From the fourth chapter of the book Las sectas frente a la Biblia  

(What the author in his book has written in the form of footnote, in this digital edition it is between [ ])

NOTE ON THE VERSIONS OF THE SACRED TEXT: Throughout the work I have preferably used my own direct translation from Greek for the New Testament, and from Hebrew and Aramaic for the Old. In the first case I have used the Greek-English New Testament, by Nestlé-Aland, Editio XXVI, Stuttgart 1981, and in the second the Bible Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Editio Minor, Stuttgart 1984. I also quote from the prestigious versions of the Bible common in the Spanish-speaking world and from the sects’ own editions. The following acronyms are those used in relation to the various translations of the Bible: NWT: New World Translation, or Bible of Jehovah’s Witnesses; EP: The Holy Bible, from Ediciones Paulinas; JB: Jerusalem Bible; NC: Colunga Nacre; GNB: Good News Bible / Versión Popular; MV: Modern Version; NBE: Nueva Biblia Española; RV: Reina-Valera. When no reference is indicated, the translation is mine.

Not long ago I attended the screening of a highly suggestive film, which was titled Jesus of Montreal. The film, debatable, but undoubtedly one of the greatest produced in the eighties, told the story of a small group of actors who write a “way of the cross” (somewhat unorthodox, by the way) and perform it in the enclosure of a Catholic sanctuary. Progressively, they come to see how contact with the person of Jesus changes their lives. Now, amid the concerns of those men and women, the question of death arises as something innate to the human being; and, in the face of it, the hope Jesus gives that not everything ends with death.

In a good number of cases, that intuition engraved within man (who carries in his heart the longing for eternity according to the author of Qo 3,1 l) [“Longing for infinity” has translated, very accurately in our opinion, the Pauline Editions Bible. The Hebrew expression olam (eternity) has, however, been translated in the New World Translation by “indefinite time”.] appears linked to the certainty that not only does our life continue after physical death, but that there is also a remuneration for good and evil, a consequence of divine judgment. Perhaps one of the paradigmatic examples of how to reach this conclusion is found in the philosophy of Kant, which, in its Critique of practical reason It formulated the imperative need for the soul to be immortal and for a retributive judgment to occur after this life.

Well, this accumulation of ancient desires and certainties that appear, we dare say, in the collective unconscious of the people, is stubbornly denied by the sects. In them there is absolute stubbornness in denying the possibility of a punishment for evil, either because it is stated that such does not exist (Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses), or because it is eternally deferred (case of the sects that teach reincarnation). In the case of Adventists and Witnesses, the idea of ​​a judgment of the wicked is also rejected. [As I have already pointed out previously, Jehovah’s Witnesses (however much they may dislike it) are not at all original in their approaches, since they limit themselves to directly copying the theology of the Adventists on the subject (cf. CÉSAR VIDAL MANZANARES, The hell of the sects, pp. 65ss; J. VAN BAALEN, The chaos of the sects, p. 239, y E. C. GRUSS, Apostles of denial, p. 55). The same could be said of the Worldwide Church of God, the creation of the recently deceased “prophet” Herbert Armstrong.]

We will try, therefore, to first show what the cited sects teach about life after death, and then what the Bible really indicates about it.

  1. The arguments of the sects for denying survival after death, as well as the existence of hell

The sects say: “The Bible teaches that with death everything ends, since the soul is mortal”; The teaching of Adventists and Witnesses insists that the soul is mortal and that no consciousness occurs after death. Let us examine, then, the alleged arguments in this regard.

– Ezekiel 18,4: “Look. All souls… belong to me. As the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son… belong to me. The soul that sins… will itself die” (NWT).

From this text (endowed, by the way, with horrifying syntax in the version of the witnesses) the sects deduce that the soul is mortal and, therefore, that everything ends with physical death. Such thesis is based on considerable biblical ignorance.

The sectarians have not been able to distinguish (as the Bible does) between spiritual death and bodily death. Death fundamentally implies the idea of ​​separation in the Bible. Bodily death is nothing but the separation between the body and the soul. Repeated passages in the Bible refer to a conception that indicates that death is marked by the departure of the soul from within the body (cf Gen 35:18).

