The Great Crowd Will Never Be Secure

As we saw last time, the Watchtower teaches that in order to obtain everlasting life, members of the great crowd must achieve moral perfection by the end of the millennial kingdom.

Ask the Witnesses the stone-in-the-shoe question:

How are they supposed to accomplish this?

The Watchtower gives a number of explanations.

Don’t argue with them.

Instead, ask them to explain to you step-by-step what is supposed to happen.As they try, ask them stone-in-the-shoe questions.

The Watchtower says that people in the millennial kingdom don’t need to receive a new birth which the gift of Christ’s righteousness.

Instead, Christ’s millennial kingdom will be a 1,000-year testing period in which they will have an opportunity to overcome their sinful inclinations and progress to actual moral perfection.^{^[1]}

How will this happen?

The Watchtower’s answer is:

Satan and demons will be bound for 1,000 years and no longer able to tempt them.^{^[2]}
Christ’s rule will be completely righteous and just.^{^[3]}
They will have the benefits of Christ’s “ransom sacrifice” applied to them as they submit to Christ’s righteous rule.^{^[4]}
“…as the result of the dripping and trickling down of righteousness from the ‘new heavens,’ the human soil of the ‘new earth’ will respond and become fruitful in a corresponding way.”^{^[5]}
Jesus as High Priest will “help them get out of their weaknesses and inclinations to badness.”^{^[6]}
There will be “new scrolls” containing Jehovah’s detailed requirements.^{^[7]}
Earthly overseers—“princes,” including the ancient Israelite worthies and Jehovah’s Witness elders—will help them learn about Jehovah and his ways and progress to perfection.^{^[8]}

If the Witnesses give you these answers, you can say:

I’m sorry. I don’t understand how that will help them overcome the power of sin that dwells inside them and overpowers them as Paul described in Romans 7.

The Witnesses may give you the Watchtower’s claim: “Throughout this time, as the result of the dripping and trickling down of righteousness from the ‘new heavens,’ the human soil of the ‘new earth’ will respond and become fruitful in a corresponding way.”^{^[9]}

Ask:

What does that mean?

Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t be able to explain it.

Although that vague and colorful metaphorical language sounds profound, what it boils down to is the unsupported assertion that somehow God will make the progression to and attainment of perfection possible.

The Watchtower claims that the advantages listed above “will enable the ‘great crowd’ to grow in true inward righteousness. This will more and more overpower ‘the law of sin’ in their bodily members with which they survived the battle of Armageddon into the new order. What sins they may yet unwillingly commit through fleshly weaknesses inherited from Adam will be forgiven them when they confess them, repent and ask God’s forgiveness through Christ. Finally, through faithful molding of themselves to righteousness, they will get that ‘law of sin’ nullified in themselves and become perfect human creatures, like the perfect Adam in the garden of Eden.”^{^[10]} (emphasis added).

If the Witnesses tell you this, ask:

Do I understand correctly that somehow they will have to faithfully “mold themselves to righteous” and that will enable them to get the law of sin nullified in themselves and become perfect humans?

But isn’t the law of sin inside themselves the very thing that prevents us from faithfully molding ourselves to righteousness?

But let’s suppose all this is attainable.

Does that mean their salvation is secure for all eternity?

No, the Watchtower teaches that if they prove worthy to enter the millennial kingdom and if they further prove worthy by enduring faithfully to the end and progressing to perfection, members of the great crowd will still face a final loyalty test by Satan at the conclusion of the millennium.^{^[11]}

Not all will pass this test.

When Satan and demons are loosed, “an indefinite number of perfected, human free moral agents will let themselves be misled through selfishness. (James 1:13-15) These willful rebels will be summarily executed, in a destruction as complete and everlasting as by fire, because they failed to prove worthy of being justified by the great Judge Jehovah God.”^{^[12]} (emphasis added)

For those who pass the test, “Jehovah God will justify, declare righteous, on the basis of their own merit, all perfected humans who have withstood that final, decisive test of mankind. He will adopt and acknowledge them as his sons through Jesus Christ.”^{^[13]} (emphasis added)

If you pass this “final test,” then is your salvation secure for all eternity?

No, despite having progressed to actual perfection and holiness, the great crowd will still never experience total security in their salvation.

They will be back to where Adam was before he sinned:

All mankind will then be, like the perfect man Adam in the garden of Eden, free moral agents, with no inborn sin or weakness or bad inclination to enslave them to a certain course of action. Now, without any disability, but with vaster understanding and experiences, they can demonstrate to God directly that their unchangeable choice, their unbreakable decision, is to worship and serve the only living and true God forever on their paradise earth.^{^[14]}

Like Adam in Eden, will you still be capable of sinning?

The Watchtower admits that even after all of this it will still be possible for them to rebel against Jehovah just as Adam did.

What would happen then?

If this happens, Jehovah will annihilate them. However, since they will have progressed to perfection and have passed Satan’s final test, it is very unlikely that this would happen.^{^[15]}

So throughout eternity, those in the great crowd continually must establish their own righteousness through perfect obedience or face annihilation.

Summary

Ask the summary question: