@EasyPrompt
Please read my LINK regarding the book of Ecclesiastes 9:5.
In the Old Testament, there wasn't much else clearly promised other than the usual: long life, offspring, wealth. This perspective ultimately suffered shipwreck in the Book of Job (Eliphaz made a lot of similar arguments) and in Ecclesiastes. You are reverting back to these Old Testament promises of limited validity in large numbers, while the apostle says that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, heart has not imagined what God has prepared for those who love him - in other words, obviously a much higher aiming promise than eternal life on a paradise earth. I guess the "heavenly class" of you may be the one that can actually partake in this promise, the others will only partake in this certain (often seen, heard, contemplated) promise.
The distinction between the New and Old Testament perspectives is valid, although not typically held by your denomination. (This is how they usually prove with Ecclesiastes that the dead know nothing, and pass by without blinking the fact that he also states: there is no better thing for a person under the sun than to enjoy God's material blessing.)
ou start from the Book of Ecclesiastes, but you are not willing to acknowledge the limited vision of this book. The pessimism of Ecclesiastes, his visible despair regarding the reward of virtues, is crying out for rewards in the afterlife or after resurrection, but the author knows nothing about all this, so the work is doctrinally crippled where there should be continuation. Where the righteous can receive the worthy reward for their righteousness.
The author does indeed write that the dead know nothing, but based on the context of the text, he does not refer to their consciousness but to their awareness of the events that happen on earth. Several biblical passages testify about the oppressive state in Sheol, yet these do not uniformly claim that existence ends with physical death. For example, in Isaiah 14:9 we read: "Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. All of them will speak and say to you: 'You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!" Therefore, existence does not cease, even though after the departure of the life-giving spirit to God, people continue to linger in a shadow-like existence. The story of the witch of Endor also talks about Samuel himself coming forward to the call (in this case, obviously with God's permission), so he did not cease to exist or manifest. The fact that this was a forbidden practice did not make it impossible.
We do not consider the sentences quoted above from the Qohelet as the final truth, but only temporary, which were overridden by later statements. Yet you all run about these as if no one spoke later as the mouth of God about the souls of the martyrs crying out for vengeance from under God's altar, or that it is better for man to depart (ekdemeo) from the body and be with the Lord. (2 Cor 5:8). As if it wasn't clear from the later ones that the soul (psyche) is inside the body of the living person, but it is not in the dead's (Acts 20:10).
In the Bible there is also a kind of progression in the Bible's revelation, and you should not step back from the later stage to the earlier one as if the later development hadn't occurred. You might ask, but doesn't that mean the Bible contradicts itself? We don't say that, because we are used to a more differentiated interpretation. We say that there is a progression of revelation in the Bible. This doesn't call the earlier statements (or in the case of the Qohelet: conjectures, conclusions) wrong, just limited. You could reconcile with this view, since your own leadership often says such things in defense when it routinely contradicts itself after thirty years.
Based on the Qohelet’s own words, I claimed that he is pessimistic. But perhaps you didn't read where he keeps repeating: "All is vanity, chasing after wind" or in another translation "the torment of the spirit"? Or his countless examples of many people not receiving the reward of their virtues? Or those cases where evil prevails on Earth? Behold, because of the fleeting nature of life he himself despised life (2:18), turned away from hope (2:21), called the miscarried fetus happier than the living (4:3), etc. I don't need to continue: this shows that the Qohelet’s point of view rests on the vanity of earthly life, and his statements should be understood in this way (not as some eternally valid divine statements, as you propose). We now have a better hope, so we can use this book as a somber background to say: this is the level that even the wisest man can reach without Christ, without the hope of resurrection.
