• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

New one from the JWs

Piscivore

Smelling fishy
Piscivore
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
27,388
Location
Home is wherever I'm with you
Had a couple of nice JW ladies come by the house Saturday morning. Had a pleasant chat with them, in the course of which they mentioned something I hadn't heard before- one of them said that "souls" as discrete entities don't exist, what gets resurrected is our bodies as they are stored in God's memory.

Has anyone heard this one before?
 
No, but why does it matter? They're just making it up, as with all the rest of the formal theories that abound. There's nothing to keep tomorrow's idiots from inventing something different from today's.
 
DallasDad said:
No, but why does it matter?
Click to expand...
Curiosity. I like to adress what people actually believe, and this was a new one. I'm wondering if this is her own interpretaion or something that the JWs as an organisation are moving to.

Seems to me abandoning belief in a soul is a big change in a nominally Christian religion.
 
Were these regular Jehovah's Witnesses, or Jehovah's Witnesses from The Matrix? Bodies stored in God's memory...well, those movies might have been better if they'd done it that way.

A corrupted file error totally explains everything about Keanu Reeves, though.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Were these regular Jehovah's Witnesses, or Jehovah's Witnesses from The Matrix? Bodies stored in God's memory...well, those movies might have been better if they'd done it that way.

A corrupted file error totally explains everything about Keanu Reeves, though.
Click to expand...

She didn't look anything like Trinity, no one was wearing leather, and it was a bright, not-at-all-dark-and-wet-and-green-for-some-reason, sunny and warm day. If anything, she kinda looked like Mrs. Garrett.
 
The JW belief (and this is not new) is that the soul is not a separate and distinct entity from the body (immortal or otherwise), but that the soul basically IS the person. Snippet from here http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/appendix_07.htm
First, consider the soul. You may remember that the Bible was originally written mainly in Hebrew and Greek. When writing about the soul, the Bible writers used the Hebrew word ne′phesh or the Greek word psy·khe′. These two words occur well over 800 times in the Scriptures, and the New World Translation consistently renders them “soul.” When you examine the way “soul” or “souls” is used in the Bible, it becomes evident that this word basically refers to (1) people, (2) animals, or (3) the life that a person or an animal enjoys.
Click to expand...



As far as resurrection goes, it's that God's memory of us is perfect, down to every last detail, so that he can resurrect us as physical beings in the exact state we were before death. A snippet from here http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/article_07.htm
Is it unrealistic to accept the resurrection as a fact? No, for Jesus taught that someday “all those in the memorial tombs” will be resurrected. (John 5:28) Jehovah is the Creator of all life. Should it be hard to believe that he can re-create life? Of course, much would depend on Jehovah’s memory. Can he remember our dead loved ones? Countless trillions of stars fill the universe, yet God gives the name of each one! (Isaiah 40:26) So Jehovah God can remember our dead loved ones in every detail, and he is ready to restore them to life.
Click to expand...
 
Its one of their standard teachings
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the souls as well as the bodies of all men perish at death and will never rise again except for the members of Jehovah's Witnesses, who will be recreated from God's memory at the end of the world, when the 144,000 "anointed" Jehovah's Witnesses will enter the Heavenly Kingdom, while the remaining millions of Jehovah's Witnesses will begin to live forever body and soul in an earthly paradise (Nevins 39-40).
Click to expand...
so they were specifically talking about themselves (more specifically the lucky 144,000) and not those theyre trying to convert, which is why you probably never heard it before. Not much of a sales pitch "join us and you will become second class saved"
;)
 
Last edited:
I've read something similar in a JW brochure. As I recall, there was an article on the specific subject, giving biblical verses in support. Alas, I threw away the brochure.
 
linky
J.W.'s believe: That the life pattern (LP), or record of a person's life (also
the "personality") is recorded (duplicated) by God during the life of the person.
At the time of death, this LP is "retained" in God's memory. At the time of
resurrection, the LP is "reactivated" and put into a newly created body.
Click to expand...

But enough of that. So how does Mrs. Garret look like in skin tight leather?
 
