The active force that animates all beings belongs to God and when someone dies, this force returns to God in the sense that he decides if he will bring you back to life in a human body on earth for everlasting life in paradise or in heaven as a spiritual immortal being....that's what I understood and believed for the longest time. When you consider the belief of an immortal soul, both are not too remote from each other, but JWs have to be different than christianity...
Jack Barr, immortal? More from the Watchtower of May 15, 2011
by dgp 45 Replies latest social humour
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The Finger
"The active force that animates all beings belongs to God and when someone dies, this force returns to God"
This active force that returned to God is just a force. Body that died is never brought back another body is made whether spiritual or fleshly and made to think it is the person that died. Almost a clone. As JW believe nothing lives on after death. Other than God remembers them they exist in his mind which sounds like it is Hades. At least that is how I understood it.
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dgp
As NVR2L8 says, this sounds like a conscious effort to say the same thing only in a more convoluted way. I am positive that if you asked this question to all the potential converts, almost everyone would agree that "Yep, the Jehovah's witnesses believe in an immortal soul, sort of".
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Mad Sweeney
This sudden enthusiasm for brochures and eulogising Watchtower articles when a GB member dies are a bit disquieting. I know some even loyal JWs who aren't altogether happy about them.
The problem with these is that the GB and other Borg leaders are portrayed as humble servants on the one hand and treated as proxies for Almighty GOD on the other. They are supposedly mere members of an entire class of faithful and discreet slaves, and yet when an anointed person in your local congregation dies, does he or (heaven forbid) she get a eulogy article in the Kool-Aid Edition? No way. The Borg doesn't even look on them as "genuine" anointed, for the most part.
I hope they keep it up. The GB love is disturbing and cult-like and if it drives people away from the Watchtower, then great.
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AnnOMaly
dgp:All right. So, after all, there is an immortal soul? If not, what part of him never died, since his body DID die?
EXACTLY!
On the one hand, when it comes to the 'anointed':
Insight-2 p. 786 Resurrection
Resurrection of Christ's "brothers." .... They must undergo a change of nature, giving up human nature to obtain "divine" nature, thus sharing with Christ in his glory. They must die a death like Christ's-maintaining integrity and giving up human life forever-and then they receive immortal, incorruptible bodies like Christ's by a resurrection. (Ro 6:3-5; 1Co 15:50-57; 2Co 5:1-3) The apostle Paul explains that it is not the body that is resurrected, but rather, he likens their experience to the planting and sprouting of a seed, in that "God gives it a body just as it has pleased him." (1Co 15:35-40) It is the soul, the person, that is resurrected, with a body to suit the environment into which God resurrects him.
On the other hand, for all other mortals:
Insight-2 pp. 1005-1006 Soul
Soul-A Living Creature. As stated, man "came to be a living soul"; hence man was a soul, he did not have a soul as something immaterial, invisible, and intangible residing inside him. ...
The Genesis account shows that a living soul results from the combination of the earthly body with the breath of life. The expression "breath of the force of life [literally, breath of the spirit, or active force (ru′ach), of life]" (Ge 7:22) indicates that it is by breathing air (with its oxygen) that the life-force, or "spirit," in all creatures, man and animals, is sustained. This life-force is found in every cell of the creature's body, as is discussed under LIFE; SPIRIT.
I.e. two conflicting ideas existing side-by-side relating to the nature of man - dualism in the case of the 'anointed'; monism for everyone else.
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freetosee
jehovah has always been immortal.
jesus received his immortality after his resurecction.
the 1st century anointed and all "little flockies" who died before the end of the gentile times attained the "crown of life" at their resurrection as "first fruits" at the birth of the kingdom in 1914.
anointed who died after 1914 are resurrected within an eye-blink.
the living remnant who make it through the great tribulation will be transformed or raptured sometime into the new system - jehovahs king decides when he calls them up.
during a discussion among some old-timers, elders and our CO, one sister said that the society only refers to jehovah, jesus and the 144k as "beings".
Seraphs, cherubs, angels, resurrected ones, great crowd and animals are always referred to as "creatures" in the wt publications.
only towards the the end of the 1000-year-reign do faithful servants attain the right to "everlasting life" not "immortality". the "princes" receive this right at their resurrection early in the 1000-year-reign.
had adam and eve made it to the tree of life, they would have had the right to live forever, but they would not have been immortal. -
sabastious
All he ever wanted eh? Freudian slip, has to be.
-Sab
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Billy the Ex-Bethelite
I think there was one Sunday afternoon that he should have gone out in service, but instead he went home. Due to that sin, I don't think he made it to heaven.
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slimboyfat
Haven't there been articles like this whenever someone in the GB died since the early 1990s at least? It's just that a lot of them have died recently so it seems a lot.
I think the GB started drawing more attention to themselves ever since the picture of the twelve then current members featured prominently in the Proclaimers book.
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moshe
The brothers seem to accept any outlandish proclamation the writing department can think up.