The idea of ​​spiritual death or death of the soul comes from the same concept of separation. When speaking of a dead soul, reference is made in the Bible to the separation that sin operates between it and God, but it does not imply at all that the soul is mortal or that at the moment of death the human being as such ceases to exist. It is true that sin means the death of the soul; but this is a symbolic term that indicates neither unconsciousness nor real mortality. A clear example that this is so is found, for example, in Eph 2:1, where we read: “Moreover, God gave life to you, although you were dead in your trespasses and sins” (NWT).

Any Adventist or witness knows that Paul speaks in this passage about death in a spiritual and, therefore, symbolic sense. He is not saying that those sinful people were literally and physically dead, without feeling or suffering. No. What Paul is saying is that their sins had caused them a spiritual death, a separation from God, an alienation from the creator, although, there is no doubt, they had continued to live and feel in the midst of that spiritual death, since they later heard the apostle’s preaching and accepted it as a message of salvation.

In the same sense, Saint 5:20 (another of the texts preferred by these sects) says that he who makes a sinner repent saves his soul from death. The exegesis is simple: he who makes a sinner return from his sinful state is saving him from a state of death of the soul; not because he does not feel or suffer, but because until then there has been an absolute separation between him and God.

The meaning of the texts that speak of “death of the soul” is so palpable that we are sure that if it were not for the blinders that the sect places on its followers, they would see it with all its clarity. And the Bible teaches it with crystal clear transparency. Let us go, for example, to Revelation (Revelation in the crudely Anglo-Saxon name of the witnesses) 6,9-11: “And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and because of the work of testimony that they used to have. And they cried out with a loud voice, and said: How long, holy and true sovereign Lord, do you refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth? And each of them was given a long white garment; and they were told to rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow slaves and their brothers, who were about to be killed as they had also been, was completed.

It does not seem that the text offers the slightest doubt about what happens to the souls of the dead (just in this case). Not only have they not died and have stopped feeling, but they also cry out to God, they can wait (can we imagine waiting for something or someone who lacks life?) and they speak complete sentences. For being dead, these souls seem very incoherent… unless the doctrines of Witnesses and Adventists on the matter are erroneous.

-Qohélet 9,5: It says like this in the New World Translation: “For the living are aware that they will die; but as for the dead, they are not aware of anything at all, nor do they have any more salary, because the memory of them has been forgotten.”

According to the very peculiar exegesis of Adventists and Witnesses, here we are taught that the dead are unconscious, from which it follows that there is no life after death. Before going on to answer that objection, I would like to make some clarifications. First of all, we must take into account the context provided by the book of Qohélet. In this, until reaching chapter 12, the author reproduces what the carnal man sees “under the sun”; from tiles down, what would we say. It is only intended to echo what one would think if one did not consider what is “above the sun.” Taking this into account, it explains the tone of a certain carefree Epicureanism and an undeniable bitterness that some of his expressions exude. Therefore, trying to base a doctrine on isolated phrases from Qohélet is bad theology and worse exegesis. Notwithstanding the above, it must be noted that the passage from Qo 9,5 does not teach that the dead are unconscious, but rather that they ignore some circumstances. The Hebrew expression that the NWT translates as “they are not aware of anything at all” is “‘ynm yodtsym m’umh“, literally translated: “they know nothing.” Now, not knowing, ignoring, is not the same (as Adventists and Witnesses claim) as being unconscious, without feeling or suffering. Millions of people on this planet ignore or do not know, but they live, suffer and feel.

The dead are generally forgotten over time and no longer receive anything from the living, and they are also generally unaware of what happens “under the sun”; but it does not follow from that that they do not feel. Trying to give that content to the text implies an unjustifiable interpretative bias in an impartial and honest reader of the sacred text. We will examine this question more carefully in the next section of this chapter.

– Psalm 146,4: It says like this in the NWT: “His spirit goes out, he returns to his soil; on that day his thoughts truly perish.” The exegesis of Witnesses and Adventists interprets the passage as a clear reference to the fact that after death the human being stops thinking and, therefore, remains unconscious, annihilated. But the text is not talking about mental or psychological activity at all. The Hebrew word translated here as “thoughts” is ‘stnio, that is, “their plans” [Thus, to cite just a few examples, the Latin American version translates “plans”, the Ediciones Paulinas version translates “plans” and the Jerusalem Bible “plans”.]. What the psalmist is saying is not that man is undone at death (as the doctrine of Adventists and Witnesses teaches), but that we should not trust in powerful men (v. 3); and this for a very simple reason: they die, and all the plans they had disappear with them (v. 4). Our hope, on the contrary, must rest in God (v. 5ff). We are very afraid that Adventists and Witnesses, who have put their trust in powerful human beings who taught them that there was nothing after death, may be surprised; and it is no wonder if we consider that his point of view is based on a lack of knowledge of what the death of the soul means in the Bible and on a couple of out of context passages.

