Who Are The 144,000 In Revelation?

Revelation 7:1-8 is a vision given to John about a group of 144,000 people.  Who are they?

The vision begins with four angels standing at the four corners of the earth -- North, South, East, and West.  These are the four horsemen of the apocalypse mentioned in chapter 6 who will pour out God's wrath on first century Israel.  In chapter seven, they haven't begun their acts of terror; they are "restraining the winds" of judgment.  A fifth angel appears and tells the four horsemen not to do any harm "until we seal the servants of God on their foreheads."  Then it says there are a total of 144,000, 12,000 from each tribe of Israel.

Who are the 144,000?  First, they are Christians.  We know this because they are called "servants of God," and because they are marked (sealed) with the Lamb's name on their foreheads (Rev 14:1).  We know that they are Jewish Christians because they are from the twelve tribes of Israel.  As for the number 144,000, just about every commentator agrees that is is symbolic for a large number of people.  It's easy enough to figure out where the number comes from.  A chiliad, or 1,000 troops, was the basic military unit in Israel.  There are twelve tribes in Israel.  Twelve squared equals 144.  144 multiplied by a chiliad (1,000) equals 144,000.  So, the 144,000 stands for a large number of Jewish Christians.  

What is the significance of the 144,000?  This vision is an intermission in the breaking of the seven seals, which began in Revelation 6.  As Christ (the Lamb) broke each seal, John saw a different vision of impending judgment on the nation of Israel for rejecting the Messiah and persecuting His servants.  We know that these judgments don't refer to the end times, because Revelation 1:1-3 tells us that Revelation is about things that "must soon take place", "because the time is near."  Before Christ opens the seventh seal, chapter seven answers a question.  While God is pouring out His wrath against adulterous Israel, and specifically Jerusalem, what will happen to all the Christians living there?  Will the godly perish with the ungodly?  In answer to this question, Revelation 7 tells us that before the angels are sent to carry out judgment on Jerusalem, they must first seal the servants of God -- the 144,000 Jewish Christians.

At this point the book of Ezekiel becomes very helpful.  The prophet Ezekiel received a very similar vision in which God showed him that He was about to send six angels to destroy Jerusalem.  This would later be carried out through the Babylonians in 586 B.C.  But before those angels destroy Jerusalem, God sends a seventh angel to put a mark on the foreheads of all the faithful people in Jerusalem.  Then God sends the six angels to destroy the city, but they are told to not hurt the ones with the mark on their forehead (Eze 9:4).  

Similarly, in Revelation 7 before God destroys Jerusalem, he sends His angels to mark all of His servants on their foreheads.  This mark is to protect them, so that when Christ sent the Romans to destroy Jerusalem, the Christians would be protected.  

All of this was fulfilled in the Jewish War in AD 66.  Before Christ died, He told His followers that He was going to destroy Jerusalem, and He told them how to protect themselves (Lk 21:20-21).  When they saw armies surrounding Jerusalem, that was a sign that its destruction was near and they needed to flee the city.  That was how God "sealed" His servants so they would be protected.

How could the Christians in Jerusalem flee the city when it was surrounded by the Roman army?  In AD 66, the Roman procurator of Judea, Florus, stole a bunch of money from the temple and killed 3,600 peaceful Jews, inciting a rebellion that ended in the death of many Roman soldiers.  This kicked off the Jewish War.  When word of the revolt reached Cestius, the Roman governor of Syria, he took a force of 30,000 Roman soldiers to put down the rebellion.  They surrounded the city.  The battle lasted for days.  Just as the Romans were about to break in to the temple and overpower the Jews, Cestius ordered a retreat, and nobody knows why.  When his army left the city, the Jewish Christians saw this as a fulfillment of Christ's words and left Jerusalem to take refuge in the city of Pella, about sixty miles north of Jerusalem.  Three and a half years later the Romans returned to Jerusalem, but this time they didn't retreat.  They completely destroyed the city, killing over a million people.  Remarkably, not a single Christian was killed because they had already left Jerusalem.  

The vision that John received of the 144,000 were of the many Jewish Christians in Jerusalem who would be rescued from the destruction of the city by the Romans in AD 70.