Who ARE the 144,00??

TallTexan

There have been a couple of posts recently about the 144,000. Since the WT theory is bogus, I ask the forum, "Who are the 144,000"? I know the traditional view of some religions is that they are 144,000 literal Jews who will convert near the GT to witness to the Jewish population. Not sure that makes a whole lot of sense to me. I guess it only makes sense if one still believes that the Jews are somehow special to God. Oh, and for those of you who don't believe in the Bible, this thread is not for the whole "Revelation/the Bible is a crock of shit" posts. I respect your opinions, but I'm asking a legitimate question for those of use who DO believe in the Bible.....

RR

I personally believe the Society is right in this regards, that teh 144,00o are members of the Body of Christ.

RR

ohiocowboy

Hi! Yes, I just posted a similar thread. We were programmed to look at Rev. 14:1 while in the Dubs, which shows the number 144,000. But what we were not taught to do is read further and see in fact as Rev. 14:4 shows, it is only MEN who number the 144,000, and goes on to say that they are all virgins. I never realized this until last night, while reading parts of the NWT, and when I saw it, it literally shocked me to read this. I wonder how the Dubs would explain this...If the were to say that Rev 14:4 is symbolic, it would also show that Rev. 14:1 must also be symbolic too, and that would ruin their whole 144,000 theory. I guess that is why they do not want their slaves to read the Bible for themselves, as they would find things such as this that would discredit them to no end. In the JW cult, Men and Women are comprised of the 144,000, but Rev. 14:1 shows something different. I would love to ask a JW about this...

XQsThaiPoes

The 144k are just born again christians. The only real debate is if the number is finite and literal or symbolic.

Con sidering they went from a Jew Gentile classification to a Christian heathen classification it is not supprising that in the latter works the writers tried to make a new two class system. People with Jesus and "the great crowd" of those with out that benefited from jesus sacrifice anyway by being freed from death.

The problem is where dose everyone end up. In all truth the people that wrote the bible did not know. They just know you can be ressurected on earth or to heaven. Infact the bible only talks about individual cases of earthly ressurection. The speak about going to heaven is always in visions or generalizations.

Ohio um there have been over 144k anointed JWs so they need to explain than before they explain the barmitzvah club. ANd Jws do read their bible. It is just they dont care about what it means in general like an exjw would. THe would get to revalations 14:4 and say hmm that must be symbolic because it is unrealistic for god to only let jewish boys into heaven.

chilliemoe

http://www.carm.org/witnesses.htm I would advise you to look at this website.

Ohiocowboy= ?But what we were not taught to do is read further?

How can your religion tell you that you can read one section of the Bible but not the other? Either the entire Bible is corrupt and untrue and, if that is the case, than you shouldn?t be reading it anyway, OR you religion is trying to hide something from you be telling you to read a certain versus, but not the preceding or proceeding versus?.

?If the were to say that Rev 14:4 is symbolic, it would also show that Rev. 14:1 must also be symbolic too, and that would ruin their whole 144,000 theory?

?I guess that is why they do not want their slaves to read the Bible for themselves, as they would find things such as this that would discredit them to no end?

There are gigantic flaws within the Jehovah?s Witness following. There are many unfulfilled prophesies. The flaws are dealt with by telling you ?not to read into the History of JW and not to look at ?OLD? publishing?s?. If you don?t look at the publishing?s then you would never find errors. If you don?t look at the History then you will never find misleading events.

The unfulfilled prophesies are dealt with by telling you that the ?light is getting brighter?, as if they are becoming more intelligent as time passes, and that God or Jehovah is revealing more and more information as time goes on. That would suggest that the men in

TMS

I took the liberty of adding a zero and subtracting a question mark.

. . . but to your question:

The 144,000 are made up of two primary groups both of narrow ethnicity.

The bulk and first to be invited were apostate Jews who rejected the religion of their forefathers and joined a first century sect.

The last 30,000 or so were individuals primarily of European descent living in the United States during the latter part of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th century. The females of this group wore pillbox hats. The males wore the Sunday go-to-meeting clothes common to North America in those years.

