Luke 22:19
Luke 22:1919And He took the bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body, given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
The Watchtower applies Jesus's "do this in remembrance of me" only to the 144,000 anointed Witnesses. The annual Memorial draws over 20 million attendees worldwide, but only the small "anointed remnant" (about 24,500 in 2025) actually partake of the bread and cup. The rest pass the emblems untouched. Jesus's word "this" is read as referring to a commemoration that includes attendance, not to the eating itself; the universal "all of you" of is restricted to the anointed class.
Read v. 19 with vv. 17-20 as a single command. Jesus says "do this in remembrance of me" — and the "this" is the eating of the bread and the drinking of the cup. He does not say "watch this" or "attend this." makes the proclamation explicit: "as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." The proclamation IS the eating and drinking. Pair with ("drink from it, all of you") and ("we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf"). The Watchtower's restriction makes 99.88% of its memorial attendees spectators at the very meal Jesus instituted as participation.
The NWT renders the Greek touto estin to sōma mou as "this means my body" rather than the standard "this is my body." The substitution of "means" for "is" pre-decides the long-running debate about the eucharistic words: rather than letting Jesus's "is" carry whatever weight it carries, the NWT translates an interpretation directly into the text. The same substitution appears at v. 20 ("this cup means the new covenant"). Standard English translations preserve "is" precisely because Jesus's word — touto estin — is the verb of identification, not of symbolic equivalence. The "means" rendering forecloses sacramental and real-presence readings before exegesis begins. The NWT also renders hyper hymōn ("for you") as "in your behalf" — slightly weakening the substitutionary force.