An emphatic NO.
2013 The Watchtower, January 1
Was the Watchtower Right?
by Christ Alone 91 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Londo111
Over the course of this last year, I've done a continual reevaluation. I realized the more the Society was dogmatic about something, the more I needed to reevaluate it.
I can agree with them that there is no place of eternal hellfire and that the 'fire' is symbolic…But of course, I depart from there.
I do believe that we have an immortal spirit, our inner essence, that is conscious after death. I've seen evidence of this thought even in the Old Testament.
It feels weird for me to say this, but I think I'm slowly becoming Trinitarian. It's been a gradual road of understanding first what the Trinity is NOT. However, I do not make issue with those who have not yet come to the same understanding. After all, I've been there myself.
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Emery
I can certainly see how one can arrive at the Trinity, it's not that difficult if you talk to some theologians. I do see a lot of verses which only pertains to YHWH in the OT being applied to Jesus in the NT, especially in Hebrews and Revelation. If I were more a believer in the sola scriptura principle then it would be easier to believe. The biggest hurdle I have is knowing the history about the bible and the development of such doctrines. The authority of the authors of the NT is also highly suspect. You can see a Jewish Christian approach about Jesus' identity in the synoptic gospels, and then see a completely different deistic view following some of Paul's letters down to the book of Revelation.
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Ultimate Axiom
Christ Alone said, “It's interesting that some of the doctrines that are peculiar to the cults are the ones that many still hold onto even after leaving. Makes me wonder if some researched these matters outside of the NWT after leaving? As far as I can see, other translations show a far different picture of who Jesus is, what the soul is, and what the eternal destination of all of us after death.”
Londo111 said, “I do believe that we have an immortal spirit, our inner essence, that is conscious after death.”
Can you guys expand on this “eternal destination” “immortal spirit” thing? I haven’t researched other translations on the subject of hell, so w hat will become of the incorrigibly evil if they are immortal? You know guys like Satan? If there is no hell, what is their destination. If it’s hell, I for one would rather go there than worship a God that would create such a place.
By the way, excellent Youtube clip Heaven.
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Christ Alone
Regarding Hell, the JW position is interesting. I usually don't comment on it too much because it is controversial. One thing is sure, the Society's definition of the words "Sheol" and "Hades" totally disagrees with the definition given by Greek scholars. Vine's expository Dictionary states about "Hades": "It never denotes the grave, nor is it the permanent region of the lost; in point of time it is, for such, intermediate between decease and the doom of Gehenna." Thayers Greek Lexicon says "Hades is the common receptacle of disembodied spirits.
The Bible's picture of Hades also refutes the Watchtower. One of the best illustrations of Hades is Luke 16:22-28. Jesus tells about a rich man who died and went to Hades, and Lazarus, begger, who died and went to paradise with Abraham. The rich man was in torment, while Lazarus was comforted.
The Watchtower says that the story was entirely symbolic. According to the "Let God Be True" book, "The rich man represents the ultra selfish class of the clergy of Christendom, who are now afar off from God and dead to his favor and services and tormented by the Kingdom truth proclaimed. Lazarus depicts the faithful remnant of the body of Christ (Jehovah's Witnesses). These, on being delivered from modern Babylon since 1919, received God's facor, pictured by the 'bosom' position of Abraham, and are comforted through his Word."
This shows the lengths the Watchtower is willing to go to avoid Hell and the existence of conscious life after death.
In Revelation 14:9-11, we are told that anyone who worships the beast and receives his mark "will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb." Again, to avoid the meaning of the verse, the Watchtower insists that these scriptures again are totally symbolic. According to the Watchtower these verses refer to the torment some individuals will suffer, while still alive, because of the message proclimed by Jehovah's Witnesses.
So what does "torment" mean in Greek? It comes from the Greek word "Basanizo". Thayer's Lexicon says that the word means "to vex with grievous pains." It always refers to literal pain. For example Matthew 8:6 tells of the centurion's servant who was at home paralyzed and suffering (basanizo). The demon in Mark 5:7 was worried that Jesus would torture (basanizo) him. The woman in Revelation 12:2 was gregnant and cried out in pain (basanizo. The Bible alway uses this word to refer to real, not symbolic, pain.
Back to Revelation 14:11, it shows that the wicked will never rest, and that they will be tormented forever. The Watchtower insists that this means annihilation. But if someone is annihilated, or wiped from existence, then they are at rest.
