---
title: Mark 12:26
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-12-26/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-12-26.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Mark 12:26
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Mark 12:26

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> But concerning the dead rising, have you not read about the burning bush in the Book of Moses, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "But concerning the dead being raised up, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account about the thornbush, that God said to him: 'I am the God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob'?"

## JW Usage

The Watchtower reads the burning-bush quotation as a promise of future resurrection — the patriarchs will live again because God remembers them and intends to raise them. The present-tense form of "I AM the God of Abraham" is treated as a covenant promise rather than a claim that the patriarchs are currently alive. Soul-sleep doctrine requires this reading.

## Protestant Usage

The argument Jesus is making against the Sadducees only works if the present-tense "I AM" is doing real work. He cites Exodus 3:6 — spoken to Moses centuries after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died — and treats God's present-tense self-identification as proof that the patriarchs are still in relationship with God. If they were non-existent, God would have said "I was their God." Jesus's use of the present tense is the load-bearing word. Pair Mark 12:26 with Luke 20:38 (Luke's parallel adds "for to him all are alive") and the case against soul sleep is built from Jesus's own argumentation, not from a proof-text inserted at a tangent.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [He Is Not the God of the Dead but of the Living](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/god-of-the-living.md) — Matthew 22:31–32, Mark 12:26–27 [Soul & Hell]