Marduk said:
Its one of their standard teachings
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the souls as well as the bodies of all men perish at death and will never rise again except for the members of Jehovah's Witnesses, who will be recreated from God's memory at the end of the world, when the 144,000 "anointed" Jehovah's Witnesses will enter the Heavenly Kingdom, while the remaining millions of Jehovah's Witnesses will begin to live forever body and soul in an earthly paradise (Nevins 39-40).
Click to expand...
so they were specifically talking about themselves (more specifically the lucky 144,000) and not those theyre trying to convert, which is why you probably never heard it before. Not much of a sales pitch "join us and you will become second class saved"
;)
Click to expand...


Your quoted information is not entirely accurate.
From http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/article_07.htm
Who will be resurrected? Jesus said that “all those in the memorial tombs will hear his [Jesus’] voice and come out.” (John 5:28, 29) Similarly, Revelation 20:13 says: “The sea gave up those dead in it, and death and Hades gave up those dead in them.” “Hades” refers to the common grave of mankind. (See the Appendix.) This collective grave will be emptied. All those billions who rest there will live again. The apostle Paul said: “There is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Acts 24:15) What does that mean?

“The righteous” include many of the people we read about in the Bible who lived before Jesus came to the earth. You might think of Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Ruth, Esther, and many others. Some of these men and women of faith are discussed in the 11th chapter of Hebrews. But “the righteous” also include Jehovah’s servants who die in our time. Thanks to the resurrection hope, we may be freed from any dread of dying.—Hebrews 2:15.

What about all the people who did not serve or obey Jehovah because they never knew about him? These billions of “unrighteous” ones will not be forgotten. They too will be resurrected and given time to learn about the true God and to serve him. During a period of a thousand years, the dead will be resurrected and given an opportunity to join faithful humans on earth in serving Jehovah. It will be a wonderful time. This period is what the Bible refers to as Judgment Day.
Click to expand...
 
Piscivore said:
Had a couple of nice JW ladies come by the house Saturday morning. Had a pleasant chat with them, in the course of which they mentioned something I hadn't heard before- one of them said that "souls" as discrete entities don't exist, what gets resurrected is our bodies as they are stored in God's memory.

Has anyone heard this one before?
Click to expand...

Yes. This has been JW doctrine since the 19th Century.
According to JWs and SDAs (Seventh-Day Adventists) we don't have souls but are souls.
The dead do not return to conscious existance till the resurection.

Well. I guess you leartned something in exchange for letting them in your house. I don't even like them ambushing me at bus stops.
 
Apathia said:
Yes. This has been JW doctrine since the 19th Century.
According to JWs and SDAs (Seventh-Day Adventists) we don't have souls but are souls.
The dead do not return to conscious existance till the resurection.

Well. I guess you leartned something in exchange for letting them in your house. I don't even like them ambushing me at bus stops.
Click to expand...

I didn't let them in, we spoke on the porch. But like I said, they were nice. The one I was speaking to (the other one was real quiet) was pretty sharp, even though we disagreed.
 
I never got that far with the ones that stopped by my house. I was always willing to chat, but for some reason they only came loaded for converting Christians and started in on their varying interpretation of verses saying what god wants.

They might have gone further, but when I told them that they were ahead of themselves and that they had to convince me that God exists and the bible comes with his stamp of approval before we could start talking interpretation, they just went back to their original point and started over. This happened three separate times.
 
Yep, it's been a long time but that's pretty much what I recall being taught as a child in the 60's. Much emphasis is placed on a biblical verse that the dead are conscious of nothing, so they don't believe in an afterlife. Back then of course the world was supposed to end in 1975, but I learned that if we died before that happened, we would be resurrected, having been somehow stored in God's memory, and live for ever on a perfect earth that was frequently illustrated on the cover of the Watchtower magazine.
 
If I remember right the idea is that the earth will be restored to a pre-flood paradise with the water canopy restored so that the entire planet is returned to a perfect edenic climate over its entire surface. All those that qualify will live on this perfect earth forever, thus fulfilling it's original purpose. It's important for them to have the no eternal soul belief because what would be the point of all that if people had an immortal soul that was going to heaven? Those 144,000 people who do go to heaven will presumably go through some kind of conversion process to change them from puny humans to heavenly rulers, but that's a special case.

Marduk can probably tell you more about the ancient Hebrew world view that this is based on. Something like a flat disc earth with a metal bowl over it with a water canopy above (and below)?

Worried JW astronomers don't need to fret that they'll be spending eternity looking up at a solid cloud sky though. The stars, sun and moon are all stuck to the inside of the metal bowl, so they'll still be visible!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom