Revelation 14:1-5

“Then I looked, and there was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion! And with him were one hundred forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the one hundred forty-four thousand who have been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins; these follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been redeemed from humankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found; they are blameless.”

Question:

Jehovah’s Witnesses use this passage very much. How could only 144,000 live with Jehovah?

Comment:

It's always tricky to insist on a literal reading of numbers referred to in the Bible. Forty years in the wilderness, 40 days on the ark, 40 days in the wilderness—there was no one around counting days. Numbers are highly symbolic—40 describes a sense of completion; in other words, the Hebrews were not necessarily in the wilderness for a literal 40 years—they were there as long as they needed to be, and they left when the wilderness experience was complete, and had served its purpose.

When I was growing up, we used "a million dollars" to describe a vast, unimaginable amount, as in “I'll bet you a million dollars you can't climb that tree.” Today, of course, inflation has required that we use “billion” or “trillion” or “zillion” or other forms of -illion to make the same point.

It’s the same here: 144,000 is a multiple of 12, and we’ve already met, by this time in the Revelation, the 24 wise men in the throne room of God who could not open the Scroll of Life. These represent the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples of the Christian faith. To multiply them together suggests a vast number of believers from both faiths. It was meant to express expansiveness, not limitation. It tells us that all those who maintain the right consciousness will be part of the kingdom of heaven. And that those who lack that consciousness will remain in this dualistic world until they have learned the lessons and made the choices that will align them with kingdom consciousness.

It would be a strange—and unloving—God indeed who barred the 144,001st person from the kingdom, simply because heaven was full. The kingdom of heaven is as infinite as its Source.

Blessings!

Rev. Ed