When God breathed life into Adam, Adam became a living soul. Moments before he had been only a concept...an idea; a lump of clay if you’re a literalist. Now he was a complex living and breathing being. A son of God. At least that’s how the Jehovah’s Witnesses see it.
In school, one of my courses was Christian eschatology in light of newly discovered papyri. We covered the whole soul sleeping doctrine as taught by William Miller, Ellen G. White and Charles T. Russell. Far from being an ancient Greek heresy, as the Adventists claim, there was a solid belief amongst ancient Hebrew and Christian leaders that man not only had an immortal soul, but many early Jewish and Christian writers believed that man’s immortality goes in both directions, into the present and future, but also into the past. One scholar writes:
Christ's premortal existence, however different Christians interpret this concept, is well attested in the New Testament.8 The concept of individual premortal existence of humans is not clearly attested in texts in the biblical tradition until the last few centuries BC on into the early Christian centuries. Examples found in some early Jewish and Christian documents include:
As a child I was naturally gifted, and a good soul fell to my lot; or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body. (Wisdom of Solomon 8:19–20)9
But he [God] did design and devise me [Moses], who (was) prepared from the beginning of the world, to be the mediator of his covenant. (Testament of Moses 1:14)10
Enoch was instructed that "all the souls are prepared for eternity, before the composition of the earth." (2 Enoch 23:5; see further 1 Enoch 48:2–3)11
Such attestations of this concept in early Jewish and Christian texts are regularly cited as dependent on Greek influence, especially Platonic thought. For example, "the Platonic view of the soul as pre-existent seems to be reflected here [in Wisdom of Solomon 8:19–20], but unlike Plato's view, there is union with an undefiled body."12
8. See ... Douglas McCready, He Came Down from Heaven: The Preexistence of Christ and the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005).
9. NRSV Apocrypha, as found in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy (New York: Oxford, 1994), AP 68.
10. As found in James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1983, 1985), 1:927; hereafter abbreviated OTP.
11. As found in OTP, 1:140.
12. Note on Wisdom of Solomon 8:19–20, in New Annotated Oxford Bible, AP 68, emphasis in the original.
If other Christians are correct in their scriptural exegeses, and if you’re a Jehovah’s Witness, what would your reaction be to die and suddenly find that you were still alive and conscious? What do you think most Jehovah’s Witnesses would do? In the stories I’ve read, a person dies, then finds themselves in Paradise (if righteous), feeling intense peace and well being. They also frequently see their own bodies, either on the floor or in a bed or stretcher.
So if this happened, how do you think most Jehovah’s Witnesses would react, seeing that this, one of their premier doctrines, was false? How would you react? Would most Jehovah’s Witnesses despair or would they continue to maintain their beliefs in the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society?
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