There were 12 tribes of Israel in the Old Testament people of God and 12 apostles in the New Testament people of God, so 24 elders would represent the whole people of God if you add them together.
But if you multiply them (from Genesis 1, where God commands the plants, fish, birds, and people to multiply and fill the earth), you’ll get 144 and if you multiply those 144 by 1,000, which is the Biblical number of completion or fullness, you’ll get 144,000 representing the whole people of God. Don’t you like the patterns?
“Then I looked, and there was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion; with him were 144,000 people who have his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.”
— Revelation 14: 1
One of those people was a delightful English woman who lived through World War II and kept a diary recording her husband’s death, food rationing, the terrible bombing of London, and moving her children to the country to keep them safe from the bombings.
She confessed in her diary that one night she woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep.
Her mind was preoccupied with the bombs, and Hitler, a possible invasion, and the cruel feared SS troops.
She lay there in her bed trembling with fear when suddenly she began to think about her faith.
What happened to Alexander the Great? What happened to the Pharaohs and the Caesars and the Czars? What happened to Napoleon? They all are dead and their empires have crumbled into dust, and that’s what will happen to Hitler!
Then she began to laugh out loud, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
Now, you and I ought to ask what will happen to Putin, the little Rocket Man in North Korea, Hamas, Xi Jinping in China and Masoud Pezeshkian in Iran?
Then in Revelation 14: 4-5, the people of God are described in three ways — they are virgins, i.e., pure, they are redeemed from the rest of the human race, and finally they have never been known to tell lies.
And now our promise at God’s altar is to be pure and generous and truthful, and to live by faith in a loving God who sent his Son to save us!
Charles “Buddy” Whatley is a retired United Methodist pastor serving Dawson Street Methodist Church in Thomasville, Ga. With wife, Mary Ella, they are missionaries to the Navajo Reservation.
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