Over the years since 1935 a few suffering schizophrenia, delusions of grandeur, plagued by visions or pure egotism stepped forward as "replacements" for some who proved unfaithful and had to be "lopped off."

An extremely small sampling of persons of color also got the calling.

tms

avishai

Why the hell is it that they say that all the rest of revalation is symbolic, but the 144,000 is literal?

Sorry, TT, just read the rest of your post. I'll try to respect your wishes *

* BUT..........Revelation/the Bible is a crock of shit!!!!!!!

peacefulpete

Be aware that I'm not making judgement calls here but offering some simple direction. The book of Revelation was sewn together from Jewish mystic literature and very early christian exegesis of OT prophetics, later editors made some minor additions. The numbers are meaningful to the author as they carry astrological symbolism or represent gemetria (number for letter formulas). It is difficult to impossible to be certain what the author of Rev 14 intended as there were many ways of intrpreting gemetria (hence it's appeal) but here is one respectible attempt:

Aleph has the Kabbalistic value = 1
Daleth has the Kabbalistic value = 4
Mem has the Kabbalistic value = 40

So, 144 (or 144,000) is the number of Adam.

Adam is symbolic, it is in reference to Adam Kadmon, the Cosmos Human, the Heavenly Man.

Thus, Revelation 7:4 means that those who become the Adam Kadmon will enter Heaven.

Likewise, the Twelve Tribes represent the Twelve Zodical Signs under which the self realization of the Adam take place. The 12 foundation stones are the 12 'birth' stones of the lesser Jewish zodiac in correct order by months.

TallTexan

Why the hell is it that they say that all the rest of revalation is symbolic, but the 144,000 is literal?
Sorry, TT, just read the rest of your post. I'll try to respect your wishes *
* BUT..........Revelation/the Bible is a crock of shit!!!!!!!

Lol, Avashi.....that was pretty funny. I agree with you, however, that since the rest of the damn book is supposed to be symbolic, why do they take this ONE thing as literal??? Oh wait, I know - it's so they can create a class of 'super witnesses' and make the rest of the r&f powerless 'other sheep'....

Terry

The Jews had a problem when it came to numbers and math and figuring. For one thing, they had no numbers! They used their alphabet as a substitute for a second set of symbols.

Imagine that!

If we did that and I wanted to write my age I'd say I was (e g) years old. (a=1,b=2, etc) and 57 would be the result. (e=5, g=7).

As a result of this backward and cumbersome nonsense it was inevitible that certain numbers would also look exactly like words! Superstitious minds made the connection instantly! Gematria was born.

Here is a Google result on Gematria:

Definitions of gematria on the Web:

A method of Torah interpretation which involves assigning numercal values to words and names, and looking for correspondences between words or passages which have the same value. This method was used in mystical interpretations of the Scripture. The techniques are a little dense and twisted, but they do result in a variety of interesting coincidences...or are they?
www.atomick.net/fayelevine/pk/gloss.shtml
Gematria is a system for calculating the numerical equivalence of letters, words, and phrases. This system is used for the purpose of gaining insight into interrelating concepts.
www.inner.org/glossary/gloss_g.htm
Homiletical rule which associates words or phrases with other words or phrases whose letters add up to the same numerical value. This is possible because each letter of the Hebrew alphabet stands for a unique number.
www.ceo.parra.catholic.edu.au/re/readroom/sacread/glossary.html
Now, with the above in mind, there came to be a whole branch of Judaism devoted to tricking out scripture to make it resonate with "hidden meanings". This practice, by the way, was common among the Greeks as well. Why? Because they too used their alphabet as a double for numbers. They ended up with a bunch of silly nonsense too.
My point? The use of numbers in the Bible has a whole other use that was meaningful to Hebrews. Numbers became supernatural symbols. They became detached from a literal everyday use.
Keep that in mind when you start pondering the meaning of some quantity in Scripture.
Terry

Who ARE the 144,00??

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