According to the Watchtower, members of the great crowd must try to prove worthy of everlasting life by attaining moral perfection during the millennial kingdom.

I recommend that you ask Jehovah’s Witnesses to explain step-by-step how this will happen.

You won’t be arguing with the Witnesses.

Instead, you’ll be like Columbo—puzzled.

Your questions will serve as stones in their shoes.

According to Watchtower teaching, if people they prove worthy at the conclusion of this “old system,” they will enter the millennial kingdom on earth, either by surviving Armageddon or by being resurrected (re-created) from the dead in physical bodies.

They will start with a clean slate.

Their past sins will not be held against them.[1]

Where does the Bible teach this?

The Watchtower’s New World Translation renders Romans 6:7 in a strange manner as follows: “For the one who has died has been acquitted from his sin.”

 It interprets this verse to mean that when those of the great crowd of other sheep die, their own deaths will acquit them of the sins they committed in this old system.[2]

Thereafter they will be judged solely on their performance in the millennial kingdom.[3]

Ask:

  • Will the millennial kingdom be a performance-based acceptance system then?

Request that one of the Witnesses read aloud Romans 7:18-20:

For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells nothing good; for I have the desire to do what is fine but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good that I wish, but the bad that I do not wish is what I practice. If, then, I do what I do not wish, I am no longer the one carrying it out, but it is the sin dwelling in me. I find, then, this law in my case: When I wish to do what is right, what is bad is present with me.

 Ask:

  • Will this indwelling sin in the flesh be eliminated when people enter the millennial kingdom so they will no longer have to fight against it?

The answer is that even though the Watchtower believes that the great crowd whom Jehovah deems worthy of resurrection will enter into the millennial kingdom without any unpaid sin debt, it also 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…”[4] (emphasis added)

Ask:

  • Will people who enter the millennial kingdom have Christ’s righteousness imputed to them?

The Watchtower’s answer is no:

Without being spiritually reborn, without having been transformed upon entering the millennial kingdom, these imperfect human beings will somehow have to progress to perfection and be judged by their deeds performed during the millennium. Thus, the 1000-year reign will be a 1000-year judgment (testing) period in which people will have an opportunity to become perfect.[5]

The ‘great crowd’ of survivors of the ‘war of the great day of God the Almighty’ will then be on their way to gaining absolute righteousness and perfection in the flesh… For this reason, they will not be justified or declared righteous either now or then as the 144,000 heavenly joint heirs have been justified while still in the flesh. The “great crowd” will not undergo a change of nature from human to spiritual and so do not need the justification by faith and the imputed righteousness that the 144,000 “chosen ones” have required.[6] (emphasis added)

Not imputed perfection by faith in Christ’s blood, but actual human perfection in the flesh by the uplifting, cleansing help of God’s Messianic kingdom—this is what the “great crowd” will need and what they will attain by Christ’s kingdom of a thousand years.[7] (emphasis added)

Ask:

  • How will people in the millennial kingdom overcome the indwelling power of sin Paul unsuccessfully battled in Romans 7?
  • Paul says the problem dwells inside us.
  • If our sinful inclinations survive our resurrection and if we don’t receive Christ’s righteousness as a gift, what hope of overcoming do we have?
  • Paul’s words ring in my ears: “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there dwells nothing good; for I have the desire to do what is fine but not the ability to carry it out.”

Summary

In your discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses, make sure they understand and acknowledge that the Watchtower teaches that they will have to attain to moral perfection by the end of the millennial reign of Christ.

If necessary, ask them to look up the footnoted sources which contain these teachings.

Your goal will be to create stones in their shoes which will help them see that the Watchtower’s salvation system requires them to achieve the impossible.

[1] Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, p. 390, paragraph 21

[2] Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, p. 390, paragraph 21

[3] Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, pp. 390-391, paragraphs 21-23

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

[5] The Watchtower, “Will You See Your Dead Loved Ones Again?,” 9/1/67, pp. 521-526; The Watchtower, “Would You Want to Be There?”, 5/15/74, p. 293; The Watchtower, “Make Jehovah’s Everlasting Arms Your Support”, 10/1/91, p. 14

[6] Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, p. 391, paragraph 22

[7] Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God, p. 391, paragraph 22

 

 

 

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