What the Watchtower calls “resurrection” is really a re-creation from God’s memory in which he creates new bodies and implants the person’s personalities into them.

When you think about it, that view is required by the Watchtower’s teaching that the dead no longer exist and that there is no separate soul or spirit to re-enter a body.

 Ask the Witnesses:

  • Will the resurrection body come from the person’s present body or will it be a re-creation of the person from God’s memory?

The Watchtower’s study book, What Does the Bible Really Teach? (p. 71) asks, “Should it be hard to believe that [Jehovah] can re-create life? Of course, much would depend on Jehovah’s memory. Can he remember our dead loved ones?… Jehovah God can remember our dead loved ones in every detail, and he is ready to restore them to life.”[1]

You can question this using The Bodily Resurrection Approach from my book, Getting Through to Jehovah’s Witnesses: Approaching Bible Discussions in Unexpected Ways, and its discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:35-37 (p. 112). Those verses show that our mortal bodies are the seed from which the resurrection bodies will come. In other words, the bodies are not identical, but there is continuity, not a complete re-creation.

A different way to approach this, though, is to ask stone-in-the-shoe questions about how the re-creation would work.

Instead of arguing with the Witnesses, draw them out.

Have one of the Witnesses read aloud Jesus’ statement in John 5:28-29: “Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, and those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment.”

Ask:

  • If the dead can’t hear or think, how can they hear Jesus’ voice and rise from the dead?

The Witnesses will tell you he was using a figure of speech.

Ask:

  • When God resurrects people into the millennial kingdom, will they then be morally perfect?

The Watchtower’s answer is no.

It teaches that they will still have the same sinful personalities and weaknesses they had when they died.

They will not have become righteous:

His death produced no change in him as to personality and sinful inclinations. By resurrection he did not become a perfect human, free from all effects of sin and imperfection inherited from Adam. He was not declared righteous because of dying. As in the case of an ex-convict, he must put forth diligent effort not to succumb to his fleshly weaknesses… Those raised to life on earth are the same individuals that died, descendants of sinner Adam. They are imperfect humans…”[2] (emphasis added)

You can say:

  • I don’t understand that.
  • When he re-creates them, why would God use his memory to implant in them the same sinful patterns and moral failings that they had when they died?
  • Why wouldn’t he do that when he could have repaired them?
  • Wouldn’t that make Jehovah the author of evil?
  • Given that Christ made the ransom sacrifice, why wouldn’t God give them the gift of Christ’s righteousness and set them up for success?

Summary

The answers the Witnesses give to your questions will be speculative.

They won’t be as important as the questions themselves, which should serve as stones in their shoes for a long time to come.

 

[1] What Does the Bible Really Teach?, p. 71

[2] The Watchtower, “Questions from Readers”, 10/1/74, p. 608

 

 

 

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