As we have had the opportunity to see, and we will continue to contemplate in the following pages, the Bible teaches that human beings continue to live after death and that they face a judgment for what their life has been like.

The sects say: “The Bible teaches that hell is a place of unconsciousness and destruction.”

The next point that Witness and Adventist theology seeks to demonstrate is that hell is not a biblical teaching. The Spanish word “hell” (as they claim) translates the Hebrew Sheol in the Old Testament and its equivalent Hades of the New Testament, as well as the expression Gehenna. According to both sects, neither of these terms means either a place where one has consciousness after death, much less a place where one receives punishment. Sheol and Hades would then be equivalent to “sepulchre”, and Gehenna to a burner or garbage dump located on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which would symbolize, therefore, the eternal destruction of the wicked, but not a place of punishment or torment. Given the bitterness with which the adherents of both sects defend such interpretations, presumably based on Hebrew and Greek, the layman may think that they may be right. The saddest thing is that they are only repeating the nonsense that their leaders have taught them and that they have swallowed without the slightest critical judgment.

First of all, it must be made clear that neither Sheol neither Hades They mean sepulcher or tomb, as these sects claim. Hebrew has a specific word for grave, which is qbr, and as such it is used in the Old Testament; v.g.: Gen 23,4. As for Greek, it also has a very specific expression to say tomb, which is mnemeion; v.g., Lk 24,2. In this way one of the first presuppositions of both sects is revealed to be false from top to bottom.

Secondly, it must be noted that the Bible does not indicate that both in the Sheol as in its Greek equivalent Hades there is absence of consciousness. In the Old Testament, on the contrary, there are various examples of the beings that populate it acting, understanding and speaking. Let us cite some of these cases, which will be more eloquent than my explanations:

“Even the Sheol below has stirred because of you in order to come to your arrival. Because of you he has awakened those who are powerless in death, all the goat-like leaders of the earth. He has caused all the kings of the nations to rise from their thrones. They all express themselves and say: Have you also become weak like us? Has it been made comparable to us?” (Is 14,910) (NWT).

The passage could not be more obvious. The king of Babylon descends to Sheol (which, as can be seen, is not the tomb); and that provokes a lively reaction among the people, especially the leaders, who had arrived previously. And not only that, but they also shout and question the king of Babylon. Of course, it is still a curious behavior for subjects who, if they accept the thesis of Adventists and Witnesses, are not conscious, nor do they suffer or suffer. The prophet Isaiah, as we can see in his book, supports a thesis diametrically opposed to that of these sects.

Let’s look at one more example: “The men of note of the powerful will speak even to him, with his assistants, from the middle of the Sheol” (Ez 32,21).

The passage (translated from English into terrible Spanish) once again expresses a thesis similar to that of Isaiah. In this case, the descent to Sheol of the pharaoh of Egypt. Well, the prophet indicates without a doubt that when the Egyptian monarch descends to it, from the middle of the Sheol Voices will be raised to speak to him and his helpers. But how can anyone speak if they neither feel nor suffer, according to Jehovist and Adventist doctrines? And how do they speak if the souls of Pharaoh and his assistants, if Jehovist and Adventist theology were true, could not hear, because they are mortal and are not conscious? The text leaves no room for doubt: once again a prophet of God holds a doctrine contrary to the “prophets”, Ellen White and Russell. The dead are conscious in one place and from within they address each other.

And both sects do not know what the Sheol in the Old Testament. That is not, as we have had occasion to see, a place where one is unconscious, nor is it the tomb, but rather a way of designating the state after physical death, but without implying unconsciousness at all.

That is why it is not surprising that Jacob or Job in moments of tremendous desperation longed to go to the Sheol or, in vulgar language, they would like to die and escape the sadness of this world. They did not expect to cease to exist (that was little consolation), but rather to move to a different plane in which they would no longer suffer the sufferings of this world, but in which everything would not be unconsciousness either.