Moreover, the book of Ecclesiastes itself states that it contains reflections and inquiries (1:13), and that this too is an evil and vain occupation. So if your opinion were well-founded, you would also have to condemn Solomon for the same thing. But what do you do with the Book of Job, which contains contentious debates, even accusations and desperate laments? Man, as a sentient and thinking being, cannot be excluded from Scripture, and certainly not from here. In vain do you try to impose the pessimistic reflections of Ecclesiastes as an absolute divine revelation on everyone, the author himself did not intend them as such. Or do you also accept at face value that man has nothing better to do than to eat, drink, and enjoy life (8:15)?
All of this speaks about the deceased of Old Testament times, before Christianity. Before Christ's redemption, heaven was closed; then all the deceased were still together in the underworld (Sheol) (see, for example, Job 30:23) in a joyless, gloomy existence, even if they were chosen for eternal salvation. While they were separate from those condemned to hell (see Ezekiel 32:17-32), this place - the limbo - was not a place of joy, but of silent sadness, where God was not even glorified. This, therefore, is completely different from heaven, which was only opened by the death of Christ on the cross. At this point, death became joy, and from this point on, the saints who have died glorify God and can intercede for us.
The underworld (Sheol or Hades) before Christ is not the same as the triple condition (hell, purgatory, heaven) after Christ, although there are similarities. For the wicked, it was a real hell (Gehenna), but for the righteous, there was no happy state of union with God. It also follows from this that when Lazarus died, he could not yet go to heaven, at most to Abraham's bosom (Lk 16:12).
The Watchtower primarily refers to Old Testament scriptures, particularly the Psalms and the Book of Ecclesiastes, which speak of the transience of man, the broken relationship with God, and the created world found in the state of death (for example, Psalm 6:5; 49:14; 115:7; Ecclesiastes 3:18-22; 9:3-10). If we read these in isolation and do not take into account their place in salvation history, then we do indeed come to such a one-sided opinion as Rutherford and his successors. Such exegesis - which takes the texts out of their salvation-historical and entire biblical context and does not take into account progress - characterizes the Bible explanation of the Watchtower Society. What is the place of Ecclesiastes (Qohelet) in the history of salvation? This is the level of knowledge of the man of the Old Testament period, before the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Here - as generally in the Old Testament - there is not yet such a clear certainty about eternal life and death as in the New Testament. Even if the existence after death is repeatedly echoed in certain places of the Old Testament (for example, Psalm 88:11; 139:8; Isaiah 26:19; Ezekiel 37; Daniel 12:1; Job 19:25ff).
Complete certainty was only given with the resurrection of Jesus Christ and by him, as the foundation of the general resurrection of the dead. In contrast, in the Old Testament, we often encounter the threatening judgment and the fear of the transience of earthly life, as also in Ecclesiastes. Qohelet is still strongly oriented in this present world and has no certainty of resurrection to life. However, he reckons that with death not everything is over (3:17; 12:7), that there is judgment. Ecclesiastes 3:18ff, for example, talks about the man without God, who is only concerned with himself, and compared to the animals, he sees and must admit that there is no difference until death. However, the line continues consistently until Jesus Christ who conquers death. The same applies to Ecclesiastes 9:3ff: "The 'placement under the sun' recognizes again that with his observations, Ecclesiastes is going beyond the sober reality of life under God's order.
When Jehovah's Witnesses rely on such places, they do not notice that these appear as questions, which find answers and fulfillment with Jesus Christ. When Ecclesiastes 3:21 asks, "Who knows if the spirit of man goes up high?", the New Testament place, 2 Corinthians 5:1 gives the answer: "For we know that, if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
Why would the writers of the Greek biblical texts have used terms such as 'hades', 'psyche', 'tartaros', which clearly had spiritual-herafter meanings in the Greek language? In a cultural-religious environment that believed in an afterlife, shouldn't the apostles have clearly taught annihilationism? Why is the part of the book of Ecclesiastes much quoted by JWs never quoted in the New Testament? Why did the apostles NEVER warned those freshly converted from paganism, "Do not believe in a spiritual soul or the afterlife, because it is paganism"?
