• Discussing Ecclesiastes 9:5 with Jehovah’s Witnesses - When discussing what happens to a person after death, Jehovah’s Witnesses will refer you to Ecclesiastes 9:5: “the dead know nothing at all...” (Watchtower's 2013 New World Translation). Some Witnesses have memorized an earlier version: “the dead… are conscious of nothing at all…” (NWT)... How can we get them to look at that passage in context?
  • Interpreting Ecclesiastes in Context - Sometimes Witnesses will persist in ignoring the context of Ecclesiastes 9:5 and insist that “the dead know nothing at all” is truth revealed by God. If that happens, I recommend that you have them look at other passages in Ecclesiastes to see if they express Jehovah’s viewpoint.
  • Anatomy of a Proof Text: Ezekiel 18:4 - Jehovah’s Witnesses often quote Ezekiel 18:4: “Look! All the souls—to me they belong. As the soul of the father so also the soul of the son—to me they belong. The soul who sins is the one who will die” (Watchtower’s 2013 New World Translation). To a Jehovah’s Witness, this verse proves that at death, human beings are not conscious of anything; rather, they go out of existence completely unless and until Jehovah decides to resurrect them. They don’t seem aware that they are making a lot of intermediate assumptions in order to arrive at that conclusion.
  • Scriptures that Show Conscious Existence After Death - When discussing what happens after death, the Watchtower is selective in the texts it examines. Rather than looking at all verses that bear on the matter of conscious existence after death, it ignores passages that don’t support its doctrine. Draw these passages to their attention and ask for their explanation.
  • The Rich Man and Lazarus: Christian View - One of the primary passages that teaches a conscious existence after death and refutes the Watchtower’s annihilation-of-the-wicked doctrine is Jesus’ account of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31.
  • The Rich Man and Lazarus: The Watchtower Explanation - The Watchtower... does not accept Jesus’ account of the rich man and Lazarus at face value. It... inserts its own meanings for all the people and events in Jesus’ account and then proclaims itself the defender of reasonableness and biblical consistency. What it ends up with is a fanciful and self-contradictory interpretation of its own creation. However, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe what the Watchtower tells them. In order to get through to them, you first need to understand what they believe.
  • Discussing the Rich Man and Lazarus: Why an “After Death” Story? - In discussing the rich man and Lazarus account with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I recommend that you begin with the Watchtower interpretation. Tell them there are aspects of it you don’t understand and ask them to clarify. I suggest dividing the account into three segments and addressing the passage topic by topic. In this post, we’ll discuss the first segment, Luke 16:19-23.
  • Discussing the Rich Man and Lazarus: The Great Chasm - In the last post, we covered the first segment of Jesus’ rich man and Lazarus account. We saw that the Watchtower doesn’t believe the story is a teaching about a conscious existence after death. Instead, it sees the account as a parable about a reversal of Jehovah’s favor which took place when Jehovah instituted the new covenant at Pentecost. In this post, we’ll talk about how to engage Jehovah’s Witnesses in discussion of the second segment of Jesus’ story, Luke 16:24-26.