Roach Clips

My brother and mother are both JW and tell me that people who never heard the word of God/the Bible will have a chance to accept Jesus Christ after death. So if you die and never heard the word of God/the Bible, you will have a chance for salvation after death or before you face judgement, I forget how they exactly stated it.

I'm just curious whether this has any scriptural passages backing it up? Or if there are any passages that explicitly refutte this.

Chris Weimer

If I recall correctly, they will be reborn during the tribulation, I think. It's some passage in Revelation I'm sure.

Mars Man

An interesting point. I will have to check out some things I have at the house, and see, about that, but I would say at the moment, that it first revolves around a few other understandings that they have, namely:

1) only 144,000 (taken literally) from among the twelve tribes of Israel (taken figuratively) will be granted spiritual being in heaven. [Rev. 7:4-8; 14:1]

2)The rest fall into two catagories: a. having a hope of physical resurrection, b. having no hope of physical resurrection.

3)Those who fall into catagory a., above, are understood to be both those who have heard the message of Christ, and those who never had that chance.

There are a more than just a few scriptures which, as far as I have determined, are most usually not only taken out of context to reach such an understanding, but which totally ignore many other facets related to both the knowable and deducible elements of textual development and what I call 'primary historical understanding'.

In a way, I feel regret that they have fallen victim to the slightly indistinguishable 'mind control' that the Watchtower Society of New York, Inc. applies within its rhetoric. I had associated with that society for a while. I spent three years in direct communication with those in charge in Brooklyn, in an attempt--a quite futile one--to get them to correct a few very important problems in their scriptural understanding.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask, and I will try to help out as much as I can. :thumbs:

Mars Man

I had tried to edit that above post for clarity, but the server had been too busy, and in the process, I seem to have lost that edit bit.

For clarification:
JW understand, and I fully agree here, but not because it can be deduced from the Hebrew Scriptures, that death is equivalent with non-existence. Those in catagory 'a.' who have 'heard' and responded, are said to get the first resurrection while those in that group who have not 'heard' get the 'second' resurrection. And those of that later resurrection have to face a possible second death. [Rev. 20:5-14]

I would suggest great care in thinking about what they might say about it, and absolutely recommend research into the text source itself, the historical settings and circumstances of the direct and immediate audience, and the degree of myth blended with it. There is no need, at face value to take the content of the communication as any factual matter of possible future events from a retrospective point of view.