The book begins, “‘The greatest futility!’ says the congregator, ‘The greatest futility! Everything is futile!’” ( Ecclesiastes 1:2 NWT) Is the worship of God really futile? But, the inspired purpose of much of the book of Ecclesiastes is to use hyperbole to instill in the reader a sense of the futility of human effort. Therefore, from a Christian perspective, Ecclesiastes 9 is not an appropriate text on which to base a theology of the afterlife or eschatology.Ī Jehovah’s Witness may respond that this wouldn’t take away from the inspired meaning of the text. Christ says He will judge the living and the dead and reward them according to their works. The good and the sinner are absolutely not the same. No Christian believes that the righteous and the wicked will come to the same end. The good one is the same as the sinner the one who swears an oath is the same as the one who is cautious about swearing an oath.” ( Ecclesiastes 9:2 NWT) “All have the very same outcome, the righteous and the wicked, the good and the clean and the unclean, those sacrificing and those not sacrificing. Regardless, if we go back to verse 9:2 it is clear that no Christian can take this chapter literally. Even at the time of Christ, Jews were divided over the belief in an afterlife and a resurrection. This statement may reflect the ancient Jewish understanding of death, because the fullness of revelation had not yet been given. “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing at all, nor do they have any more reward, because all memory of them is forgotten.” ( Ecclesiastes 9:5 NWT) They might base this on Ecclesiastes 9:5. They believe that spirits refer to angels, or to resurrected human beings who do not have their earthly bodies. They believe that we are only composed of a material body, and that the soul is simply a life-force, a breath, which ceases to exist at death. Some non-Catholic groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, teach that there is no afterlife between death and the resurrection. For this article, scriptural references are taken from the New World Translation (NWT), and the Kingdom Interlinear Translation (KIT) of the New Testament, which are both published by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
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