What Do Jehovah's Witnesses Believe About the Soul, Death and Hell?

Ask a Jehovah's Witness what happens when we die, and you will usually get a clear and calm answer. The dead are not suffering anywhere. They are unconscious in the grave, as if asleep, waiting for God to raise them. Many who grew up with frightening pictures of hellfire find this answer more merciful, and some find it more biblical.

The Witness view rests on a definition of the "soul" as the whole living person, on a few verses quoted often (Ecclesiastes 9:5 and Ezekiel 18:4 above all), and on the claim that belief in an immortal soul and an eternal hell came into Christianity from Greek philosophy. This article sets out that teaching in Witnesses' own words, traces where it came from, and compares it with the historic Christian reading of the same texts as the Orthodox Church has received it. On several points Witnesses are right. On the central question, whether a person who dies still lives to God before the resurrection, we will argue that they are mistaken, and that the earliest Christian writers already answered it.

In brief

Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the soul is the whole living creature, not an inner part that survives death. At death a person ceases to exist. "Hell" (Sheol, Hades) means the common grave, while Gehenna and the lake of fire mean permanent destruction, not torment. The hope is resurrection: 144,000 are raised to heavenly life as spirits, and most of the dead will be re-created on a paradise earth. This view came to Charles Taze Russell from nineteenth-century American conditionalists such as George Storrs.

Historic Christianity agrees that the Hebrew "soul" usually means the living person, that death is a real enemy, and that resurrection is the final hope. It denies that death is non-existence: Scripture speaks of the dead as living to God, and Paul expected to "be with Christ" at death. Several second-century Fathers rejected Plato's naturally immortal soul, yet taught that souls continue until the resurrection. Orthodoxy holds that the soul is immortal by God's grace, not by nature, and that hell is eternal, though many Orthodox teachers describe hell as God's love experienced by those who refuse it rather than as physical torture.

Thesis: The Witness teaching rightly rejects a Platonic picture of the soul, but its claim that the dead do not exist until the resurrection does not fit the New Testament or the faith of the early Church.

What Jehovah's Witnesses teach, in their own words

The soul is the person, and death is non-existence

The official Witness website begins from vocabulary. The Hebrew nephesh and the Greek psyche, it says, mean "a creature that breathes" and "a living being," so "the soul, then, is the entire creature, not something inside that survives the death of the body." Adam "was not given a soul" but "became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7).¹ The Witness Bible encyclopedia, Insight on the Scriptures, says that "man was a soul, he did not have a soul as something immaterial, invisible, and intangible residing inside him." The "spirit" that returns to God at death (Ecclesiastes 12:7) is the life-force, which humans share with animals.²

Quoting Ecclesiastes 9:5 in their translation, "as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all," Witness literature concludes: "Therefore, when we die, we cease to exist." The Bible often calls death sleep, and Witnesses take the comparison seriously, adding that God "can awaken the dead as if from sleep."³

Hell is the grave, and Gehenna is destruction

Sheol and Hades "basically refer to 'the Grave,' that is, the common grave of mankind," where people are "in a state of nonexistence." Good people go there too; Jacob and Job expected to, and Jesus was there between his death and resurrection (Acts 2:31). Death, not torment, is the penalty for sin, and eternal torment is called "repugnant to God" and contrary to the teaching that "God is love."⁴ Gehenna and the lake of fire are different: "a symbol of eternal destruction," the "second death," from which no one is raised. The torment "day and night forever and ever" of Revelation 20:10 is read as everlasting restraint or destruction.⁵

The resurrection and its two destinies

Resurrection is the heart of Witness hope, and they write about it warmly. Jesus will restore the dead "each one with his unique identity, personality, and memories." Since no soul survives, resurrection is not a reunion; the person "is recreated as a living soul," and God "keeps in his limitless memory a detailed record of each person he will resurrect." Some are raised to heaven with a spirit body in "the first resurrection," during Christ's presence, "which began in 1914." Most will be raised on earth during the Thousand Year Reign, "when the earth will be transformed into a paradise." Those beyond reform will not be raised at all.⁶ According to The Watchtower (2022), the "unrighteous" who are raised will pass through "a period of judgment, or probation," in which they can learn about Jehovah.⁷ Immortality itself is given only to the anointed, who "receive a resurrection to immortal spirit life."⁸ The two classes are examined in our article Who Are the 144,000?

