Only the 144,000 are born again

Jesus said to Nicodemus, “Unless anyone is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3, New World Translation). And: “Unless anyone is born from water and spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God” (3:5).

Jesus says “unless anyone,” which states a condition for everyone, not a privilege for a few. To “see” the Kingdom is to experience it, to come under its rule and share its life. The other sheep hope to live under God’s Kingdom on earth. On Jesus’ words, that hope requires being born again.

Jesus goes on: “Do not be amazed because I told you: You people must be born again” (3:7). The “you” is plural. Then, in the same conversation, comes the best-known verse in the Bible: “God loved the world so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life” (3:16). The new birth and everlasting life are offered in the same breath, to the same “everyone.”

John repeats this in his first letter, with no limit: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God” (1 John 5:1). The only qualification he names is belief.

Watch Tower teaching holds that the anointed know their calling because God’s spirit bears witness with their spirit (Romans 8:16), and that the other sheep do not have that witness. Read the chapter around that verse.

A few verses earlier Paul writes, “if anyone does not have Christ’s spirit, this person does not belong to him” (Romans 8:9). He does not describe a second group who belong to Christ without his spirit. Then: “all who are led by God’s spirit are indeed God’s sons” (8:14). And then the verse about the witness: “The spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children” (8:16). The witness of the spirit is not a mark that sets a few Christians apart. It is what every Christian has, because every Christian has the spirit.

Paul says the same to the Galatians. “You are all, in fact, sons of God through your faith in Christ Jesus… There is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in union with Christ Jesus. Moreover, if you belong to Christ, you are really Abraham’s offspring, heirs with reference to a promise” (Galatians 3:26-29). “All,” “all,” “if you belong to Christ.” Paul’s whole point is that there are no longer classes among God’s people.

Ephesians 4:4 is short and direct: “One body there is, and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling.” Paul is writing to a whole congregation, and he names their unity as the thing to protect: one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

If the Watch Tower teaching were right, a congregation would have two hopes, a heavenly one for a few and an earthly one for most. Paul says there is one.

That does not mean the Bible’s hope is “going to heaven” in place of the earth. Revelation’s last chapters show the holy city coming down out of heaven, and God’s tent being with mankind on a renewed earth (21:1-3). The one hope Paul speaks of is life with God in his new creation, shared by all his people. You can keep the earthly hope. What Paul leaves no room for is a second-class hope for a second class of Christians.

At the Last Supper Jesus took bread and said, “This means my body, which is to be given in your behalf. Keep doing this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19, New World Translation). He did not set the bread before his disciples to be passed and declined. He told them to eat.

Twenty years later, Paul passed on the same instruction to the whole congregation in Corinth, a mixed group of ordinary believers, many of them recent converts. “For whenever you eat this loaf and drink this cup, you keep proclaiming the death of the Lord, until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). He warns them not to eat “unworthily.” His answer is self-examination: “First let a man approve himself after scrutiny, and only then let him eat of the loaf and drink of the cup” (11:28). Examining yourself leads to eating, not to declining.

Nothing in Paul’s letter suggests that most of the congregation should watch while a few partake. Jesus gave the command to remember him by eating and drinking to all his disciples, and taking the bread and wine obeys it. It claims nothing over anyone else.

Revelation is a book of visions, full of symbols: a Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, a woman clothed with the sun, beasts with many heads. Watch Tower teaching itself reads much of it symbolically. The 144,000 are said to come from the twelve tribes of Israel, 12,000 from each (7:4-8), and Witnesses understand the tribes as symbolic, standing for spiritual Israel. They are described as men “who did not defile themselves with women” (14:4), which is also read symbolically. If the tribes and the description are symbols, it is fair to ask why the number must be literal.

Revelation has a pattern here. In chapter 5, John hears of “the Lion of the tribe of Judah,” then turns and sees a Lamb. Lion and Lamb are the same person, heard and seen. In chapter 7, John hears the number of the sealed, 144,000 from Israel’s tribes, then looks and sees a great crowd from every nation, standing “before the throne.” He may be describing one people in two ways.

You do not need to settle that to see the larger point. Whatever the 144,000 mean, Revelation does not say that only they are born again, only they have the spirit, or only they may take the bread and wine. Those conclusions come from joining Revelation to other teaching. The plain statements in John, Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians should guide how the symbols are read, not the other way around.