Father Mike Schmitz

What is that?

Well, 144,000 are 12 times 12 times 1,000.

So 12 times 12,000 is 144,000.

So that would essentially be the idea of here are 12 tribes of Israel named here in chapter seven.

And you have 12,000 people from the 12 tribes of Israel.

And they're being brought back.

They're being reunited.

They're being restored, essentially, in God's presence.

And so that is really important to understand.

Why 144,000?

Because 12 times 12,000.

The numbers of tribes of Israel and 12,000, which is, again, that number 12 being a very powerful, complete kind of number that here's God who wants to restore Israel.

You could also say that here's God restoring the new Israel.

This could be God restoring Christians, those who belong to him.

Now, again, there are different scholars who say different things, but what is very clear, very clear, is that this is the restoration of the kingdom of God in the old covenant.

He even mentioned, he even names every one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

So this is very, very important that these are the Jewish people.

Again, this is so important.

Sometimes people can think that the New Testament can be anti-Semitic, but it's not when we realize that the people who wrote it were Jews.

Not only that, but here in chapter seven,