Where the teaching came from

Witness history is frank about its sources. Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (1993) records that the teenage Charles Taze Russell was repelled by the idea that God had made people "inherently immortal" and would torment most of them forever. In 1869 he heard the Second Adventist preacher Jonas Wendell, and he later studied with George Storrs, editor of the Bible Examiner, who "became a zealous advocate of what was called conditional immortality" and had "a strong, positive influence on young Charles T. Russell."⁹ The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists confirms that Storrs had never doubted that "man possessed an immortal soul" until 1837, when he read a pamphlet by Henry Grew arguing that the wicked are annihilated; it adds that Storrs also shaped early Adventist belief.¹⁰ {{very-strong: The Witness view of death grew out of nineteenth-century American conditionalism, passed from Grew and Storrs to Russell.}}

Conditionalism has defenders outside these movements too. In 1988 the evangelical Anglican John Stott tentatively defended annihilationism, the view that the lost are finally destroyed rather than tormented forever, to the shock of many evangelicals.¹¹ The Witness position is one side of a real debate among Bible readers, not an eccentric invention.

The key texts and the historic Christian reading

Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 18:4

On Genesis 2:7 Witnesses have the stronger point. The NKJV says that "man became a living being," a fair rendering of nephesh chayyah, and most Old Testament uses of nephesh mean a living creature, a life or a self. An Orthodox reader can grant this: the Church has never taught that human beings are souls trapped in bodies. Ezekiel 18:4 is similar: "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; the soul who sins shall die" (NKJV). The chapter answers a proverb about children paying for their fathers' sins, and its point, repeated at verse 20, is personal responsibility. "Soul" means "person," as Witnesses say, and the sinner really dies. But neither verse describes what death is. The real question is whether Scripture as a whole teaches that the person remains alive to God after death, and a single Hebrew word cannot settle that.

"The dead know nothing": Ecclesiastes 9:5

Ecclesiastes 9:5 reads: "For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten" (NKJV). The verse needs its setting. In the same chapter one fate comes to all "under the sun" (9:3), and of the dead it says, "Nevermore will they have a share in anything done under the sun" (9:6). "Under the sun" is the book's refrain for life as observed in this world (1:3). If 9:5 were a full account of the afterlife, the dead would also have "no more reward," which Witnesses do not believe, since they expect the righteous to be rewarded at the resurrection. The same book ends with "the spirit will return to God who gave it" (12:7). Christians have usually read the book as an honest look at death from this side of the grave.

The texts Witnesses must explain

Jesus says, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28, NKJV). Insight reads "soul" here as the person's future life in God's purpose, which men cannot take away, and notes that God can destroy it, so it is not indestructible.² That last point is right; Orthodox teaching agrees that nothing created is indestructible by nature. Yet the plain sense is that killing the body does not kill the person.

To the thief Jesus says, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43, NKJV). The New World Translation reads, "Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise." Its study note is candid: it admits that the Greek allows either punctuation and that the standard critical editions (Westcott and Hort, Nestle-Aland, the United Bible Societies) put the comma before "today," and it cites a fifth-century Syriac version and later Greek writers who knew the other reading.¹² {{moderate: The punctuation of Luke 23:43 cannot settle the debate by grammar alone.}}

Paul matters more. "For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better" (Philippians 1:23, NKJV); "We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8, NKJV). The Witness study note takes "the releasing" as Paul's death and the "being with Christ" as his later resurrection; dying faithful was "better" because it would secure his heavenly reward.¹³ But Paul is weighing life for the Philippians against departing. If departing meant centuries of non-existence, it is hard to see why it would be "far better" for him. Jesus tells the Sadducees that God "is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him" (Luke 20:38, NKJV). At the Transfiguration "Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him" (Matthew 17:3, NKJV). John sees "the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God," crying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true" (Revelation 6:9-10, NKJV). Revelation is a book of visions, and its images are symbolic, but they assume that the martyrs are known to God and waiting, not that they have ceased to be.

Did the immortal soul come from Plato?

Witness publications say that Christians who believe in an immortal soul "get this teaching, not from the Bible, but from ancient Greek philosophy," and Insight quotes Plato's Phaedo.¹⁴ There is something to this: Plato taught that the soul is by nature divine and deathless, and later Christians borrowed his vocabulary. But the claim runs into two difficulties.

First, belief that the dead live on was present in Judaism before Christianity. The Book of Wisdom, in the Septuagint Old Testament the Orthodox Church received, says: "But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them" (Wisdom 3:1, RSV). Josephus reports that the Pharisees held "that all souls are incorruptible," while the Sadducees took away "the belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades."¹⁵ Josephus uses terms his Greek readers would know, so his wording should not be pressed, but Luke draws the same line: "Sadducees say that there is no resurrection—and no angel or spirit; but the Pharisees confess both" (Acts 23:8, NKJV). Paul sided with the Pharisees.