Now let’s move on to the meaning of the term Gehenna. Witnesses and Adventists argue that it is only a symbol of destruction, which was torn from a garbage dump located on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Is this true? It is true that the name Gehenna either gehinnon It derives from the Valley of Hinnom, which was a garbage dump long before the time of Jesus, but it does not symbolize a place of annihilation. Quite the opposite. The meaning that the Jews have always given it has been that of a place of conscious punishment for the wicked [For a broader study of the thought of Jewish rabbinism on the Gehenna and its meaning of conscious punishment of the wicked after this life, cf A. COHEN, Everyman’s Talmud, New York 1975, pp. 376ff; A. EDERSHEIM, The life and times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. II, Grand Rapids 1976, 79ff.].

The idea of Gehenna (called gehinnon or Valley of Hinnon in some of the Jewish sources) as a place of conscious torment comes largely from the Jewish rabbis before and contemporaries of Jesus, from the study of the text of Dan 12:2, where it is said: “And there will be many of those who are asleep on the ground of dust who will awaken, these to life of indefinite duration and those to reproaches (and) to hatred of indefinite duration” (NWT). The destiny of humanity is clear: for some it is eternal life and for others eternal disgrace.

So in Eccles. R. III, 9 the rabbis taught: “In the hereafter the wicked will be sentenced to Gehenna and will murmur against the Holy One, blessed be He, saying: ‘We sought your salvation and this misfortune has befallen us.’ But he answers them ‘When you were on earth, did you not fight and fight and commit all kinds of evil?'”

The rabbinic text is eloquent: the wicked are destined for Gehenna either gehinnon; and this is a place of conscious punishment, and not a place of total annihilation, as Jehovists and Adventists claim.

No less clear is a work attributed to the Jewish historian Flavius ​​Josephus, almost a contemporary of the apostles, entitled Speech to the Greeks about Hades. In it Josephus tries to explain to non-Jews what the people of Israel understood by Hades and by Gehenna, and it says like this:

“Hades is a place where the souls of the just and the unjust are held… In this region there is a certain place apart, like a lake of unquenchable fire… The unjust and those who have been disobedient to God and have honored idols, as have been the vain inventions of men, will be sent by the judgment of God to this eternal punishment” [We have translated from the Greek text published in Josephus, Complete Works, Grand Rapids 1978.]5.

Of course it is clear that when Josephus showed the non-Jews what his coreligionists thought about the Hades and the existence of the afterlife, did not even remotely refer to anything that resembled the doctrines of Adventists or witnesses.

The first thing one should do when studying a culture is to learn what the different terms mean in the language spoken by it. If the Jehovist and Adventist “prophets” had been more honest and prudent, they would have consulted Jewish, biblical and extra-biblical sources to know what they understood by terms such as Sheol and Gehenna. Thus they would have avoided the formulation of nonsense such as teaching that the Sheol is the grave, that Gehenna is destruction and that there is no consciousness (much less conscious punishment) after death. And they would have been saved, because the sources we have are clear on the matter.

But, as if this were not enough, the New Testament clearly teaches the doctrine of eternal punishment. You may like it or not, it may be more or less attractive; but what cannot be denied is that Jesus and the apostles taught it. Briefly let’s get closer to it.

Jesus taught about a punishment for the wicked, in which there would be darkness, weeping, and gnashing of teeth. Let’s look at an example: “The children of the kingdom will be cast into the darkness outside. That is where their crying and gnashing of teeth will be” (Mt 8:12) (NWT). “And they will throw them into the fiery furnace. That is where (their) crying will be and the gnashing of (their) teeth” (Mt 13:42) (NWT). “And he will punish him with the greatest severity and assign him his part with the hypocrites. That is where (his) weeping and the gnashing of (his) teeth will be” (Mt 24,51) (NWT). Other similar texts: Mt 25,30 and Lk 13,28.

Contrary to what Witnesses and Adventists may think, punishment is not a state of unconsciousness. It is crying and gnashing of teeth. We greatly fear that, unless these actions can be carried out by an insensitive and unconscious being, the doctrine of these sects is not the same as that taught by Jesus.

