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“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.
In order to get through to Jehovah’s Witnesses on some points, it’s necessary to discuss some fairly long Bible passages with them. This is particularly so when we need to show Witnesses the full context of some of their favorite proof texts.