Second, the early Fathers argued with Plato rather than simply adopting him. In Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (c. 160), the old man who brings Justin to faith leads him to agree that the soul is not immortal in Plato's sense, since it had a beginning, and then says: "I do not say, indeed, that all souls die ... The souls of the pious remain in a better place, while those of the unjust and wicked are in a worse, waiting for the time of judgment."¹⁶ Theophilus of Antioch wrote that man "was by nature neither mortal nor immortal," but capable of both.¹⁷ St Athanasius wrote that "man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not."¹⁸ St John of Damascus said of the angels that they are immortal "not by nature but by grace. For all that has had beginning comes also to its natural end." Elsewhere he calls the human soul "immortal"; read together, the passages describe immortality as God's gift to a creature.¹⁹

{{strong: Several second-century Christian writers explicitly rejected the Platonic idea of a naturally immortal soul, while still teaching that souls survive death and await judgment.}} This complicates the usual account on both sides. Witness publications present the immortal soul as a Greek import; popular apologetics often presents the Christian soul as if it were Plato's. The Fathers held neither view. The soul lives on because God wills it, and its life after death is not yet the goal.

The Fathers also agree with Witnesses that the hope is resurrection. St Irenaeus (c. 180) taught that the souls of Christ's disciples "shall go away into the invisible place allotted to them by God, and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event; then receiving their bodies, and rising in their entirety, that is bodily, just as the Lord arose."²⁰ Justin warned that those who "say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven" should not be thought Christians.²¹ St John of Damascus put it simply: if death is "the separation of soul and body, resurrection surely is the re-union of soul and body."²² Our Church Fathers guide introduces each of these writers.

The Orthodox position

Dogma. The Creed confesses that Christ "shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead," and ends: "I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." The resurrection is bodily, as Christ's was, and the Church sings it every Pascha: "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!"²³ Witnesses share the hope of resurrection, but not this point: they teach that Jesus was raised "in the spirit," not with his flesh-and-blood body, and that the anointed are raised as spirits.²⁴

Common and constant tradition. The soul does not perish at death; it is immortal by grace, not by nature. The departed are alive to God, awaiting the resurrection and judgment. Orthodox teaching also speaks of a "particular" judgment at death, in which the departed receive a foretaste of blessedness or of punishment before the Last Judgment at Christ's coming.²⁵ The Church prays for them at every funeral and memorial, which would make no sense if they did not exist (see our guide to Orthodox funerals and memorial services). Hell is real and has no end. Our article What Happens to the Soul After Death? The Orthodox View sets this out more fully.

Theological opinion. Much is left open: what the departed experience before the judgment, how the "aerial toll houses" of some hymns and Lives should be understood (see Are Orthodox Christians Required to Believe in Aerial Toll Houses?), and how the fire of hell is to be pictured.

On that last point, the Orthodox picture of hell is not the torture chamber Witness literature attacks. Fr Thomas Hopko's catechism for the Orthodox Church in America says that at Christ's coming "His very presence will be the judgment": for those who love him, joy; for those who hate him, "the same Presence will be infinite torture, hell and eternal death." He concludes: "Thus it is the Church's spiritual teaching that God does not punish man by some material fire or physical torment."²⁶ Hopko draws on St Isaac the Syrian, who wrote (in A. J. Wensinck's translation): "Also I say that even those who are scourged in Hell are tormented with the scourgings of love."²⁷ See also Hell: When the Love of God Becomes Torment. The Catholic Catechism likewise teaches that the soul "is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death," and calls the chief punishment of hell "eternal separation from God."²⁸

Objections Witnesses raise, and some replies

"Eternal torment is incompatible with a God of love."

This is the moral heart of the Witness case, and it deserves sympathy: much preaching has made God sound like a torturer. The Orthodox reply is that hell is not God inflicting pain for its own sake but the state of a person who hates the love that holds all things in being. God is "a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29), experienced differently by those who love and those who refuse. This does not remove the grief of hell, but it answers the charge that the Church worships a sadist. On the Witness view, too, some are lost forever.

"The rich man and Lazarus is a parable."

Witnesses read Luke 16:19-31 as a parable about the religious leaders and the common people.²⁹ Many Christians agree it uses popular imagery that should not be mined for details. But Jesus told a story in which the dead are conscious, and he did not correct the picture. Irenaeus read it as showing that souls "continue to exist" and "remember the deeds which they did."³⁰

"Gehenna was the city's burning rubbish dump."

