetings is much larger than where this is not the case. Therefore, Jehovah’s witnesses have five regular, weekly congregational meetings of an hour each, with an average attendance worldwide of about 75 percent of all associated members, as contrasted with the one-time-a-week churchgoers and the generally low meeting attendance complained about in most other churches.

21. Why are the meetings of Jehovah’s witnesses different from those of other churches?

²¹ Most of the meetings of Jehovah’s witnesses are different from the so-called divine services and meetings held in Christendom’s church buildings, because they must meet the demand of a general priesthood. Besides the Sunday sermon, to which the public is also specially invited, and two weekly Bible studies, the Witnesses conduct two meetings a week with the special purpose of educating and training themselves for their ministerial services to one another and to the public.

22. What meetings are specially designed to assist in practicing the general priesthood?

²² One of them is the Service Meeting. Here Jehovah’s witnesses discuss ways and means by which the congregation can most efficiently shoulder the obligation of preaching regularly to every household in its assigned territory and studying the Bible with interested persons. The other meeting is the Theocratic Ministry School, which provides the individual Witness with his personal training as a public minister of the good news. Men, women and children are enrolled. The school program includes instruction lectures, student assignments of public Bible reading, sermons and house-to-house ministry, followed by instructive counsel by a school servant. All meetings are free, and the public is welcome.

23. What conclusions can be drawn from the fact that Jehovah’s witnesses are able to practice the general priesthood worldwide?

²³ Making every member of a religious organization, by count 989,192 in 189 countries, public praisers of God is something to take note of. They were not social workers or literal singers in the streets, but ministers following in the footsteps of Christ Jesus, preaching and teaching from house to house and in the homes in apostolic style, regardless of age, sex, language, race and worldly education; and this is an achievement no man or organization may take credit for. Worldwide Jehovah’s witnesses spent 142,046,679 hours in house-to-house preaching in the year 1962. Christendom’s fruitless attempts to do the same in spite of great desire and effort testify to that. It is the result of the power of God’s spirit and is evidence of the fact, not only that we are living in the “last days” referred to by Joel, but also that the congregation practicing the much-desired general priesthood has received God’s spirit and is the one he uses on earth to represent him among the nations. Why not get better acquainted with Jehovah’s witnesses? You can find them in all parts of the world. You are welcome to attend their Bible study meetings at their Kingdom Halls.

[Footnotes]

According to Danish law of 1947 governing the Danish Lutheran State church, it is not permitted a layman to preach in the church during the ordinary divine services. (Lovbekendtgørelse nr. 456 af 23/9 1947, § 2, stk. 3.) A modification of said law considered by the Danish parliament during 1961 will only permit a layman to speak on such occasions provided the minister himself speaks on the day’s text. (Kristeligt Dagblad 15, 16/4 1961)

The Lutheran Swedish State church even has apostolic succession.

“Lost Its Faith”

“Protestantism,” The Church Herald says, “has lost its faith—not all Protestants, to be sure, but so many of them that the gasoline in the tank is half water. You can’t run a car that way. You can’t run a church that way.”—The Reader’s Digest, September, 1962, p. 50.