Since the heavenly hope was the only “calling” throughout the centuries until the point in time of the earthly hope in the 20th century (according to wt commentary), such people missed their boat to go to heaven and are hopefully resurrected only as humans -righteous and unrighteous. Too bad. ( Or are toast; that’s worse. if no earthly hope back then) A couple of questions arise: Without the preaching back then and an apostate christianity without pure worship being restored until 1919, how would all those millions of people qualify to go to heaven based on what standard?
And why extend the heavenly hope to millions if there is only room for 144,000? Particularly because the other option is eternal death—but then again no because if they didn’t qualify to go to heaven back then, they will be resurrected as humans after the gt. Either that or most of our ancestors are toast because they didn’t qualify for the heavenly hope—Even grandparents born in the 1800’s and that entire generation of people who heard the kingdom message from the Bible students and rejected it and having only the heavenly hope is toast. And many people all over the earth that never heard the kingdom message at all or of Jehovah only had the heavenly hope without even knowing about it. Unless the heavenly hope was not for everyone throughout the centuries and the earthly hope also existed throughout the centuries . But if there was no hope except for only the heavenly hope back then, all those people are toast except for a tiny number that go to heaven. The problem with that is that most humans back then never had a chance to begin with even if they all qualified because there is only room for 144,000 —and also need to make room for the anointed of 1914 that also are part of the limited figure.
We do know however, that a limited amount of people go to heaven and everybody else that is found in the book of life, stays on the planet.