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Does
Annihilation and resurrection make sense?
According to the Watchtower Bible and
Tract Society, when you die, you cease to exist: Let God be True,
p. 59, 60, 67. On Judgment Day, only faithful Jehovah's
Witnesses will be resurrected to life eternal on Paradise Earth.
The rest of all mankind will be annihilated, wiped out, made to not
exist with no eternal punishment in a fiery hell.
There is a logical problem with this
view. If a Jehovah's Witnesses believes that he ceases to exist
when he dies and that he will be
resurrected at the Judgment Day, then is he really being
resurrected? In other words, if he was alive and then has ceased to
exist, he is in the same state he was before he was created.
That is, he isn't. He has no existence. He is gone.
The only remnant of this person would be in the memory of God (not
counting family and friends, etc.). Only God would know if this
Jehovah's Witness was good enough for Paradise Earth. If he was,
then the reward would be a new creation of someone in the exact
image of the Jehovah's Witness who previously lived and did all the
works mandated by the Watchtower Organization. But, it wouldn't
be the exact same person, because that person ceased to exist and
there is no continuity, no continuance of the person since he has
ceased to be.
Therefore, on Judgment day, how can he be resurrected?
That is, how is he, as the same person, resurrected when he doesn't
exist anymore? Is he the exact same person or has God make an
exact copy of the person upon which to shower the blessings of
Paradise Earth?
It would seem that simple logic would
contradict the idea of existence, non-existence, and then existence
all being the same person. It also contradicts scripture which
says,
- "We are of good courage, I
say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at
home with the Lord," (2 Cor. 5:8).
-
"I know a man in Christ who
fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of
the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught up to
the third heaven," (2 Cor. 12:2).
The Bible
teaches us that we have an existence away from out bodies once we
die. The Jehovah's Witnesses are incorrect. We continue on
after death.
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