Sea Breeze, that is a great post you made. It does show that according to the Bible's NT the literal bodily death of a sinning human does not atone for sins (or pay for sins or acquit one of sins). Furthermore at least some portions of the Bible's OT written after Jews began believing in a resurrection from the dead also teach that. For example, even Daniel 12:1 - 2 (which teaches the doctrine of the resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous) indicates, according to the Bible, death by a sinner does not pay for the sins of the sinner. I say that because verse 2 (NWT, 1950 and 1984) says the unrighteous that are resurrected are subject to "... reproaches [and] to indefinitely lasting abhorrence." In harmony with my idea regarding Daniel 12: 1- 2, the study note (commentary) in the NASB edition of the "Life Application Study Bible" - "Updated Edition" (2000) says regarding Dan. 12:2 that "This is a clear reference to the resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked, although the eternal fates of each will be quit different. ..." The NWT rendering of “acquitted” in Romans 6:7 seems incorrect to me. Thanks for drawing attention to that matter.
You make a good point about what defines whether a person is really a Christian or not. Since the vast majority of the JWs don't believe they have a new covenant relationship with Jesus Christ and since the JW/WT religion teaches that only a literal 144,000 of Christians (with dead ones included in that number) are in the new covenant relationship, then it can be logically argued that JWs are not really Christians. All the time I was a believing JW I thought I was a Christian, but maybe I was wrong to think I was a Christian back then. But, for three years after I completely stopped thinking of myself as a JW, I thought of myself as an independent minded Christian. During those 3 years I conducted my own Lord's Evening Meal (Memorial) service privately by myself. In that service I partook of Jewish passover bread and unfermented homemade red grape juice. [Note: the Bible doesn't specifically say Jesus used wine, it says he used the "fruit of the vine" instead (for example see Mark 14:24 in the NASB), and because I don't want to consume alcohol I have very rarely ever drank an alcoholic beverage.] I partook because I had come believe that according to the Bible all devout Christians are to obey Jesus in partaking of the bread and "fruit of the vine". I made my homemade grape juice by squeezing the juice out of fresh grapes.
However, even as an independent Christian I accepted much of the liberal higher criticism of the Bible and I saw many problems with the Bible (including numerous contradictions); and shortly after an atheist ex-Christian informed me that the geological fossil record conflicts with Genesis chapter one's creation account (even as interpreted by day age old Earth creationism) and with the biblical idea of a world wide flood, I ceased being a Christian and became a nontheist and metaphysical naturalist. A year after that I became an outright atheist (being convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that not even a deistic god exists, due to learning what scientist Steven Hawking said proves no god existed to start the big bang - or at least that none was needed to start the big bang).
Bobcat, you are right in saying the NWT Bibles from before the 2013 Revision include brackets (except that
the "2006 Printing" edition also excludes all single brackets, but
includes some doubled brackets) in some verses. That is also the case regarding the handling of the word "his" in Romans 6:7, except the original NWT (the one in the individual "Christian
Greek Scriptures" volume from 1950) and also in the volume revised in 1951) of Romans 6:7 has no brackets around the word "his".
