Acts 15:23
Acts 15:2323and sent them with this letter: The apostles and the elders, your brothers, To the brothers among the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia: Greetings.
The Watchtower reads the letter beginning "The apostles and the older men, brothers" as a directive flowing from the first-century governing body to the worldwide brotherhood — the template the modern Governing Body continues. JWs treat the salutation as establishing universal jurisdiction.
Read the salutation slowly. The letter is sent "to those brothers in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the nations." The geographic scope is explicit — three named regions, all affected by the specific circumcision dispute of . The text does not address the churches of Rome, Ephesus, Corinth, or Thessalonica. It does not legislate globally or perpetually. It answers one pastoral question for one cluster of Gentile congregations. A letter with an explicit limited address cannot bear the weight of a claim to binding worldwide authority across the centuries.