I’d like to humbly offer five reasons the 144,000 witnesses comprised of 12,000 celibate men from each of the twelve tribes of ethnic Israel are actually 144,000 witnesses comprised of 12,000 celibate men from the twelve tribes of ethnic Israel…
1. What John wrote makes perfect sense as it stands written, and there is no better way to write it.
2. The verse above that passage (vs 3) calls these people sealed servants of God, as a subset of all believers.
3. Chapter 14 describes them as celibate men, not as all the redeemed.
4. All the redeemed are sealed by the Spirit, but these men are sealed on the forehead as well.
5. My main reason for interpreting the 144,000 as 144,000 is because that is—contrary to popular belief—how numbers are used in the Book of Revelation.
Read Clint Archer’s entire article here.
“Now I heard the number of those who were marked with the seal, one hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed from all the tribes of the people of Israel: From the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Zebulun, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed.” (Rev 7:4–8 NET)
