Given the prophesy that the weeds would grow together with the wheat, by what reasoning do we split from the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which grew directly out of the original congregations that the Epistles were written to?

When Jesus was finished explaining the illustration of the wheat and the weeds to his apostles, he asked them directly: "Did you get the sense of all these things?" They said "yes," to which Jesus then replied: "That being the case, every public instructor, when taught respecting the kingdom of the heavens, is like a man, a householder, who brings out of his treasure store things old and new."

What did Jesus mean by that? How could their understanding of that illustration be like a householder that brings both old and new treasures out of his store? Since the apostles with whom Jesus was speaking were to become the wheat-like sons of the kingdom at that time, the illustration would have had the utmost relevance for them. True to Jesus' illustration, as the Christian congregation developed over the course of the 1st century, the weeds also began to gradually appear. The super-fine apostles, whom Paul described as covert agents of the Devil, were examples of the emergence of a few weed-like imitation sons of the kingdom. So, the truth regarding the weeds in their midst, as the 1st century disciples understood it then, could be likened to a new treasure that they possessed that helped them explain the phenomenon that then existed.

As time went on, however, the apostles were inspired to prophesy that eventually weed-like Christians would become the most prominent, in that there would be a full-scale apostasy from the truth. So, by the time when the foretold apostasy had fully developed, another aspect of Christ's illustration then became apparent to the few remaining of the wheat class. From the perspective of the true sons of the kingdom, instead of a few weeds among the wheat, it would become a few wheat stalks in a virtual field of weeds.

In the modern era, the Bible Students, and now Jehovah's Witnesses, have identified the weeds as being all the nominal Christians of Christendom, and the wheat as the anointed ones. At the time when the Watchtower Society was first forming, nearly all of its original members came into the truth from the churches of Christendom. It appeared to them that Jesus was finally harvesting his precious wheat into his storehouse. So, in that sense, then, the wheat-like Christians were gathered directly from among the weeds, as you indicated. Their understanding of the parable of the wheat and the weeds was like a new treasure to them at that time.

Yet, Jesus' illustration lends itself to applying on an entirely different level. Now that the Watchtower Society has itself become a large institution, like a field under cultivation, the Devil has had the opportunity to once again sow weeds among the wheat, just as he had originally done in the first century. Since Jesus' illustration culminates in the conclusion of an entire system of things, when the angels go forth and physically separate the weeds from among the wheat and remove all those doing lawlessness, it is apparent that that the ultimate harvest is ahead of us. So, while our understanding of the illustration once had relevance in relation to Christendom, it is no longer adequate to explain what has developed among Jehovah's Witnesses in more recent years.

The householder must now bring out the old treasure back out of his store to satisfactorily explain the reappearance of the weeds among the wheat. That's because our situation now more closely resembles what developed in the 1st century when the weeds first started to emerge among the freshly sowed wheat.

The Catholic and Orthodox churches claim that their legitimacy and claim to authority come from their unbroken line of transmission of the traditions mentioned at 2 Thessalonians 2:15. Since Jehovah's Witnesses have thrown out all traditions, in their efforts to not place the "traditions of man" above the Bible, how do they know that they haven't thrown out some of those oral traditions mentioned in the Bible, which Paul exhorted the Thessalonians to stand firm in?

The footnote in the reference Bible for 2 Thessalonians 3:6 states that the word tradition can also be rendered as instruction. That being the case, in the 1st century, as Christianity was just developing, there was very little in the way of written instruction. What we know as the so-called New Testament, or more properly, the Christian Greek Scriptures, took many years to develop, compile, copy and distribute. In the interim, the brothers and congregations were simply taught orally and by the traditions or verbal instructions handed down by the apostles.

But, as more and more of the Greek Scriptures were written, the oral teachings became written down. For example, at 1 Corinthians 11:23, Paul wrote: "For I received from the Lord that which I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was going to be handed over took a loaf and, after giving thanks, he broke it and said…"

What Paul handed on to the Corinthians was the account of how Christ instituted the memorial of his own death. Apparently, the gospel accounts had not been written down at that point yet, or if they had, perhaps they were not circulating in great numbers. So, the gospel itself was passed on in oral tradition. Yet, as time went on, that oral tradition was written down, as is obvious by Paul's having written down in a letter to the Corinthians what he had previously handed on to them in oral instruction.

Another example, of how oral tradition becomes written instruction, is in the context of the verse you cited. At 2 Thessalonians 3:6, Paul gives written instructions to withdraw from "every brother walking disorderly and not according to the tradition you received from us." Again, what Paul referred to as "tradition," was evidently originally passed on to the congregations through example and oral instruction, but eventually those instructions were written down to form what has become an integral part of the Bible.

A few verses up, Thessalonians 2:15 says: "Stand firm and maintain your hold on the traditions that you were taught, whether it was through a verbal message or through a letter of ours." Paul here describes both written and verbal instruction, as being part of the tradition that Christians needed to hold on to. It stands to reason, then, that the oral tradition and the written tradition did not contradict one another, but were basically identical.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 states that "all Scripture is inspired of God," so that "the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work." If we believe that to be true, then we must believe that the necessary oral traditions of the apostles became part of the inspired canon so that we are not lacking anything essential for us to be fully competent ministers.