Matthew 16:19
Matthew 16:1919I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Jehovah's Witnesses acknowledge that the "keys of the Kingdom" were given to Peter and interpret them as the historical moments when Peter opened the Kingdom message to Jews at Pentecost (Acts 2), Samaritans (Acts 8), and Gentiles (Acts 10). However, the Watchtower then extends the principle: because Jesus promised that "the gates of Hades will not prevail" against the congregation (), a visible faithful organisation must exist in every era, and that organisation requires a divinely appointed channel of communication — identified as the "faithful and discreet slave" of . The passage thus becomes a back-door justification for the Governing Body's claim to unique, binding authority over all doctrinal and organisational decisions today.
Protestants argue that the "keys" represent the authority to proclaim the gospel and thereby open the Kingdom to people — an authority Peter exercised by preaching, not by establishing an organisational hierarchy. Crucially, in Jesus gives the identical binding-and-loosing language to the gathered disciples as a whole: "whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven." The authority of the keys is not a monopoly held by one man or one institution but is extended to every gathered congregation of Jesus' people. reinforces this: the church is "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone." A foundation is laid once and cannot be relaid every generation. The apostles had unique marks — eyewitness of the risen Christ, authority to perform signs, bearer of new revelation — that the Governing Body neither possesses nor claims. After Acts 10, the keys have done their job; there is no reference in the New Testament to anyone holding Peter's keys after him, no ceremony of key-transfer, and no Petrine successor named.