📖 Biblical Definition
The sealed multitude of Revelation 7:1-8 (twelve thousand from each of twelve tribes of Israel) and Revelation 14:1-5 (with the Lamb on Mount Zion, having the Father's name written in their foreheads). The number is twelve squared times one thousand — a classic biblical fullness-of-fullness symbol. Interpretation varies among orthodox Christians: (1) literal Jewish remnant during the eschatological tribulation (dispensational futurist); (2) symbolic full number of the redeemed church (preterist, amillennial, postmillennial); (3) symbolic faithful within ethnic Israel still to be gathered (historic premillennial); the sect-based interpretations (Jehovah's Witnesses' 144,000 limited heaven-dwellers) misread the text by collapsing the figure into a literal cap. Either reading affirms God's sovereign preservation of His own through judgment: whether the number is ethnic-Israel-specific or church-symbolic, the doctrine of the preserved-elect-through-tribulation is invariant.
📜 Webster 1828 Definition
Revelation's symbolic number of the sealed.
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The 144,000 sealed servants of God in Revelation 7 (12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel) and the same number standing with the Lamb on Mount Zion in Revelation 14; a deliberately structured symbolic number — twelve squared times a thousand — representing the complete number of the redeemed.
📖 Key Scripture
Revelation 7:4 — "And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel."
Revelation 14:1 — "And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads."
Revelation 7:9 — "After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number."
⚠️ Modern Corruption
Read literalistically by sects (Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons), missing the symbolic structure of apocalyptic number.
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Twelve squared times a thousand — the number is built. Apocalyptic numbers are not census figures. The 144,000 and the great multitude no man can number are arguably the same group seen from different angles: complete and innumerable at once.
🔗 Greek & Hebrew Roots
Greek hekaton tessarakonta tessares chiliades.
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['Greek', 'G1427', 'dōdeka', 'twelve']
['Greek', 'G5507', 'chilias', 'thousand']
Usage
"Read 144,000 as symbolic completeness."
"The same multitude is innumerable to any human counter."