As my wife and I were driving home from mass today, we passed the local JW Kingdom Hall and started discussing our JW “neighbors”. During our discussion, my wife raised an interesting question about them…
If we’re not mistaken; they believe only 144,000 people will be saved at the end of the world, right? And if THAT’S true… why do they spend so much time and energy evangelizing? Aren’t some of them afraid that a new convert might take “their” spot in heaven?
What’s the deal?
JWs and former JWs are especially welcome to respond.
Thank you.
I was a former Jehovah’s Witness in my teens and 20s before returning to the Catholic Church wherein I was baptized and originally raised.
The official teaching of the JWs is that only 144,000 people have been chosen by God through the Holy Spirit to have a heavenly hope–and can expect to live in heaven with God and rule with Christ over the world to come.
The reason for this belief is due to their literal interpretation of the number 144,000 in the book of Revelation. (Revelation 7:4; 14:1) They support their belief that this number has to be literal because of what Christ said at Luke 12:32:
Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.
Since those the Father will give the kingdom are described as a “little flock,” they reason that those who will be saved to receive heavenly life are greatly limited.
Why Preach If Only A Limited Number…?
Up until very recently, the teaching was that Christ began to choose who would be of the 144,000 from the time of the apostles onward. Since the Witnesses grew to almost 90,000 by the 1930s the then president of the Watchtower Society, J.F. Rutherford, claimed to be enlightened by God to proclaim that the door to heaven had been shut in 1935. Since then all new members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses could only hope to live on earth after Armageddon had passed.
New converts are told to believe exclusively in living on a Paradise earth for eternity under the rule of Christ and his 144,000. While often claiming that hope in living on a paradise earth is a doctrine unique to their religion, it is actually borrowed from the Catholic Church’s 2000-year-old doctrine on the future transformation of the physical universe.–For more information see the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1042, “The Hope of the New Heaven and the New Earth.”
For almost 100 years the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been preaching in order to gather people for life on a paradise earth, mainly because they believe that at about 6000 years after the creation of Adam society as we know it will be destroyed by God. Only those siding with the religion of the Jehovah’s Witnesses will survive the slaughter. Their preaching is two-fold, they claim, not only to make converts but to warn those who are likely to refuse their “life-saving” message.
Problems and Current Changes
The problem is that the Witnesses have set several dates for this “end of 6,000 years,” most notably in 1975 and then later before the 20th century was over. They have also used the dwindling number of those among them who claim to have the heavenly hope–only around 8000 when I left in 1989–as an indicator that the end was near. According to them the yearly decreasing remnant number of the “little flock” (with no more being added to their number) is “proof positive” that Armageddon will be visited on “this generation” (a claim they have been making since the 1870s).
But after the year 2000 the number of the “little flock” has increased by almost 5,000! Instead of dwindling the number now stands at 13,204. The current Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses has claimed to receive “new light” from Heaven instructing them to dismiss J.F. Rutherford’s claim that 1935 was the year that the hope to heavenly life was closed.
A Powerplay Ensuing
There does seem to be some fear that newer ones will take the spot of those who in the past claimed to be of the 144,000 among their number, so much so that a couple of years ago the Governing Body changed a major teaching that their religion held for about a century. The official doctrine had been that the “little flock” were those to whom God had specifically written the Bible to. Having this special knowledge they in turn acted as a teaching class to others, especially those who were being gathered to the hope of life in an earthly paradise.
With the number of those claiming to have a heavenly hope increasing (a hope that is decided personally, by the way), the Governing Body has just recently claimed “new light” from Heaven revealing that only they, the Governing Body, are the only members of the special teaching class to whom spiritual enlightenment is granted. They also teach that any who claimed to have the heavenly hope after 1935 (even though that year no longer means anything) are subject to disbelief, with pride and even mental instability a likelihood basis for their claim.
It should be noted that simple calculations puts the number of Jehovah’s Witnesses who throughout their religion’s history have claimed to be of the limited 144,000 at about 103,000. Since they claim that the apostles and first century Christians (and many others through the centuries up until the 1800s) were of this number, their current interpretations are proving to be more of a thorn in their side than a hope.
