*** w56 7/1 p. 401 par. 18 What Dedication Means to Me ***So each one of you undedicated persons has today the same freedom to choose, a choice of life or death. If you deliberately refuse to dedicate yourself to Jehovah God in this judgment day of his in which we now are living, your life will end at Armageddon, if not before, as a condemned sinner without right to life and even without hope of a resurrection.
CHANGED
*** w95 10/15 p. 22 par. 22 How Will You Stand Before the Judgment Seat? ***Does this parable apply when Jesus sat down in kingly power in 1914, as we have long understood? Well, Matthew 25:34 does speak of him as King, so the parable logically finds application since Jesus became King in 1914. But what judging did he do soon thereafter? It was not a judging of "all the nations." Rather, he turned his attention to those claiming to make up "the house of God." (1 Peter 4:17) In line with Malachi 3:1-3, Jesus, as Jehovah’s messenger, judicially inspected the anointed Christians remaining on earth. It was also time for judicial sentence on Christendom, who falsely claimed to be "the house of God." (Revelation 17:1, 2; 18:4-8) Yet nothing indicates that at that time, or for that matter since, Jesus sat to judge people of all the nations finally as sheep or goats.
If we analyze Jesus’ activity in the parable, we observe him finally judging all the nations. The parable does not show that such judging would continue over an extended period of many years, as if every person dying during these past decades were judged worthy of everlasting death or everlasting life.It seems that the majority who have died in recent decades have gone to mankind’s common grave. (Revelation 6:8; 20:13) The parable, though, depicts the time when Jesus judges the people of "all the nations" who are then alive and facing the execution of his judicial sentence.
In other words, the parable points to the future when the Son of man will come in his glory. He will sit down to judge people then living. His judgment will be based on what they have manifested themselves to be. At that time "the distinction between a righteous one and a wicked one" will have been clearly established. (Malachi 3:18) The actual pronouncing and executing of judgment will be carried out in a limited time. Jesus will render just decisions based on what has become evident about individuals.—See also 2 Corinthians 5:10.
Understanding the parable of the sheep and the goats in this way indicates that the rendering of judgment on the sheep and the goats is future. It will take place after "the tribulation" mentioned at Matthew 24:29, 30 breaks out and the Son of man ‘arrives in his glory.’ (Compare Mark 13:24-26.)
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At one time the WTS taught that from 1914 to when the "great tribulation" broke out was a judgment period or a judgment day and non-jws who died during this period would not be resurrected but would descend into Gehena, everlasting destruction. They "reasoned" that the sheep and goats were being identified and separated since 1914. Of course, that teaching changed in 1995 when the WTS started teaching that the sheep and goats would be separated shortly after the great tribulation started and thus 1914 to now was not a judgment day or period during which people were being identified as goats worthy of eternal destruction. They had compared this time to the flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, periods during which people died and had no hope of a resurrection.
With this change in WTS doctrine, it became beneficial then to die as a non-jw before Armageddon, their resurrection into the paradise was assured.
Blondie
