Using soundbites as stones in the shoe in witnessing has a downside.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use them.
However, it does mean that it’s important to establish some safeguards. Continue reading
Tag: Ecclesiastes 9:5 (page 1 of 3)
In last week’s introductory post, I said, “Make your point using memorable soundbites.”
By “soundbite,” I mean a brief, catchy comment or saying that convey the essence of your message and sticks in the minds of your audience.
And that’s precisely what you want to create—something memorable that the Witnesses will hear over and over in their minds long after your conversation has ended.
Those soundbites constitute the stones in the shoe.
Why do soundbites make good “stones”? Continue reading
One of the primary passages that refutes the Watchtower’s everlasting-nonexistence-of-the-wicked doctrine is Jesus’ account of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31. If necessary, set aside an entire session to study this account. Continue reading
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
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.
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