by Perry 44 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Another scripture that blows the 'soul-sleep' doctrine out of the water, is the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. While the Society feebly tries to claim that it was only an illustration, since when did Jesus use a 'false doctrine' to make a point?
I asked an elder this once and I was given no answer.
Ah yes, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man...
19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In hell, a where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’
27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’
29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’
30 “ ‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’
31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”
Jesus was such an apostate !
LOL !
Excellent point Mary.
Logically, one would have to assume that God used Jesus to mislead people for two thousand years regarding the condition of the dead until the Seventh Day Adventists told us the truth.
I asked my father how the people that heard Jesus speaking were supposed to understand him without a Watchtower to explain it way back then? No answer.
Below is one amillenialist point of view.
We should not confuse the reality of hell with its images. The images of hell are of: 1) “everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:46); 2) “eternal destruction” (Matt. 10:28); and 3) banishment into the “darkness” (Matt. 22:13; 25:30). How we interpret these images depends on other Bible verses. In the O.T. the wicked will cease to exist (Psalm 37, Mal.4: 1-2). Jesus in the N.T. shows us that the purpose of fire in punishment is to destroy or burn up the wicked (Matt.3:10-12; 13:30,42,49-50). According to John R.W. Stott: “The main function of fire is not to cause pain, but to secure destruction.” [Evangelical Essentials, (p. 316)]. Paul likewise emphasized destruction (2 Thess 1: 9; I Cor. 3:17; Phil. 1:28; 3:19). Peter likewise stressed the sinners’ fate as that of destruction (2 Pet. 2:1,3, 6; 3:6-7). Even in John’s book of Revelation, the lake of fire will consume the wicked (Rev. 20:14-15). G.B. Caird: “John believed that, if at the end there should be any who remained impervious to the grace and love of God, they should be thrown, with Death and Hades, into the lake of fire which is the second death, i.e., extinction and total oblivion.” [Commentary on Revelation, (p. 186)].
“The Bible uses language of death and destruction, of ruin and perishing, when it speaks of the fate of the impenitent wicked. It uses the imagery of fire that consumes whatever is thrown into it.” But “linking together images of fire and destruction suggests annihilation. One receives the impression that ‘eternal punishment’ refers to a divine judgment whose results cannot be reversed rather than to the experience of endless torment (i.e. eternal punishing).” [Pinnock, Four Views of Hell, p. 144].
L.E. Froom claims that conditional immortality was generally accepted in the early church until its thinkers tried to wed Plato’s doctrine of the immortality of the soul to the teaching of the Bible.” [The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, Herald Pub., 1966]. Biblically speaking, human beings are not immortal. God alone has immortality (I Tim. 6:16); well doers seek immortality (Rom. 2:7); immortality is brought to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1:10); those in Christ will put on immortality (I Cor. 15:54), so that they now partake of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4).
If human beings don't have immortality until they die in Christ when God grants it to them, then according to the Bible we cease to exist after we die. We are annhihilated, and that's our punishment.
(Source)
Well, we know that the soul can be destroyed but untill it is, is the soul immortal in the sense of not subject to death?
In the greek, immortal is :aphthartos
And means:
1) uncorrupted, not liable to corruption or decay, imperishable
a) of things
2) immortal
a) of the risen dead
1 Kings 17:22 And the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.
As already noted, the above scripture is but one that proves the biblical teaching that the soul survives death. Spiritualizing hell, does nothing to prove aniliation of the soul at death, which is clearly heresy.
So, if not hell (realm of departed souls, favored and damned) where then would they go?
PSacramento,
Here dead (slain) souls can talk, and think, and are conscious:
Rev. 6:9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
Dead souls are dead because they are separated from their body, just as the body is dead when separated from it soul. It has nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness.
Perry,
I think the issue with the WT isn't the soul, its the belief that the spirit, which they admit returns to God, is nothing but an impersonal "force".
In the OT and even the NT, the soul and spirit were almost interchangeble..
Jesus was such an apostate !
LOL !
Yea, sneaky, like when he recreated a body to decieve the deciples into believing he had resurrected.
