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East Ridge SDA Church

Steven Grabiner

The 144,000 and the New Jerusalem

Title for our talk this morning is the 144, 000 in the New Jerusalem and I started thinking about it.

We were having a Bible study at the Phillips house a couple of weeks ago, and we're talking about the 144, 000 and Interesting Bible topic a lot of questions about it, but before we do that let me share briefly.

I was in Chile last Saturday night and Sunday and Monday, had the opportunity to go down there to visit 1 of our projects.

And then I had opportunity on Sunday to go visit 1 of our ministries called Los Romos.

It's down this dirt road out in the country.

And I'm like, you know, how do people pick the places to start these ministries?

But they started a beautiful lifestyle center.

And when I was there, they had 10 guests coming to this Lifestyle Center and they do a session a month, 10 days at a time and they're always full.

This is a group of the guests and students, and I had a few hours to speak to them before having to move on.

Everybody took good care of me, nice, good, luscious food.

These peaches, they planted these trees 1 year ago, and they're already bearing fruit?

And they gave me 1, they weren't telling the students that they were ripe, they were gonna tell the students they weren't ripe until after the students left.

But they gave me 1 to eat on the bus as I was traveling, and it was exquisite.

What I really wanted to share is, this is a group of individuals from the Lifestyle Center and this 1 gentleman here, not a very good picture of him, he spent his entire life as a priest, or most of his life as a priest in the Catholic Church.

And then later in life, when I think he was in his 50s or so, he found somebody and they decided to get married, so he left the priesthood.

And he's just kind of been wondering what to do with his life.

And he has just been thrilled to learn about God's love for him, that never ending love of God.

So it's just a really exciting trip to be down there.

Just wanted to share with you some of the blessings.

So if you have your Bible, I invite you to turn with me to the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 7.

And as we begin to look at this group of the 144, 000 and their relationship with the new Jerusalem, I want to remind you of something we talked about last week and I want to stress it to you because a number of you have made comments during the week about what I said.

And so I thought, well, this must have hit a nerve.

And that is, in order to become who we want to be in Christ, in other words, in order to become part of the 144, 000, or in order to become somebody that can have part of God's message that'll take place toward the end of time, in order to become who we want to be in Christ, we first need to understand what?

In order for us to have rest, as we talked about in our Sabbath school lesson, We need to understand that in Christ we are made complete.

And that Our growth needs to come out of that soil of security of who we are in Jesus Christ.

Very important for us, particularly if we think about this enigmatic group, the 144, 000.

Well, there's a lot of interesting thoughts about the 144, 000.

I was reading in preparation for this, came across somebody in early Adventist history like in the 1840s and 50s, who argued that the 144, 000 were those people that were raised at the resurrection of Christ.

That was their view and that view caused distress for some other people.

Other people say no, the 144, 000 is that group of people that are going to be living when Jesus comes.

And I think there's some evidence fairly close to that.

Other individuals say no, the 144, 000 are a group of people that are Jews, because they're from the tribe's 12 tribes, and they're all Jewish evangelists.

And they're going to really do their work after, quote, the secret rapture, which is a theory that the church will be taken out of the world and then this group of people will do the preaching of the gospel.

I don't subscribe to that, just to be very clear to everybody, although I am Jewish.

Some other people say, no, the 144, 000, that's a select group within the Jehovah's Witnesses.

For example, Jehovah's Witnesses teach that a very small number of people should have communion, only the 144, 000, and so it's a subset of that group.

Some other questions that we might ask is, how does the 144, 000 relate to the great multitude, which is a little later in Revelation 7?

Are they same as the great multitude, which some people argue, or are they different, which other people argue?

And really, is it a literal number or maybe it's a remnant within the remnant?

So, but I'm not gonna answer hardly any of these this morning.

You wanna know about these things, You could continue to study on your own, maybe at another time.

Because there's something for me bigger than this, not that these aren't important.

Some of them are more important than others.

What's the setting in which we find this group of people?

So if you have your Bibles and turn back with me to Revelation chapter 7, starting in verses 1 through 3, we just read this momentarily again.

John says, after this, I saw 4 angels standing at the 4 corners of the earth, holding back the 4 winds of the earth so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or any tree.

And then he sees in verse 2, another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having something important.

And he cried out with a loud voice to the 4 angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, saying, do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the bond servants of our God on their foreheads.

And in verse 4, and I heard the number of those who were sealed, 144, 000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel or the children of Israel.

Then he lists them in the next few verses.

They've been granted authority to bring harm to the earth.

And then there's another angel that says, no, no, don't do that yet.

That this group of people, 144, 000, whoever they are, they are sealed with the seal of the living God on their foreheads.

Let's just look back at the end of verse, chapter 6 that is.

Because it says after this in chapter 7 in verse 1, so immediately Before that, starting in verse 12 of chapter 6, are climactic heavenly scenes.

Then in verse 14, the entire sky is split apart like a scroll being rolled up.

Mountains and islands move out of their places.

Dramatic events, mountains moving, islands sinking.

Then in verse 15 and following, we see all these people, kings of the earth, rich men, commanders, great men, strong, slave, poor, all of them are running away from a great event.

So chapter 6 brings us to the return of Jesus Christ and all these people in that context, they cry out at the end of chapter 6 and verse 17, and who is able to stand?

Who's going to be able to look when Jesus comes?

And so it seems like as we look at the context that clearly the 144, 000, whatever else we may say about them, are a group of people in a last time crisis in this world.

It's interesting, the other time they're mentioned in Revelation is in Revelation 14.

And of course, Revelation 14 is preceded by Revelation 13, which has another time of crisis, which is an issue called the Mark of the Beast, and nobody is able to buy or sell.

The 144,000 and the New Jerusalem

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