Can JW really imagine what it is to live FOREVER?

Albert Einstein

While we were JW, we uncountedly stated, that we have a hope to live forever on Earth, now really think about it:

Dinosaurs lived here some 100 000 000 years ago

Pangea splited into continents some 300 000 000 years ago

Earth was created some 4 000 000 000 years ago

Whole Universe came to the existence some 15 000 000 000 years ago

And 100 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years from now, you as a JW with your JW wife/husband will still be on Earth, petting lions and planting vegetables on your garden, thinking the billions and trillions of years you experienced is just a begining, eternity is just ahead and will be soooo long ....

Do you really want to live forever on Earth?

In fact, I believe eternal life, would be a nightmare...

Albert

White Dove

I agree. I think we'd all spiral down into a black depression with the inability to end it.

cofty

If you learned one new fact every day you would eventually run out of new things to learn

If you learned one new skill every century you would eventually be a master of every conceivable activity

greenhornet

Here is another way looking at this. Each grain of sand on the beach equels one year. Thats a lot of years. But time the grains of sand by a trillion.

Thats only one beach. There will be no children babies ETC. Not a world Id like to live in. It just make no sense.

Gopher

I think all Christian religions have this same problem, except that the non-JW Christians will have to find things to do forever in heaven.

Regarding the JW hope to live forever on earth, eventually procreation would have to stop - can you imagine the built-up tension, forever?

Or if Jehovah opens up other planets in the universe for habitation (as some JW's think could happen), then forever won't be here on earth - and the title of their book from the 1980's "You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth" would be false. People would actually be living forever in heaven (as viewed from earth). But wait, only 144,000 Christians are supposed to live in heaven.

I could go on. The JW's don't want to take their "forever on earth" hope to its logical extension, preferring to say "we shouldn't speculate on such matters". Or that's at least what they've been told.

cofty

I used to be of the opinion that earth would be the "garden of Eden" of the universe and that procreation would never cease

A.Fenderson

I remember getting frequent panic attacks due to thinking intently about living forever. My brain would go into some sort of feedback-loop at the absurdity of the concept as I got nearer and nearer to grasping what eternity entailed, and I would freak the hell out and have a very strong panic reaction--face flushed, heart pounding rapidly etc, and I would often start running as fast as I could in no general direction, all the while reassuring myself mentally (and sometimes even aloud) over and over that I would kill myself rather than get stuck living eternally.

I don't think I was ever seen to do this by anyone (except once when I wasn't saying my mantra aloud and could pass it off as something else) but it must have been quite a site if someone had seen me sitting quietly one moment, then suddenly bolting at top speed towards nothing in particular, obviously scared out of my mind, repeating the phrase "I'll kill myself! I'll kill myself!" They would have thought I was demon-possessed for sure!

And that was even considering eternal life on a paradise earth: I am utterly incapable of comprehending the terror that someone who believes in eternal torture in hellfire--with no possible escape--must go through when they really come close to grasping that concept.

believingxjw

If people could have good health and have those they love around them for an eternity of course they would choose eternal life. Or do those who think otherwise not cry at the funeral of a loved one?

mythreesons

What would life be like w/o the sound of children playing? One elder tried to tell me that eventually there wouldn't be any more kids because the earth would be full. I told him that if that's the way it would be then it would be empty and not very interesting....It really wouldn't be living now would it?

No young ones, no old ones - I guess that's not right, you just wouldn't be able to pick them out of the crowd as they will all look 20 years old, no ups, no downs...a bunch of know-it-all's running around everywhere telling everyone how much they know. I guess the JW's have an advantage of being able to do that already, huh? :)

GLTirebiter

Perhaps life in the Watchtower paradise is like being a struldbrug. In Gulliver's Travels, these were the rare Luggnaggians who were doomed to immortality. Struldbrugs had eternal life, but not the same way it's depicted on the Watchtower covers:

"That the question therefore was not whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health, but how he would pass a perpetual life under the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it."

"When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they not only had all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions."

Can JW really imagine what it is to live FOREVER?

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