Bridge of Reason

  The Watchtower Society teaches that when a person dies they simply cease to exist. There is not a part of man that separates from the body at death and goes to another place. This means there is no fiery hell of torment but simply the common grave of mankind. WATCH TOWER TEACHING ‘ The Hebrew sheohl’ and its Greek equivalent haides , which refer, not to an individual burial place, but to the common grave of dead mankind; also the Greek geenna, which is used as a symbol of eternal destruction.’ - Reasoning from the Scriptures, WBTS, 1985, p.169. Matthew 25:46 - This verse, they insist, simply means the righteous go to life, the wicked to the cutting off from life, or death. Revelation 14:9-11; 20:10 - These verses, they say, cannot refer to conscious torment after death because ‘ the dead know not any thing.’ (Ecclesiastes 9:5). It is the proclamation by God's servants that worshi p pers of the "beast and his image" will experience second death that causes th...

C4 Sunday 16 August 2009 7pm Revelations: How do you know God exists? Written and produced by Anthony Thomas An arresting opening image: a burning effigy on a busy western city street. We try to figure out what it is- some religious protest against the Mohammed cartoons, perhaps? As it turns out, it's a model of a banker. In commencing his contribution to the Revelations series, Anthony Thomas may be trying to show how materialism has failed as a concept, and that as western capitalism turns on itself, religious solutions to man's dilemmas may begin to reemerge. Thomas chooses five leaders from major world religions (Judaism, Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism and Hinduism) to explain to him and the viewer how they know there is a God. The five men (and they are men, as my wife dryly observes) are Jonathan Sachs (chief rabbi of Orthodox Jews in the UK), Rowan Williams (Church of England Archbishop of Canterbury), Vincent Nichols (Catholic Archbishop of Westminster), Tari...