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
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.
Click image to access this “Bible Teach” chapter on the Watchtower’s website
Does it matter whether Jesus died on a traditional cross or on an upright stake without a crossbeam (as the Watchtower teaches)? For Christians, this isn’t a salvation issue. But to Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’s salvation issue which sets them apart from pagan “Christendom.” Continue reading
Click image to access this “Bible Teach” chapter on the Watchtower’s website
Last week, I discussed the first two topics in Chapter 1 of “Bible Teach.” Today, I’ll move on to the next subject.
Topic #3: The importance of God’s name—“Jehovah”
Given the importance of the name “Jehovah” in the Watchtower religion, it’s somewhat surprising that “Bible Teach” doesn’t introduce the topic until midway through the chapter, but the Watchtower often catches us off guard by introducing key teachings when we least expect it.
In Watchtower publications, photo captions often convey doctrine. As an example, the photo caption at paragraph 14 (p. 12) reads, “When you want someone to get to know you, do you not mention your name? God reveals his name to us in the Bible.” The same point is made in the text itself, under the heading, “God Wants You to Know Who He Is.”
You can point out that our children and grandchildren know us intimately even though they call us “Dad” and “Grandpa” rather than using our given names. Likewise, our friends often refer to us by nicknames. Continue reading
“Saying but not citing” is an error in which “a writer says that the Bible says such and such but does not cite the specific text (which often indicates that there may be no such text at all).”[1]
The Watchtower commits this error frequently. This allows them to imply that they are just teaching what the Bible teaches, when in fact the Bible provides little or no support for their teaching.
Here are four examples from Watchtower literature: Continue reading
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