If all Christians are going to be kings and priests, who will they rule over ?
Number of Christians in First Century
by garlic81 13 Replies latest jw friends
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WTWizard
I believe it has to be more than 144,000.
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PSacramento
John of Patmos had a fetish for numbers and symbols from what one gathers from Revelation.
I am sure that all can make a solid case for what they take as literal and what they take as symbolic since good Ol John is dead and isn't here to refute it, but it doesn't change that ALL interpreting things their own way and while thatis all good and fine, we need to remember that no one salvation should be based on something subject to such a huge range of interpretations.
The WT sees the Vatican ( or saw at one point) as the " great whore of Babylon", I think that has now passed on the all of christendom, of course that funny part is that the vatican has so little influence on the majority of people its not even funny !
Even on the majority of RC.
To insinuate that christendom is infuencing the world as it is depicted in Revelations shows that the JW's don't get around much !
LOL !
Heck, Between India and China alone we have over 2 billion people that aren't influenced by it ! -
Leolaia
The question of whether the numbers in Revelation 7 are figurative or literal actually misses a more fundamental point. The Society regards the 144,000 as representing the totality of spiritual Israel, limiting the "heavenly hope" and inclusion in the New Covenant only to this group. This fails to recognize the purpose and literary genre of the ennumeration of the 144,000 in 7:4-8. It is a military census (which ennumerates the number of people conscripted to battle) based on the OT model found in Numbers 1:20-46, 2:3-32, 26:2-51; 2 Samuel 24:1-9; 1 Chronicles 27:1-24. That is why the 144,000 consists of virgin males, for Israelite soldiers in the OT are required to be ritually chaste (Deuteronomy 23:9-10; 1 Samuel 21:5; 2 Samuel 11:8-11). The repetition of ek phulés "from the tribe of" in Revelation 7:4-8 recalls the ek tés phulés "from the tribe of" in Numbers 1:21, 23, etc. (LXX). Such censuses also often draw equal numbers from each tribe, like the 12,000 chosen from each tribe in Revelation. In Numbers 31:4-6, 1,000 troops were dispatched from each tribe against Midian; the size of a battalion was 1,000 troops. Interestingly, the 144,000 in Revelation is composed of (12 x 12) x 1,000, such that the total of 12,000 soldiers from Israel sent against Midian in Numbers is what each tribe would furnish in the much greater war in Revelation (i.e. 12,000 troops x 12 tribes = 144,000). It should be obvious that a selection of people "from a tribe" do not represent everyone in the tribe. It is a selection. That the 144,000 represents only a portion of Israel is indicated as well by the mention of the innumerable crowd from all nations in the same chapter. The promise made by God to Abraham in Genesis has innumerability and internationality built into it; the descendents of Abraham (= the "seed of Abraham" in Galatians 3:29 and Romans 9:3-8) are said to be "too many to be counted ... like the dust on the ground ... like the sand on the seashore ... as many as the stars of heaven", and on account of their number they are distributed throughout the nations through the diaspora. That is why census-taking of the whole nation, or of all those "twenty years old and under", was frowned upon in the OT; it would reduce to a number what is supposed to be innumerable (1 Chronicles 27:23-24). So the innumerable "great multitude" of Revelation 7 has in view the nation of Israel as a whole, whereas the 144,000 represent a selection from each tribe.
So even if the number 144,000 is regarded as literal, it is only a portion of Israel as a whole.