The Last Days and the Earthly Hope
As taught in the Jehovah's Witness tradition
How Jehovah's Witnesses read the signs of the last days and the hope of a paradise earth.
Among the doctrines that give Jehovah's Witnesses their distinctive public profile, none is more visible than their conviction that humanity is living in "the last days" of the present wicked system of things, and that this age will soon give way, through the war of Armageddon, to an everlasting paradise on a cleansed and restored earth. The house-to-house ministry, the magazines The Watchtower and Awake!, and the urgency with which Jehovah's Witnesses press their message all flow from a settled eschatology: the end is near, the signs are already visible, and the great majority of those who survive or are resurrected will live forever, not in heaven, but on a paradise earth under the rule of God's Kingdom.
By the end of this lesson
- Explain why Jehovah's Witnesses teach that 'the last days' began in 1914, tracing the chronology from the 'seven times' of Daniel 4 and the 'Gentile times' of Luke 21:24, and describe how Christ's invisible presence (parousia) is tied to that date.
- Describe how Matthew 24:3-14 is read as a composite, observable 'sign' - including wars, food shortages, lawlessness, and especially the worldwide Kingdom-preaching work - that marks the present age as the conclusion of the system of things.
- Summarise the Witness teaching on the war of Armageddon as God's decisive destruction of the wicked human system, and explain how survivors and the resurrected become the population of the paradise earth.
- Explain the earthly hope drawn from Psalm 37:9-11 and Revelation 21:1-4 - that the meek will possess the earth and live forever in a world without death, mourning, or pain - and contrast it with the limited heavenly hope of the 144,000.
- State the Witness teaching on the state of the dead (soul sleep), the resurrection to an earthly hope, and the annihilation rather than eternal torment of the wicked, and identify where this diverges from the Nicene confession of the resurrection and the life everlasting.
- State fairly and without flattening where the Witness eschatology differs from historic creedal Christianity on the timing and visibility of Christ's coming, the immortality of the soul, hell, and the structure of the final hope, and explain the principled basis each side gives.
Scripture
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