Jesus symbolized this punishment of the unjust through fire: “It is better to enter life maimed and lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire” (Mt 18:8) (NWT). “It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where its cresa does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mk 9,47-48) (NWT) “…the rich man died and was buried. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, while he existed in torment, and saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in (the position of the) bosom with him. So he called and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in anguish in this flaming fire” (Lk 16, 2lb-24) (NWT). Other similar texts in Mt 3,12; 5,29-30, and Mc 9,43.

I would like to dwell a little more on this last passage. Although we admit that there may exist in it a certain hyperbolic colorism typical of the Semitic environment of Jesus, the truth is that it teaches that after death human beings are separated into saved and condemned, and while the former receive a reward, the latter see their just punishment fall upon them. Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses argue that the passage is a parable, and therefore what it says cannot be taken as a sample of Jesus’ thinking on the subject. Such a statement, apart from being totally gratuitous, only denotes an absolute ignorance of what a parable is. This one, which in Hebrew is called mashal, is an absolutely credible story taken from everyday life, with an additional didactic meaning. Thus, in the parable of the sower we are not told that the sower threw wheat seed and melons grew, but rather we are told a real fact: there is seed that is lost and another that bears fruit. In the parable of the net we are not told that they collected dragons from the sea, but rather fish, which were then logically separated. There is not a single parable of Jesus that does not relate logical, natural and plausibly real facts; and it is difficult to believe that the story of the rich man and Lazarus would be an exception simply because it pleases Adventists and Witnesses.

This parable (which, of course, also has a deeper meaning) tells something that, as we have seen, every Jew contemporary with Jesus knew: that God judges after death; that while some are saved, others are condemned, and that this condemnation implies torment and anguish.

But in addition, the parable was so clear in its teaching (contrary to the confusion of Adventists and Witnesses), that Jesus’ disciples did not have to ask him about its meaning, as happened in other cases. Would they not have done so if they had seen that Jesus not only gave them a strange teaching but also did so by contradicting the biblical ideas about hell and survival after death, as Adventists and Witnesses claim? Undoubtedly yes; Only for the disciples, as for those who heard him, what would have been unbiblical was not Jesus’ teaching on afterlife punishment, but one similar to that of Jehovists and Adventists.

Jesus taught that the punishment of the wicked was eternal. This has already been noted in some of the texts we have seen, but we are going to observe it in one more. It is Mt 25:46: “And these will go to eternal punishment and the righteous to eternal life.”

The text could not be clearer: in the judgment in which every human being will face before God there will be two classes of people: the just, who will have eternal life, and the unjust, who will also have eternal punishment. The text is so revealing that the leaders of the Watchtower have not had the slightest qualms about falsifying it in the following way: “And these will depart to eternal cutting” (NWT).

Now the word that is translated “punishment” or “torment” in all versions is the Greek term kolasis, which only appears again in the New Testament in 1Jn 4:18, and which cannot be translated by “cutting” under any circumstances (as, in fact, the witnesses do not do in the latter case). Its verbal form (koladso) appears in Heb 4:21 and 2Pe 2:9. Curiously, in the first case the Watchtower correctly translates it as “punish” (translating that the high priests threatened the apostles with “cutting them off” would have been excessive even for the Watchtower), but in the second it repeats the nonsense of “cutting”. The idea, however, is clear in the Greek language of the original, as revealed in Heb 4:21. The word means “punishment”, and we have already seen that “eternal punishment” is linked to ideas such as fire, anguish, crying, gnashing of teeth, etc.

Jesus taught that there were varying degrees of punishment. If the thesis of Adventists and Witnesses were true, it would not be expected that anyone would receive a greater punishment than another. Ultimately, all the unjust would receive a similar destruction. But since the Bible does not teach such a doctrine and God is just, what Jesus made clear on many occasions is that punishment varies in intensity from one to another. Let’s look at an example: “It will be more bearable for Tire and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you” (Mt 11:22) (NWT). “They are the ones who devour widows’ houses and make long prayers for a pretext; these will receive heavier judgment” (Mk 12:40) (NWT). See in the same sense Luke 20:47 and 1Pe 2:20.