Witness literature says the valley was used "as a garbage dump," with "a fire constantly burning," so Jesus' words describe annihilation.⁵ Christian sermons often repeat the story, and older reference works accepted it. The evidence is weak. Lloyd Bailey found that it "seems to go back to" Rabbi David Kimhi's commentary on Psalm 27 (about 1200) and concluded: "There is no evidence that the valley was, in fact, a garbage dump."³¹ {{strong: The burning rubbish dump explanation of Gehenna rests on a medieval comment, not on ancient evidence.}} The valley's dark name more likely comes from the child sacrifices the prophets condemned (Jeremiah 7:31). This does not prove eternal conscious punishment, but it removes a popular argument against it.

A question in return: who is raised?

If death is total non-existence and God re-creates a person from his memory, is the raised person the same person or a perfect copy? Witnesses answer that God restores each one "with his unique identity, personality, and memories."⁶ Christians face puzzles about the resurrection body too. But the historic teaching keeps a thread of continuity that the Witness view lacks: the person who dies remains alive to God, and that same person is raised.

What we can say confidently

• Witnesses teach that the soul is the whole person, that the dead do not exist until the resurrection, that Sheol and Hades are the grave, and that Gehenna means permanent destruction.
• Their view of death reached Russell through conditionalists, especially George Storrs, as their own history acknowledges.
• The Hebrew nephesh often means the living person; Genesis 2:7 does not describe a separate soul placed in Adam.
• Jews before Christ, including the Pharisees and the author of Wisdom, believed that the dead live on.
• Several second-century Fathers rejected Plato's naturally immortal soul yet taught that souls survive death and await the resurrection.
• The garbage-dump account of Gehenna has no ancient evidence behind it.

What remains disputed

• How much Ecclesiastes and other Old Testament texts say about the state of the dead, and how Old Testament belief developed.
• The punctuation of Luke 23:43.
• Whether "everlasting punishment" (Matthew 25:46, NKJV; the New World Translation has "everlasting cutting-off") means conscious punishment or permanent destruction. Catholic and Orthodox teaching hold the first; Witnesses and some evangelicals hold the second.³²
• What the departed experience before the resurrection, which Orthodox tradition describes in images rather than definitions.
• Whether some Fathers, such as St Gregory of Nyssa, hoped for a final restoration of all; see Can the Church Fathers Disagree?

Conclusion

Jehovah's Witnesses are right that death is an enemy, that a human being is not a ghost in a machine, and that the Christian hope is the resurrection of the dead. Where they go wrong is in turning the real death of the person into the non-existence of the person. The Scriptures and the earliest Christians speak of the dead as living to God, held in his hand, waiting with the martyrs for the day when Christ raises them.

The Orthodox Church sings at Pascha that Christ has trampled down death by death. That victory does not wait for the last day to begin: Christ went down into death and filled it with his life, so that those who die in him are kept, not lost for a time. That is good news worth offering gently to a Witness neighbor. For a wider comparison, see Are Jehovah's Witnesses Christian? A Doctrinal and Historical Comparison.

