Dan Sydlik
25 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn, New York 10019, USA

7 December 1994

Dear Dan,

Thanks for calling me. Long may your love for your sheep exceed and conquer your love for your shepherd's staff. Of course the sheep are more important than the staff. For God made the shepherd and God made the sheep, both of them living, but it is the shepherd who makes the staff, out of dead wood, hopefully after the pattern set by the holy spirit.

It is so much more human, to write to somebody who you have at least talked to. You have made my task a mountain-load easier, thanks again.

We human beings are designed to communicate face to face, not by letters and telephones in the manner presumably that the angels communicate, since they have no physical faces. And the glory of man is in his face, for it was Jesus' face that shone like the Sun, and Moses' face that emitted rays so that it had to be veiled. Whereas God's face cannot be seen, although his back, even his reverse side, was revealed to Moses. Everyone was seeking Solomon's face, although his wisdom was in his heart, for in his face was all his glory. And yet all of his glory was not a match for the face of the lowly lily of the field. And this glory, in fact all of these glories, all of these faces, are expressions of love, which God symbolises by the living creature with the face of the man, not the voice of the man or the words of the man.

Dan, this face of flesh and bone, the true God's visualisation of pure love, his great work of divine and living art that the Mona Lisa is merely a dead and motionless and singular photocopy of: this is the face which I wish to see from the governing body. So that was my face argument I hope you liked it! Sorry I couldn't present it face to face.

I am amazed that such abstract concepts as love, hate, fear, anger, pride, happiness, sadness, hope, amusement, understanding, despair and satisfaction, have been captured by our creator in all of our faces. Are we not the perfect illustration from the perfect illustrator? How did he do this? Is this not the great miracle of human creation?

So now here I am hoping and praying for a miracle of not incomparable magnitude when I return to New York later this month, to try to see the faces of the governing body members on the writing commitee. I would appreciate any help you could give me in persuading them to agree to this meeting because I am not as ugly as all that! I will write to you, and to your brothers, with details of my Hotel and arrival date in a few days time.

Yours gratefully

Gordon Ritchie

P.S.

May I try to answer the following three objections that I have heard to my work from many sources:

1. I am too young in the truth to know anything

2. I have had too many bible understandings all at once

3. Who the hell am I?

My response is: These were all grounds that the Pharisees used to condemn Jesus and Peter and John and Stephen, the latter three of whom had all been in the truth, actually in 'the way' as it was then known, roughly the same length of time that I have been an anointed Christian, at the time of their various condemnations in Acts 4 & 7 (I was sanctified on 1991Tishri17, over 3 years ago).

Therefore the Jews fell to wondering, saying: "How does this man have a knowledge of letters, when he has not studied at the schools?" (John 7:15).

The response that Jesus gave was, and the response that I now make is:

What I teach is not mine but belongs to him that sent me (John 7:16).

Dan, I wrote the green book, 'Letter to the Society' and designed the chart 'The Divine Plan of the Ages' in seven months. I got my first new bible understanding of Leviticus 26 in 1991Shebat, and delivered the books and charts to you in 1992Elul. I ask you in all sincerity, is this possible without the help of the holy spirit?????

Really, I sent my work to Brooklyn not to have an assessment made of me, for I already know that I am a no good sinner, and you know this too, as do the royal courts of Justice. I sent the work in order that a straightforward rational appraisal might be made not of me but of the work itself. Like Jesus said:

Even though you do not believe me, believe the works (John 10:38).

And as we both quoted to each other, Jesus said:

I publicly praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have carefully hidden these things from wise and intellectual ones, and revealed them to babes. Yes, Oh father, because to do thus came to be the way approved by you (Luke 10:21).

Russell was a babe when he was given, in the way approved by God, the Gentile Times and 1914, a matter carefully hidden by the code of the bible. Apart from the shear exuberance and incomparable finesse that the true God shows in revealing his great spiritual treasures to babies and nobodies, or as in my case to a baby-nobody, he ensures, by doing this, that the glory for these treasures goes to him, rather than to the one to whom he reveals these meanings. It is actually wonderful that I am not in a position to say: Oh, I have been a faithful servant of Jehovah for 50 years, and I have done this and that in the truth, and that's why he revealed the date of Armageddon to me, in order to reward my faithful service. This is not a bad thing, it is a good thing, it is a marvellous thing.

For I had really no faithful service to show anybody when he gave me the date of the end. All I had was a criminal prosecution for a multi-million pound mortgage fraud conspiracy. But this is not the first time that God has acted in this way. All Paul had when Jesus appeared to him in a blinding flash of light, to later gave him unspeakable revelations, was his part in a conspiracy to murder Stephen. Let's face it Dan, Paul was hardly the sort of material that the first century Governing body would have short-listed for the position of apostle! But thereagain, I am hardly the sort of material that the 20th century Governing body are short-listing to get big revelations from God. This is because men's short-lists are short-sighted, but God sees a lot further than we do. We try to limit his hands to the confines of our own understanding but there is nothing that is too extraordinary for him, as he has demonstrated many times.

There are two particular rewards that God gives men of faith. These are the gift of God's own interpretations, and the gift of life, and both rewards are gifts, neither are wages. The true God is free to give either or both of these gifts to any man of faith, precisely because they are gifts. But to nobody will God give his own glory, his face. We cannot see it and neither can we get it. So please do not assess my work record so as to determine my suitability to receive what is not a wage but is a gift, in fact a gift of the spirit.