Regarding the Book of Ecclesiastes, it is worth stating that, of course, Christianity considers it an inspired book; there is no debate about that. Here we have an Adventist influence on the side of Jehovah's Witnesses. It is well known that Russell's movement sprang from early Adventism. Russell, at least in theory, adopted devotion to the Scriptures, belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible, even if arbitrary, and also the notion of equal substantive value of the Old and New Testaments.
He did not view and take seriously the biblical revelations in their salvific historical context, but as if he were mining stones, he extracts them from the textual context and combines them according to his own ideas. I have already spoken about the so-called "knight jump" "hermeneutics" method of Jehovah's Witnesses. Equating the Old Testament with the New Testament leads, among other things, to the celebration of the Sabbath in the Adventists and to a very legalistic way of thinking in Jehovah's Witnesses, which is particularly noticeable in the prohibition of blood.
They couple the entirely correct statement that all Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16) with the false conclusion that therefore all parts are equally valuable, of equal weight. This viewpoint results in neglecting the history of salvation, as well as deviating from Christ as the center of Scripture towards primarily eschatological side tracks. Just as stones are extracted from a quarry, revelations are drawn from the most diverse places in the Bible and - mostly without regard to context and the circumstances of origin - are freely combined. That's why they hardly make a distinction between the Old and New Testaments, between promise and fulfillment, in fact, they reject the terms Old and New Testament, replacing them with "Hebrew Scriptures" and "Christian Greek Scriptures".
Ecclesiastes 3:19 - The narrator here does not deny the immortality of the soul, in 3:19 he is not dealing with the soul (in Hebrew, nefesh) but with the breath of life (in Hebrew, ruach). According to him, the soul also ends up in the joyless underworld after death (9:10), so it does not perish; however, death ends organic life, and in this point, there is no difference between man and animal. The Psalm 104 (verses 29-30) partially reflects the same view, where God is presented as the one who sends out and retracts the breath of life of all living creatures. This breath of life is a comprehensive term for organic life and its operations.
Luke 16:19-31 - Regarding the Rich Man and Lazarus, please read THIS. So far, not a single JW has been able to answer the points raised in the article, they are all confused that if this and that must be symbolic, then the whole thing is symbolic, if it is symbolic, then it is not true, etc.
Psalm 146:4: The original text in the quote reads as follows: "bayyōwm hahū āḇəḏū eštōnōṯāw", which roughly means, "on that day, his (shining) plans/thoughts are perished/lost." I don't know how it can support anything. It only proves that his plans no longer exist, which is quite logical if the person is dead. The term "eshton" does not refer to a person's entire intellectual (mind) activity, but only to a very small slice of it. So, "bright, great thoughts," or something similar. Comparing it with similar verses from the scriptures, it's much more likely that these bright thoughts refer to plans related to earthly life. The scriptures speak in many places about the fragility of man's plans for earthly life, if they ignore the will of the God, and the finite nature of earthly life.
His thoughts, his plans. In the margin of the Revised Version, it says, "plans." The Greek word for thoughts is DIALOGISMOI. Greenfield interprets it as, "argument, reasoning, thought, meditation, plan." If we trust in earthly nobles, when they die, their plans fail and we are left without help. This psalm contrasts confidence in the flesh with trust in God. It does not teach that self-awareness would be extinguished, but that the person will no longer be able to carry out what he had planned. It does not prove the annihilationist position for three basic reasons:
- Because the literary nature of the Psalms and their being from the Old Testament allow only a limited doctrinal proof.
- Based on the context of the verse, it is not a revelation of a doctrinal truth about the state of the dead - especially not in such an explicit and definitive way that it can be played against the much more specific New Testament statements, but it calls for trust in God, as opposed to human finitude.
- The corresponding Hebrew term 'eshton' used here does not denote a person's full self-awareness, consciousness, but his plans regarding the earthly life, which perish with the death. I even asked a native Hebrew rabbi about this, and he also professed this interpretation.
Check THIS too.