Notes

1. "What Is the Soul?" Bible Questions Answered, jw.org (undated web article; accessed 16 October 2026). The page quotes Genesis 2:7 in the King James Version. Online.
2. Insight on the Scriptures, vol. 2 (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1988), "Soul," sections "Soul: A Living Creature," "Mortal and destructible" and on the "spirit" of Ecclesiastes 3:19-21. Online.
3. "What Happens When You Die?" Bible Questions Answered, jw.org (undated; accessed 16 October 2026). The page quotes Ecclesiastes 9:5 in an older New World Translation wording; the current revision reads "the dead know nothing at all." Online.
4. "Is Hell Real? What Is Hell According to the Bible?" Bible Questions Answered, jw.org (undated; accessed 16 October 2026). Online.
5. "What Is the Lake of Fire? Is It the Same as Hell or Gehenna?" Bible Questions Answered, jw.org (undated; accessed 16 October 2026). Online.
6. "What Is the Resurrection?" Bible Questions Answered, jw.org (undated; accessed 16 October 2026). Online.
7. "Questions From Readers," The Watchtower (Study Edition), September 2022, p. 26. Online.
8. Insight on the Scriptures, vol. 1 (1988), "Immortality," section "Kingdom Heirs Granted Immortality." Online.
9. Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1993), chap. 5, "Proclaiming the Lord's Return (1870-1914)," pp. 42-60. Online.
10. Jonathan Gomide, "Storrs, George (1796-1879)," Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Online (PDF).
11. Robert A. Peterson, "Undying Worm, Unquenchable Fire," Christianity Today, 23 October 2000, on David L. Edwards and John Stott, Evangelical Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (InterVarsity, 1988). Online.
12. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), Luke 23:43 and study note "Truly I tell you today," jw.org. Online.
13. New World Translation (Study Edition), Philippians 1:23 and study note "the releasing," jw.org. Online.
14. "What Is the Soul?" (note 1), section "Where belief in an immortal soul comes from"; Insight, vol. 2, "Soul" (note 2), quoting Plato, Phaedo 80-81.
15. Josephus, The Jewish War 2.8.14, trans. William Whiston (Project Gutenberg). Online. Wisdom 3:1 is quoted from the RSV (Catholic Edition, which contains the book).
16. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 5, trans. Marcus Dods and George Reith, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1 (New Advent). Online.
17. Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2.27, trans. Marcus Dods, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 2 (New Advent). Online.
18. Athanasius, On the Incarnation 4.6, trans. Archibald Robertson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 4 (New Advent). Online.
19. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 2.3 ("Concerning angels") and 2.12 ("Concerning man"), trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, NPNF 2nd series, vol. 9 (New Advent). Online.
20. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.31.2, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1 (New Advent). Online.
21. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 80 (translation as note 16). Online.
22. John of Damascus, Exact Exposition 4.27, "Concerning the Resurrection" (translation as note 19). Online.
23. Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, "The Symbol of Faith," Orthodox Church in America (online); Paschal Troparion, in "Selected Liturgical Hymns," Orthodox Church in America (online).
24. "Jesus' Body: Was It Flesh or Spirit After His Resurrection?" Bible Questions Answered, jw.org (undated; accessed 16 October 2026), citing 1 Peter 3:18. Online. On the anointed, see notes 6 and 8.
25. Wendy Paula Nicholson, "Judgment," in John Anthony McGuckin, ed., The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). The entry cites Luke 16:19-31 and 23:43 for the particular judgment. Page number not verified.
26. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 4, Spirituality, "Heaven and Hell" (Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America; online edition). Online.
27. Isaac of Nineveh, Treatise 27, in Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh, trans. A. J. Wensinck (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1923), p. 136. Online.
28. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 366 and 1035 (vatican.va). Para. 366; para. 1035.
29. "Who Were the Rich Man and Lazarus?" Bible Questions Answered, jw.org (undated; accessed 16 October 2026). Online.
30. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.34.1 (translation as note 20). Online.
31. Lloyd R. Bailey, "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell," Biblical Archaeologist 49, no. 3 (September 1986): 187-191, at 188-189.
32. New World Translation (Study Edition), Matthew 25:46 and study note "cutting-off," jw.org. Online. On evangelical annihilationism, see note 11.

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982 (Bible Gateway).
• The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (for Wisdom 3:1; Bible Gateway).
• Josephus. The Jewish War. Trans. William Whiston. Project Gutenberg.

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Trypho. Trans. Marcus Dods and George Reith. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.
• Theophilus of Antioch. To Autolycus. Trans. Marcus Dods. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. Trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.
• Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation. Trans. Archibald Robertson. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 4.
• John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Trans. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 9.
• Isaac of Nineveh. Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh. Trans. A. J. Wensinck. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1923.
• Hopko, Thomas. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 4, Spirituality. Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America (online edition at oca.org).
• Orthodox Church in America. "Selected Liturgical Hymns." oca.org.

Other scholarship

• McGuckin, John Anthony, ed. The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011 (entry "Judgment," by Wendy Paula Nicholson).
• Bailey, Lloyd R. "Gehenna: The Topography of Hell." Biblical Archaeologist 49, no. 3 (1986): 187-191.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church. Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va).
• Gomide, Jonathan. "Storrs, George (1796-1879)." Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists.
• Peterson, Robert A. "Undying Worm, Unquenchable Fire." Christianity Today, 23 October 2000.

Sources from the tradition being discussed (Jehovah's Witnesses)

• Jehovah's Witnesses. Bible Questions Answered series, jw.org: "What Is the Soul?"; "What Happens When You Die?"; "Is Hell Real? What Is Hell According to the Bible?"; "What Is the Lake of Fire? Is It the Same as Hell or Gehenna?"; "What Is the Resurrection?"; "Who Were the Rich Man and Lazarus?"; "Jesus' Body: Was It Flesh or Spirit After His Resurrection?" (accessed 16 October 2026).
• Insight on the Scriptures. 2 vols. Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1988 (online edition): "Immortality" (vol. 1); "Soul" (vol. 2).
• "Questions From Readers." The Watchtower (Study Edition), September 2022, p. 26.
• New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), with study notes on Matthew 25:46, Luke 23:43 and Philippians 1:23. jw.org.
• Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom. Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1993.