The truth is that common sense makes one expect that the unrepentant thief will receive less punishment, for example, than the willful and unrepentant murderer of millions of people. Likewise, it seems evident that the sin of the person who received light (like some Pharisees of the time of Jesus) and, furthermore, under the guise of religion broke the law of God, cannot be judged the same as that of the person who did not receive the same degree of light. This is so evident that it does not surprise us that Jesus taught it this way. Well, Mrs. White and the witnesses did not consider it that way. Not only did they allow themselves to deny the conscious punishment of the condemned, but they also equalized the fate of human beings without taking into account that even among the unjust there are not insignificant differences.

Whether Adventists or witnesses like it or not, their theses lack the slightest historical, linguistic and exegetical basis; and, what is worse, they hide from man their state of perdition and its terrible consequences. We will return to this aspect later.

The sects say: “The Bible teaches that only the righteous will be resurrected.” As a sad culmination of the Adventist and Jehovist theses on the state of the dead appears the statement that only the righteous will be resurrected. To a certain extent, and seen from their perspective, it is logical: What is the purpose of resurrecting unconscious beings to undo them eternally? Better that they stay as they are, without feeling or suffering.

The problem is that this teaching collides head-on with the teaching of the Bible. We have already seen before how Dan 12:2 indicates that at the end of time humanity will be resurrected either to receive eternal life or to see the punishment of eternal shame fall upon it.

In harmony with this Old Testament teaching, both Jesus and the apostles taught that there would be resurrection of the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and not just the former. Let’s look at it: “Do not marvel at this, for the hour is coming when all those who are in the memorial tombs will hear his voice, and those who did good things will come out to a resurrection of life; those who practiced vile things will come out to a resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5,2829) (NWT). “I have hope regarding God, a hope that these same people also have, that there will be a resurrection, both of the just and the unjust” (Heb 24:15) (NWT). “And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and they were judged individually according to their deeds” (Rev 20:13).

Precisely this denial of the biblical doctrine of a universal resurrection makes it possible for Adventists and Jehovists to deny with apparent certainty the scriptural doctrine of eternal punishment. An example of this is found in his flawed exegesis of Rev 20. In this chapter we are first told the following: “The devil who was leading them astray was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where both the wild beast and the false prophet (already were), and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev 20:10) (NWT).

It is obvious to anyone who knows how to read the passage: the devil was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, which, as we have already seen in the Jew Josephus, is the name given to the place of punishment of the unjust, and there he will be eternally tormented along with the antichrist and the false prophet.

Just a few verses below it is pointed out that this is the fate that also awaits unredeemed humanity: “And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This means the second death: the lake of fire” (Rev 20:14).

The idea is clear: death (the bodies of the unjust dead) and Hades (the spirits of the unjust dead) were thrown into the second death [It is evident that we are here dealing with a literary figure, consisting of expressing the continent through the content. So we talk about drinking a glass, when in reality what we drink is the wine that is inside. In the same way we say that Great Britain declared war on France, when in reality it is the inhabitants of Great Britain (and not its rivers or its mountains) who go to war with those of France. This same figure is used here by the author of Revelation: death (the bodies) and Hades (the spirits) were thrown into eternal torment.]. Now, the reader may ask: What is the second death? The answer is withering: the lake of fire, that is, the place where, according to verse 14 of this same chapter, the reprobates will be eternally tormented.

Adventist and Jehovist adepts take great pride in what they understand to be a correct understanding of man’s state after death and his eternal destiny. It is pathetic to see the extent to which such illusions do not correspond at all to what the Bible teaches.

  1. The believer’s hope in the Bible

Some readers may feel a certain bitter aftertaste after reading the preceding pages. It’s understandable. Concepts such as sin, personal responsibility, final judgment and hell are not pleasant to the ears of modern man; But if we believe what Luke tells in the Acts of the Apostles in relation to the Roman Felix (Heb 24:25), that has never been a pleasant topic for ears disinclined to repent.

The teaching of the Bible is clear and forceful: man has separated himself from God through his own sin and he can do nothing on his own to repair that situation. God’s love has been manifested precisely in the fact of sending his Son to die in our place on the cross to give us eternal life (Jn 3:16). It is not from a little that the love of God saves us, but from a punishment of dimensions possibly inconceivable to us; and being aware of this is essential to understand, even in a small part, the love of God.

