Immortality of the Soul and Jehovah's Witnesses

[ChristosVoskrese]

I was talking to some Jehovah’s Witnesses today at the university market day, where they have a stand. I have met this particular lady before, and I first went over to say hi. I told her that although I don’t agree with their theology, I applauded them giving out books that refute evolution.

However, she started talking about the immortality of the soul, and how that is a false doctrine carried over from paganism. I told her that I’d read Fr. Seraphim’s book The Soul After Death, which tells about what happens to us when we die. I explained how when you die, your soul leaves your body, and I quoted several of the experiences that Fr. Seraphim talks about, plus one that isn’t in the book. The one that is the most convincing is that of a blind woman who could see when she left her body, and accurately described what was in the room. They still didn’t believe me. They claim that your soul is you – man is a soul. They use Genesis 2:7 as proof: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” They also quote Numbers 31:28 to show that animals are souls.

The lady showed me Ezekiel 18:4 “Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Does this mean that the soul will die in a spiritual sense, i.e., being cut off from God? What is the Orthodox interpretation of this?

Then she quoted Ecclesiastes 9:5 “For the living will know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and there is no longer any reward to them; for their memory is lost”. I don’t know enough about the Orthodox teaching on the state of anticipation to refute this. Do the dead in Hades know anything? Do they have full memory of their past lives?

Lastly, this lady talked about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. She quoted John 11:11 “Lazarus our friend sleepeth”. I looked up this passage in the original Greek, and it reads “Λάζαρος ο φίλος ημών κεκοίμηται” (reproduced in monotonic). While I am taking an ancient Greek class at university, I couldn’t determine what form of the verb “kekímite” was, so I couldn’t look it up in the dictionary. Does anyone here know enough Greek to recognize the verb and point me to the dictionary form? I presume (although this is just a guess) that the same word means “rest” as well as sleep. Rest has no connotations of not being conscious.

They also told me that “True Christians” would not fight in the army. They told me that in the early days of Christianity, soldiers who converted had to leave the army and find a new job, and that history attests this. I thought that there were some saints who were soldiers. Can anyone back me up on this?

Thanks for any help you might be able to give. What they’ve said has worried me a bit.

[Jean-Serge]

I made a study of the Bible with the Jehovah witnesses. There marny problems with them.

1° The first one is solo scripturism. They say they found their teaching in the Bible only. But nowhere in the Bible you can find the Bible is the only source of authority. On the contrary, Saint Paul speaks also about oral instruction.

2° The Jehovah witness use a Protestant bible without the Book of the Macchabee and other books. But in the book of the Macchabee it is written somewhere that the souls of pure people are alive near God or something like this.

3° Another problem is the translation they use. it is not correct and it is impossible to know who translated it. But about the immortality of soul, you can quote what Jesus taught to the GOOD THIEF. "Today, you will be in paradise". This means -since resurrection has not occured yet- that the soul is really alive... But for this passage, the Jehovah witnesses changed the translation and wrote :

I tell you today, you will be in paradise instead of I tell you, today you will be in paradise. The position of the coma changes everything...

The problem is that Orthodox have little knowledge of the scriptures to argue wih protestant and Jehovah witness. I can suggest you this site : (I simply google refutation + jehovah witness)

http://www.angelfire.com/ms/seanie/jw/jwindex.html

[Pravoslavnik]

One of the central heresies of the Jehovah's Witnesses is Arianism; a denial of the divinity of the Son, and of the Trinity. If Jehovah's Witnesses want to preach about the sacred scriptures, ask them to interpret the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....and the Word became flesh."

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    Could there be a more elegant, direct refutation of the heresies of the Arians (and Jehovah's Witnesses) than that?  When I have asked J.W.'s about this scripture they can never give a straight answer.

     Father Seraphim Rose's [i]The Soul After Death [/i]is a definitive Orthodox account of the fate of the soul, but there is some interesting secular literature on the subject of near death experiences.  One such book is Ian Wilson's [i]Life After Death[/i].  The American psychiatrist Orville Moody also wrote a best seller in the late 70's about people's accounts of near death experiences called [i]Life After Life[/i].  If I am not mistaken, Father Seraphim wrote [i]The Soul After Death [/i]partly to give the world a more definitive view of Orthodox experience on this subject.  He believed that some of the popular accounts of near death experiences, like Moody's, were heterodox distortions of ultimate reality.  In any case, the near death literature clearly describes a state of extra-corporeal consciousness that, in my opinion, cannot be adequately explained by mere endorphins or hypoxic hallucinogenic experience, as some of my medical colleagues insist.

    I do not know the Greek verb mentioned, but I do recall that Christ said of Lazarus' death, "This is not the sickness unto death," certainly implying that the soul of Lazarus was yet living.  He also said, "Do not fear that which may (destroy/kill) the body, but rather that which may (destroy/kill) the soul."

[Euthymios]

The phrase "a sleep" or "sleepeth" in the New Testament, is a Greek idiom and euphemism to describe the way a person looks at death.

"Death and the Afterlife," by Bob Morey is an excellent book refuting the idea of "soul sleep." He explores the Greek and Hebrew of the Bible. While he is not Orthodox, he is a recognized protestant theologian and the book is excellent. The teaching that souls can exist outside the body, comes right from the Bible, and Dr. Morey proves it.