So then, can a God of love torment? This is what causes alot of people to turn away from God. Someone above said "I would rather go to hell than serve a god that would send me there." That's pretty telling. The book "Attributes of God" makes this statement: "A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger,fury, and wrath of God, than there are to His love and tenderness." Love is only one of the many attributes that God possesses. God IS loving and merciful, but he is equally holy and just. Because God is holy, he hates all sin. His holiness is infinite. It never ends. And when this holiness is offended, it requires that punishment be due.
Since God is holy and infinite, and sins committed against him require the full magnitude of divine punishment, this requires that punishment be infinite. Divine justice cannot exist alongside annihilation. Sentencing someone to an eternity of rest (annihilation) is hardly punishment for sins committed against an infinitely holy God. Punishment can only be experienced when someone is conscious.
The reality is that we have a choice. Someone going to hell is their choice not God's. Jesus, at John 3:18 says "Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son." God's wrath on unbelievers is a choice they make for themselves. His judgment on them is only what they choose. C.S Lewis wrote, "There are only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those whome God says, in the end, "They will be done.""
Romans 5:9 says that there is only one way to escape God's wrath. It says "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!"
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Ultimate Axiom
I tend to agree, the JW position on hell is sometimes difficult to defend from a literal interpretation of many biblical passages, but it’s easy to defend from a logical and moral perspective.
Christ Alone, you sound a lot like many of the born again Christians I used to debate this with when I was “in”. If the only way to escape God’s infinite wrath is to become a Christian, what happens to the millions of Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists etc etc who are not convinced by the Christian message, founded as it is on a vengeful Jewish God, and who chose to live a devout and holy life in their own peaceful religion? It seems to me that those who “leave” as you put it, but who cling to Christianity, suffer their own cognitive dissonance, by having to reconcile the beautiful message of Christ with the primitive, vindictive, irrational and completely unjustifiable punishment the hell doctrine involves. And they do this of course because they want to hold on to the divinely inspired concept of the bible. I find your statement that, “Since God is holy and infinite, and sins committed against him require the full magnitude of divine punishment, this requires that punishment be infinite” to be absurd in the extreme (and that’s putting it politely). I think death (which is also infinite) to be sufficient punishment for the poor Buddhist mentioned above. Yes, I said that I would rather go to hell than worship a God that would create it. I also say that the only people worthy of hell are those that preach it. I think there's something deeply disturbing about a philosophy that promotes as acceptable the eternal torture of people who don’t accept their message.
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Christ Alone
I find your statement that, “Since God is holy and infinite, and sins committed against him require the full magnitude of divine punishment, this requires that punishment be infinite” to be absurd in the extreme (and that’s putting it politely) .
Yes, but that avoids the point. Does the Bible teach it? Luke 16 is very clear and you have to try and twist it into some sort of alegory in order to get past it's clearness. If you don't want to believe in the Bible, that is fine. But DOES the Bible teach Hell?
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Ultimate Axiom
But DOES the Bible teach Hell?
I think, as Heaven has already said, the answer is Yes and No! There are plenty of scriptures referring to the soul as being mortal, and plenty that speak of Hell. It’s what makes Christianity so fragmented. If you accept the Bible as the infallible, non-contradictory, inspired word of God then you have to accept position A and interpreted all the scriptures that disagree with it, or accept position B and interpret all the scriptures that disagree with that. And with dozens of combinations at your disposal, you have the potential for hundreds of denominations all sincerely believing that their position is the right one. The only real problem comes when one of them claims that they are the only true one and all the rest are controlled by Satan. But surely, no one would ever fall for that nonsense would they?
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Christ Alone
The problem is that while people claim that the Bible hopelessly contradicts itself, there is a clear answer to each one of these supposed contradictions. Most that I have talked to have heard of the contradiction and then said "Yup, it's a contradiction", without hermeneutically researching what the supposed contradicting texts actually say in context. They didn't research who the listeners were, what the context was, what language was used, and they didn't interpret the OT in the light of the NT.
This thread isn't the place to go through these "contradictions", however.
But when someone has a solid understanding of hermeneutics, these contradictions disappear. But yet the ones that want to hold on and say, "You can't believe anything about the Bible because it contradicts itself", don't know what the answer is to the supposed contradiction. I haven't found any "contradiction" that I did not feel had a valid answer to it.