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“However, think of the spiritual paradise that we now enjoy. Compared with the sick condition that we once were in, we have been healed spiritually.”

 – October 15, 2004, Watchtower –

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Nowhere is the spiritual blindness foretold in Isaiah more painfully apparent than in the persistent belief that a spiritual paradise presently exists among Jehovah’s Witnesses. While the exact expression “spiritual paradise” is not found in the Bible, the concept of a trouble-free, Edenic, spiritual haven certainly is. However, what exactly is it? This chapter will examine that question along with the Watchtower’s claim that Jehovah’s Witnesses are currently living in the spiritual paradise the Bible describes. 

The October 15, 2004, Watchtower carried a study article, intriguingly entitled: “Paradise—For You?” The article reinforces the long-held belief that Jehovah’s Witnesses are living in the biblically foretold spiritual paradise of God’s making. The article rightly points out that Paul’s rapturous vision of the “third heaven” was spiritual in nature. The apostle was likely privileged with a visionary foregleam of the spiritual paradise Isaiah prophesied about. Not to be overlooked, though, the obvious reason that God gave Paul an inspired glimpse of paradise in the first place, was because those anointed Christians were not then living in any sort of spiritual paradise. It existed only in a vision—a supernatural revelation of things to come. 

The question is: What has changed so that Christians are now living in a spiritual paradise even though the apostles and early Christians did not enjoy such a blessed condition? Is the organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses somehow superior to the congregation Chris