<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Bookman Old Style"; panose-1:2 5 6 4 5 5 5 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:647 0 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Bookman Old Style"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:black;} p {mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> I’m sure you’ve seen them. All the pictures in the magazines show everyone wearing nice cheery outfits as they gather fruit and wave to one another in the paradise that awaits them after the judgment, but what about the next day and the day after? Won’t the waving and the fruit gathering get kind of old? And what will become of the 144,000 who are resurrected as spirits? What, exactly, do they do? (Back in the 1970s, there were quite a few people who believed themselves to be part of the 144,000, and they’d partake of the Lord’s Supper while everyone else let it go. I don’t know how they’ve worked it since, but I suspect they’ve passed the 144,000 mark.)
Anyway, the fall of man is viewed much more profoundly in other denominations than it is in the JW view. To me it's fairly short-sighted to believe that God would create Man and put him in a garden to live forever in a static existence. It's reasonable to me that if Man did indeed fall, then it was a necessary part of his planned journey. According to many ancient texts, Man was the pinnacle of God's creations. Some even suggest that Satan's rebellion first began with his refusal to acknowledge Man as God's crowning achievement, which never made sense if Adam and Eve were to “tend” a garden forever.
To suppose that God's whole intent was for men and women to stay naked in a garden makes about as much sense as Islamic theology with their virgins in heaven, honor killings, women as "meat" before "cats" and jihads and such. To me, it makes much more sense for the fall of Man to be an integral part of the journey and one for which God planned.
But what of those pictures we’ve all seen in the JW publications, of people of varying ethnic backgrounds carrying baskets and having what appears to be huge family reunions with trees and flowers and the like? Wouldn’t it be much cooler if we could just convert our bodies to energy and go streaking across the galaxy? And what of the angels? What will happen to them and how will they interact with people? Who will be higher on these planes of existence?
The JW website this month had an article on reincarnation. It stated: “Consider another case. A four-year-old girl had had several agonizing stays in a hospital in Mumbai, India. Her problem was a defective valve in her heart. Her well-to-do parents could not bear to see the child suffer. But they reasoned: “ We have to accept it. She must have done something in her previous life to deserve this.” The article continues by noting that it’s a completely unscriptural notion and came from other countries where belief in an immortal soul was common. But what of the apostles who, when seeing a blind man, asked the Master, “Who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind?”
So the man was born blind and the disciples wanted to know whether the man or his parents sinned that he was born blind. It reflected their belief that the man 1) had a previous existence and that he 2) was an immortal spirit, for how else could he have sinned before birth? As far as I know, none of these apostles was from India, nor were they Hindu — and in all fairness, Jesus may have been referring, not to reincarnation, but to some form of premortality (which has been written about in some of those life after life books. Anyway, getting back to the story, they were all Jews. And Jesus didn’t stop and say, no your doctrine is all wrong, or ye do err in not knowing the scriptures — he said it was so that the works of God could be manifest in the blind man.
So, c’mon…what happens to most people after they’ve been resurrected? Are we all going to sit around eating vegetarian meals at family picnics that never end? How deep does the theology go?
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