Many evangelicals claim that during the tribulation 144,000 Jews will be marching through the world proclaiming the gospel, resulting in the conversion of the “great multitude which no man can
number” (Rev 7:9) who are martyred for their faith during that time (Rev 7:14 & Rev 6:9). But do they really know that? Does the bible actually teach this anywhere? The truth is that this concept is a case of if we believe A and we believe B then C must surely be the case. What if A is incorrect in the first place, or if A + B does not equal C?
What I think we should start by affirming though is that the 144,000 are Jews. (Yes, really, not elite Jehovah’s Witnesses after all.)
Revelation chapter 7, verse 4 reads:
And I heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed.
(Revelation 7:4)
…and it goes on to specifically name each of the tribes.
If we understand the unconditional nature of the Abrahamic covenant, and the clear statement that
all Israel will eventually be saved (in Romans 11:25-27), then there is absolutely no justification for not taking the specific mention of the tribes at face value.
The scene we have in Revelation 7 is really not too difficult to understand. In Revelation 6 we see the opening of the first six seals during the time of the tribulation prior to the final outpouring of divine wrath. At the start of Revelation 8 we see the opening of the seventh seal and the time of wrath
beginning. Revelation 7 is a pause in between while God places a seal on 144,000 Jews who he wants
to protect from the wrath to come. Christians are said to be “sealed with the Holy Spirit”, so this may refer to a moment when they supernaturally receive the Holy Spirit and become born again as
well, though it may also just be God marking them out to be spared (without them necessarily even
knowing it).
Also in chapter 7 we see again the Martyr’s of the tribulation that we saw in Revelation 6:9-11:
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were
wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.
(Revelation 7:9)
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These are mostly gentiles (though could include Jews), since they come out of all the nations. They are also a great multitude and it’s clear from the Revelation 6 context that they are those killed
during the intense persecution of believers that arises during the tribulation.
The assumption that is made by pre-tribulation rapture advocates is that, since there are obviously great multitudes of gentile believers present during the tribulation, and since 144,000 Jews are
sealed in the same chapter that mentions them (now martyred), then the 144,000 Jews must be the
evangelists that proclaim the gospel to them during the tribulation and bring them to saving faith.
But here’s the problem. In the flow of the first seven seals in Revelation chapters 6-8 the 144,000 are only sealed at the end of the tribulation (after the sixth seal), after the persecution and martyrdom of most of the believers (during the fifth seal). The order is all wrong for them to be the evangelists who bring the great multitude to faith. On the other hand pre-wrath or post-trib theories on the
rapture don’t suffer from this problem since they simply conclude that the great multitude are the
genuine Christians in the world who entered the tribulation, or were saved during it, and that the
Jews spared during the final cataclysms are just that, not necessarily anything more. If anything (in terms of evangelists) they may be the group that brings Israel as a whole to saving faith in Messiah right at the end of the time of Jacobs Trouble, precipitating the return of Messiah.
So, a relatively straight forward chapter but one often clouded by a great deal of potentially
mythological speculations.
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RISE OF THE BEAST