The hope of the believer is precisely to be united, in a way that we cannot even imagine, with the God of love who became incarnate to die for us. Let’s see what the New Testament teaches in this regard:

The believer has his hope in heaven. Perhaps one of the most strange aspects of the theology of the witnesses is to affirm that only 144,000 people will go to heaven, while the vast majority of the saved, the so-called “great multitude”, will remain in a paradise on earth. I must point out that such a doctrine is relatively recent in Jehovism, which initially supported the biblical teaching on the matter [See on this matter CÉSAR VIDAL MANZANARES, The hell of the sects, Bilbao 1989, 65ff]. However, it is so fervently defended by the Jehovists and is at the same time so easy to refute, that, before entering into the subject itself, it is worth referring to this.

To do this, we are going to go to the text of Rev 7,9ff, where it speaks of the “great crowd”, and we will see if it is said to be in a paradise “made in Watchtower”.

“After these things I saw, and look, a great crowd, which no man could number, from all nations and tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb” (Rev 7,9) (NWT).

Despite the witnesses’ concerns, this text does not say that the “great crowd” is in a paradise on earth, but rather that it is in heaven, before the throne of God. That this is so is made even more evident a few verses below, when it is explained who this great crowd is: “These are those who come out of the great tribulation and have washed their long robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Therefore they stand before the throne of God; and they are rendering sacred service to him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them” (Rev 7:14b-15) (NWT).

If Jehovists would read the Bible a little carefully, instead of allowing their leaders to direct them with Watchtower publications, they would see what is evident in this text: the reward of believers who have washed away their sins in the blood of Christ is to stand before the throne of God serving Him in heaven.

That the Apocalypse points out this is, on the other hand, nothing special, because that is the evident teaching of the New Testament.

“Rejoice and leap for joy, since great is your reward in heaven” (Mt 5:12) (NWT). “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, were dissolved, we must have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in heaven.” (2Cor 5,1) (NWT). “Because of the hope that is reserved for you in heaven” (Col 1,5) (NWT). Other similar texts: Mt 6,1920; 19,21; Lk 12,33; Eph 1,3.

Generally, Jehovists tend to argue that these passages refer not to the “great crowd,” but to the 144,000. Such a division of Scripture into two classes of faithful, so that 90 percent of what is written in it has no validity for the vast majority, is something that is repugnant not only to common sense, but to the Christian spirit itself; But, furthermore, as we have seen, the “great crowd” has a destiny in heaven, before the throne of God, and not in the paradise created by the Watchtower. The Bible is much more coherent in this than the theology of any sect.

The believer hopes to be with Christ. Perhaps one of the most shocking aspects in the conversation with these followers is the tremendous desire they express to receive a plot of land in paradise and how little they care about the presence of Christ. I remember years ago that my father accompanied an acquaintance to speak with some Jehovah’s Witnesses. When, in the course of the conversation, our friend asked about the interest that Jehovists might feel in being with Christ, the answer she received was forceful: “What I want is to be in paradise, and the rest is secondary.” As incredible and unpleasant as this may be for a moderately sensitive spirit, the truth is that I have had the opportunity to go through similar experiences on many occasions. Now, that was not the hope desired by the first Christians. Let’s see what the New Testament says in this regard: “Father, as for those you have given me, I wish that where I am, they may be also” (Jn 17:24) (NWT). Unfortunately, if we believe the doctrines of the witnesses, the Father has not heard Jesus’ prayer…

“For if our faith is that Jesus died and rose again, then also those who have fallen asleep (in death) through Jesus, God will bring them with him… Then we who are living who survive will be caught up, together with them, in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we will always be with (the) Lord” (1Thes 4:14-17) (NWT).

To a large extent, this desire to be with God is something that has its precedents in the Old Testament. In it we are told how God took Enoch (Gen 5:22-24), Elijah (2Ki 2:10), and that this hope was expected by many believers (Ps 49:16, v. 15 in the New World Translation). Although Witnesses and Adventists have insisted that neither the rapture of Elijah nor that of Enoch means that they died, the truth is that the Hebrew term lch, which is used in these passages that I have quoted, leaves no room for doubt. It is a “rapture” that God makes fall on a person to have him with him.

