Luke 23:42
Luke 23:4242Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!”
The Watchtower teaches that the dying man will be resurrected to life on a paradise earth during the thousand-year reign, not that he went anywhere on the day he died. The NWT's punctuation of the reply supports this: Jesus is understood to be saying "I tell you today" — making a promise on that day about a future paradise — rather than promising the man would be with him that same day.
This is the diagnostic question for any gospel: could it be given to someone with an hour left? Look at what the man had. No baptism into any organisation. No record of service, meetings or study. No time to demonstrate anything. He was a convicted criminal with both hands nailed down, and all he could produce was a sentence: Jesus, remember me when you get into your Kingdom. Jesus did not tell him to first learn accurate knowledge, dedicate himself and prove faithful to the end. He answered with a promise. That is the whole argument, and it needs no Greek. Ask a Witness kindly: if the message you brought me this morning cannot be given to a dying man, is it good news? Then read — to the one who does not work but puts faith in the God who declares the ungodly righteous, his faith is counted as righteousness. The dying-thief question is not a debating trick. It is a test of whether a message is a gospel at all. A gospel that requires time cannot save someone who has none. Compare , , .
The reply in verse 43 is where the NWT differs. It reads "Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in Paradise," placing the comma after "today" so that the word attaches to the act of telling. Every other major English translation puts it before: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." The earliest Greek manuscripts carry no punctuation, so this cannot be settled by the text alone. But "truly I tell you" is a fixed formula Jesus uses dozens of times in the Gospels, and nowhere else is it extended with "today" — the addition would be redundant, since he could hardly be speaking on another day. The placement matters doctrinally: with the comma moved, the promise loses its timing, which is what the teaching of an earthly resurrection much later requires.