They trash the King James Version? Do they even have any scholars who are capable of judging a translation? The NWT is a laughing stock in biblical translations and is never included in any collection of Bible translations.
The problem for the Society is that it has to translate the Bible in a certain way to fortify some of their problem doctrines, like the soul sleeping doctrine. And to the malefactor on the cross, they move the comma in the translation to have the Lord say, “I’m telling you today, you’re gonna be with me in Paradise.” Well, in the ancient church, Paradise was, in the words of Origen, “a place of learning or school of the spirits” in which everything they did on Earth would be made clear to them. It wasn’t a destination, but a place in which spirits prepared themselves for the resurrection. And Origen, while he wasn’t in the first century church, he, Clement and other early fathers knew a great deal more about the ancient church than we do. The Pastor of Hermas is not part of our canonized scripture, but it was a very popular Christian work that certainly didn’t support the soul sleeping interpretation. As we’ve discussed on this board, if you really cease to exist at death, then any recreation God would bring about in the new world would be just that, a recreation. It would be an exact copy of what you were and are, but it wouldn’t necessarily be YOU. The copy would have all your thoughts and memories, but it would still be a recreation. As far as the here and now you is concerned, you’ll be completely disintegrated at death. You will be no more. When, and if, Jehovah sees fit, he will resurrect you by recreating you. And that re-creation will be a You 2.0. That means you can apostatize, live for the moment and throw caution to the wind, and you don’t have to worry about it. It’ll be your re-creation that will be destroyed. You’ll be long gone.
But if you’re an intelligence...a spirit...you’ll pass from your body, go to either Paradise or Hell, and then come forth in the resurrection. There is no destruction or eternal torture. There is remediation and, through Christ, a redemption. There will be eternal ramifications to what you do in life, but your existence is dependent upon your continuity.
Once a doctrine like soul sleeping is adopted, the way scriptures are translated depends on your exegeses. Thus, when Paul said he wanted to “depart” and be with Christ, but to “remain in the flesh” is more needful to the church, you have to do some real juggling to save your doctrine.