There is nothing crazy about this. For anyone who has felt, even if only for a few moments, the closeness of God, it is clear that nothing better can be desired than this, and that the possession of the best “paradise” has no point of comparison with it. Being a believer implies a continued love affair with God. It is an idyll in which our human weakness causes ups and downs to occur; but it is also an idyll that cannot be exchanged for any paradise proclaimed by the sects, no matter how wonderful it may seem.

The believer hopes to be with Christ from the moment of his death. That is why the affirmation that this being with Christ begins from the moment of death can only provoke gratitude in the soul of the believer. The testimonies of the New Testament are conclusive in this regard: “For in my case to live is Christ and to die is gain…; but what I do desire is liberation and to be with Christ” (Phil 1:21-23) (NWT). The apostle’s words are clear. After his death he did not expect centuries-long unconsciousness. He was certain that if he died, he would immediately be with Christ.

“And they continued to throw stones at Stephen, while he made petition and said: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Heb 7:59) (NWT). Stephen’s hope at the time of his martyrdom was not to pass into unconsciousness for centuries. No; It was what has animated so many martyrs of the faith throughout centuries of Christian history: that their conscious spirit was received at the moment of death by Jesus. The idea of ​​exchanging this for a plot of land cannot but seem painful to us [The reader may wonder whether the “paradise” to which Jesus refers is of the earthly type advocated by the witnesses. The answer is negative. The apostle Paul himself tells us that he was mystically raptured to that paradise… which is the third heaven, and not the set of plots that the Watchtower claims (2Cor 12,1-4).]

In fact, such hope comes from words like those that Jesus said to the repentant thief at the moment of his death: “And he answered him, Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Lk 23:43).

Let’s stop at this text with a little more attention. The thief, who began by insulting Jesus, has been observing him for hours and has discovered that he is the messiah. Repentant, he begs Jesus to remember him. Then Jesus solemnly declares to him that that same day he will be with him in paradise. The statement is so clear that in its grandiose simplicity it contains an entire compendium of theology of the afterlife. With death the believer does not enter a state of unconsciousness, but rather passes into the presence of God. So evident is this that Adventists and Witnesses have insisted that the phrase is mispunctuated in Bible translations, and the latter have had the nerve to pervert the passage in their Bible as follows: “And he said to him, Truly I say to you today, You will be with me in paradise” (NWT).

Needless to say, there is not a single Greek manuscript of the New Testament that punctuates the passage in this way; and the reason is obvious: a phrase of that type is pure grammatical nonsense; It is unthinkable in Greek. This one says: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Once again, as is customary among Adventists and Witnesses, the bad theology and worse exegesis has been combined with ignorance of biblical languages ​​[Like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Valera version of 90 has also falsified the text of Luke 23:43. There are more than good reasons to think that this revision of the Bible is due to the interests of the Adventist sect.].

  1. Conclusion

About fifteen years ago I was visiting some acquaintances in a town in Catalonia. In the course of the conversation someone mentioned Jehovah’s Witnesses; and one of those present (not especially pious, it must be said) commented that he would like their doctrines to be true, because he could allow himself to do what he wanted in this life without fear of any subsequent trial in which he would have to give an account to God for his actions. Such a conclusion is, from our point of view, pregnant with logic.

The teaching of Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses about the afterlife deprives those who believe it of a real perspective on what man’s situation is before God; But, furthermore, it does not indicate the cost of salvation nor the wonderful hope of the believer. All of this is replaced by an offer of plots in a kind of colossal urbanization. If it weren’t so dramatic, you could almost say it’s comical.

And the worst thing is that such teaching does not free man from any fear. On the contrary, I must say that I have not met any Catholic or Protestant so distressed about their future situation as Adventists or Witnesses. The irrational fear experienced by the followers of these sects of being destroyed if they abandon them practically cannot be compared with any other kind of fear. And, deep down, it is a pathetic manifestation of the fear of slaves. In them there is not that confidence of Esteban at the moment of his death; nor the joyful hope of Paul, who knows that dying is gain; nor the tranquility of the repentant thief, who rested in Jesus’ promise that he would be with him in paradise that same day. No; What there is is the horrible expectation of nothingness if they abandon the yoke of their leaders, or the gross longing directed toward a paradise that, of course, if it is going to be like the interior of these sects today, seems repellent rather than tempting. Let us thank God that fortunately there is not the slightest similarity between what the Bible teaches and what these sects preach.