Category: Death and Resurrection (page 2 of 10)

Jesus, Angels, and Watchtower Speculation

Bible teach Ch 10

Click image to access this “Bible Teach” chapter on the Watchtower’s website

“Bible Teach,” Chapter 10, “Spirit Creatures—How They Affect Us,” is devoted to a discussion of angels—both obedient angels and demons.

While this may not seem like a fruitful area for discussion, in fact you can use this chapter as a springboard for making new points or reinforcing points you’ve previously made regarding a number of important topics: Continue reading

Do We Get a Second Chance After Death?

Bible teach Ch 7

Click image to access this “Bible Teach” chapter on the Watchtower’s website

The “Bible Teach” Appendix entitled “Judgment Day—What Is It?” claims that Judgment Day will be a 1000-year period in which people get a second chance and will have an opportunity after death in which to learn about Jehovah, conform to his will, and so obtain everlasting life on a paradise earth. Continue reading

Discussing the Coming Resurrections

Bible teach Ch 7

Click image to access this “Bible Teach” chapter on the Watchtower’s website

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. Continue reading

What Happens Between Death and Resurrection?

Bible teach Ch 7

Click image to access this “Bible Teach” chapter on the Watchtower’s website

Chapter 7, “Real Hope for Your Loved Ones Who Have Died,” and two related appendices explain what the Watchtower believes will happen to people after they die.

Christians don’t all agree on the sequence of end times events, so it’s only fair that I give you my views before critiquing the Watchtower’s. If your opinions are different than mine, you can make the necessary adjustments in your conversations with Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Unlike the Watchtower, I believe the Bible teaches that people have separate souls and spirits that surviving physical death. At death, the souls and spirits of the saved go to heaven to be with Christ (Philippians 1:23). The souls and spirits of the unsaved go to Hades to await the final judgment (Luke 16:19-31).

Resurrection is a reuniting of body, soul, and spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Resurrection bodies won’t be identical to the bodies that died, but there will be continuity, as there is between a seed and the plant it produces (1 Corinthians 15:35-43). Continue reading

Dealing with Watchtower Afterlife Proof Texts

Bible teach Ch 6

Click image to access this “Bible Teach” chapter on the Watchtower’s website

For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5, Watchtower’s New World Translation, 1984 edition)

This verse is probably the Witnesses’ favorite proof text referring to the afterlife. They frequently quote only a few words from it—“the dead… are conscious of nothing at all” or “the dead know nothing at all” (from the 2013 edition).

For them, this definitively excludes the possibility of human beings having a soul or conscious spirit that survives the death of the body.

Continue reading

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