Answering Jehovah's Witnesses by Jason Evert

Author:Jason Evert [Evert, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781933919898
Publisher: Catholic Answers
Published: 2014-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

11

Who Goes to Heaven?

God has revealed that in the end there will be an earthly class and a heavenly class of believers. Only the anointed 144,000 of Revelation 7 and 14 will enter heaven, while the remainder who are not annihilated will live forever as a great crowd on earth in paradise. They will exist in peace as in the Garden of Eden, without aches, pains, disease, famine, violence, wrinkled skin, or gray hair.1 This is the plan God had intended for man before the fall, and he will restore this ideal state. Psalm 37 clearly teaches that the “evildoers themselves will be cut off, but those hoping in Jehovah are the ones that will possess the earth. . . . The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.” Jesus reiterates this in his Sermon on the Mount, promising some that they will “inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:5)

Revelation 7 and 14 are the two passages most commonly used by the Watchtower to support its idea that heaven’s total occupancy will be 144,000. Here is what the passages say:

I saw four angels standing upon the four corners of the earth . . . and I saw another angel . . . saying: “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the slaves of our God on their foreheads.” And I heard the number of those that were sealed, a hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the sons of Israel: Out of the tribe of Judah twelve thousand sealed; out of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand. . . . After these things I saw, and, look! a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. (Rev. 7:1–9)

And I saw, and, look! the Lamb standing upon the Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads . . . the hundred and forty four thousand who had been bought from the earth. These are the ones that did not defile themselves with women; in fact, they are virgins . . . and no falsehood was found in their mouths. (Rev. 14:1–5)

What the Bible says here is not compatible with the Watchtower understanding of these passages: If Revelation 7 and 14 are to be taken literally, there would be 144,000 Jewish male virgins that were taken from a square-shaped earth and are now worshiping a lamb in heaven. This would mean that St. Peter (not a virgin), the Blessed Virgin Mary (not a male), and Charles Taze Russell (not a Jew) could not be in heaven. Reading one verse literally while taking the rest of the chapter symbolically—in this particular case the very next verses—is dangerous and faulty exegesis.

Like the rest of the details given about the group, the number 144,000 should not be taken literally.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.