Bodies and souls are annihilated at death. All souls die, even the soul of Jesus. The soul is merely the immaterial part of man, his life, the function of his brain and heart, etc. It is not a separate entity. Notice how this teaching parallels the “witness” teaching about the Trinity, where Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not separate persons of the Godhead, not a part of God at all. The idea of a three-in-one entity is difficult for them.

Though annihilation occurs, “witnesses” teach that there will be a resurrection of all the righteous. See “resurrection” below.

What does the Word say?

Psalm 146:3-4. “…[man’s] spirit departs, he returns to the earth. In that very day his thoughts perish.”

Q=questioner. JWA=Jehovah's Witness answer. CA=Christian Answer.

Q. Is it the “Witness” position that souls cease to exist at death?

JWA. Obviously, as the verse you have quoted here demands.

Q. For the record, the NWT is quite similar to the NASB quoted here.

JWA. Agreed, no problem.

Q. May I first point out that the verse here does not say anything about death of the immaterial part of man, rather it mentions the departure of that essence.

JWA. But notice that the man simply returns to the earth. He is dead. Gone. Lifeless. He cannot make any more plans or even thoughts.

Q. Context, friend. What “man” is this passage concerning?

JWA. Princes, leaders of men.

Q. Indeed. Men have their ideas, their plans. But all that goes up in smoke at death. The same is true with good people, but the context here is the plans of ordinary men who want a following, power on earth. Can you see this?

JWA. Your point?

CA: My point is that there is nothing in this verse to suggest what your organization says, namely that the soul just dies. You have read this into the text for your own purposes. The apostle Paul makes it clear that when we leave this body we are present with the Lord, assuming we know Him. The thief on the cross was told that that very day He would be with Jesus in Paradise. No talk of death, annihilation of the soul.

Even your own group speaks of resurrections that will come. The Scripture speaks of those resurrections too. The body will be raised, changed, equipped for eternal life. And then it will rejoin the soul that has been waiting for it for so long. Hear the cry of the souls under the altar in Revelation, men and women beheaded for their faith and brought to death in so many other ignominious ways. They live, they long to be whole again, they want to know, “How long?”

That’s found in Revelation 6:9, in the NWT, by the way. John saw the souls. The souls were very much alive. They merely awaited their bodies at the great resurrection.

Ecclesiastes 9:4-6. “(NWT) …the dead know nothing at all… their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they no longer have any share in what is done under the sun.”

Q. Is it, or is it not, possible to know anything after death?

JWA. Solomon here makes it very plain that all knowledge, a function of the soul of man, is finished at the grave.

Q. What does Solomon mean when he says here “under the sun”?

JWA. I assume you know.

Q. Actually it is a recurring theme in Ecclesiastes. Old Solomon has seen it all. He was given great wisdom and great riches. The riches he spent on everything imaginable, the wisdom he now uses to explain the worth of all his riches. Do you remember his conclusion?

JWA. You mean that “all is vanity”?

Q. Exactly. Sir, is life with God vanity?

JWA. Of course not.

Q. Is the Word of God vanity?

JWA. Why, no!

Q. How about the death of Jesus?

JWA. Not at all!

Q. Then what is vanity? I will answer that. Solomon is talking about things you can see under the sun, with the naked eye. Even John echoes this, “All that is in the world… is of the world, not of the Father.”

CA: So when Solomon says the dead know nothing, he is looking at a graveyard, or imagining one. Graveyards are usually pretty quiet. No one is bickering in the graveyard. They don’t love and hate over there. They know nothing and teach the same. Their bodies, including their brains, are dust. That’s what I can see, and it is verifiable by all who have physical eyes.

But with eyes of the spirit we see what God has told us about the next life. People leave their bodies and go to be with the Lord. People are greeted by Jesus when they die, on the spot. Life goes on.

We cannot use Solomon as our theologian about last things. That was not the purpose for which God had him writing. Solomon showed us the vanity of earth so that we will desire the glories of the other world, the heavenly one.

Matthew 26:24 . “…it would have been good for that man [Judas] if he had not been born.”

Q. Where is Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, now?

JWA. Essentially there is no Judas. His body perished and decayed. His soul was annihilated.

Q. If there were an eternal hell, and Judas was suffering there, would that be worse than no existence at all?

JWA. Well, of course.

Q. But you say Judas is going from existence back to no existence. Jesus compares no existence to no existence, then? Which is better?

JWA. Why, I suppose they are the same.

Q. If they are the same, why does Jesus say that no existence at all is better than where he has gone?