Apologetics Session 23 - Eschatology - Part 2

Cold. So I'm going to apologize at the outset of this that my voice is probably going to get raspy at times. It'll get raspy at times. It is not COVID for all of you who might be afraid. I wouldn't be here if it was.

I did test. So but I do have a head cold. It seems to want to hang around for a while. So I'll do the best I can. So last week, we had a I don't want to call it a marathon because it wasn't really a long running thing.

It was more it was more sprint through Revelation. Yeah, it was more more like Top Gun when Maverick goes by the tower. It was more like that. So we're able to go through all 22 chapters of the book of Revelation in very high level summary form.

As those of you who were here, I actually joined the church at the tail end, or started coming to the church at the tail end of pastors study of Revelation. And as I understand it, that went on for what, like nine months?

Probably, yeah, something like nine months. So that was, that was a far more detailed and in depth study. What I went through was essentially just an outline of Revelation. But the reason why I did that, as the first session was basically so that we had a foundation for what we're going to talk about next, which is the three millennial views, and then some of the sub views of the rapture underneath that.

Now, all of that said, this still will be a very high level review of those I'm going to go through, I think it's six different views and talk about them. One of them is heretical, the other five are, I'll just call them orthodox, although they do differ.

They're not something that we should essentially be dividing over. It's something that we can hold those differences and debate them as much as we want. Revelation is, is apocalyptic language, it is confusing at times.

And, and so that's why there's a lot of these different interpretations. But there's certain things that we hold to be true. And so we'll talk about those. But just by way of review, we talked about sort of revelation being broken into a set of categories, right?

Revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ to John. And he actually sees Jesus in heaven, there's a whole bunch of, there's the seven spirits and the four living creatures, and you've got the 24 thrones.

And then there's the letters to the churches. And we talked about the topology, typology of those churches right there. They were both real, literal churches. And the both warnings and calls for repentance that were given to them in their letters fit the historical, cultural context of those churches.

But they were also types of churches, types of churches that we see today. And some of those messages were for churches at all times. Then we get into a lot of the end times stuff. We have the seven seals.

That's the scroll of the lamb. We talked about how Roman scrolls were rolled up and sealed seven times. Well, these were the seven seals, no one was worthy to read the scroll of the lamb, which was essentially the the title deed to the earth, if you will.

But then John was told not to cry because Jesus was there and could and was worthy to read the scroll. Then we went through the seven seals. We went through the seven trumpet judgments. There were the seven bulls of wrath, the fall of Babylon, the final victory, marriage supper of the lamb, new heavens, new earth, new Jerusalem.

And then the final part of Revelation, which has a blessing. Revelation is a book that begins and ends with a blessing and the final sort of call to come. So that's kind of where we left off. And I had some nifty graphics for the seals, the horsemen of the apocalypse, the trumpets, the bulls, and we talked about how things progressively just got worse and worse, right?

Whereas with the trumpets, you had a third of the sea, with the bulls, you had the entire sea, right, and so forth. And this is kind of important. The parallels between the trumpets and the bulls is going to play into some of the some of the other views that we're going to talk about.

But, you know, we had kind of what what each of those were, were, and then the structure of Revelation. That brought us into the three primary millennial views. So we, we talked about the millennial kingdom, right, Jesus ruling and reigning for 1000 years on earth.

And the major distinctions between them centered around the millennial kingdom and its positioning sort of with Christ's coming. So there's pre-millennialism, I've got the right slide up. There's pre-millennialism, right, which has Jesus's first coming, his second coming, the 1000 year earthly reign and the final judgment.

Post-millennialism believes that there was Jesus's first coming, that at some point, either now or at some point in the future, there's going to be this 1000 year earthly reign, then there's going to be Jesus's second coming and the final judgment.

And then you have amillennialism. Amillennialism has Jesus's first coming. And then the millennial kingdom, kingdom is a figurative 1000 years, right? It is, it is. Yeah, you're right. It's spiritualized.

It is saints or believers reigning in heaven with God right now. So when you die, you go to reign in heaven with God in this figurative 1000 year millennial kingdom. Until at some point, Jesus comes for the second time, and then there's the final judgment.

Oh, yeah, go into detail. I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna go into more detail with some of the some of the other views. Yeah.

But maybe just to get let you have a drink here, too. Sure. The 1000 year reign in the post millennial view is not with a physical Lord Jesus reigning. It's what is church ushering in the kingdom. So we're where his church would be establishing his rule on the earth.

Yes. So in in some of the post millennial views, and we're going to actually the first the first view I'm going to go into is a is a post millennial view. I'm going to start with post millennialism, then go to like pre millennialism, and then amillennialism.

So yes, with the post millennialism, and the first one I'm going to go through is preterism. It talks about a church ushering in essentially a theocratic, you know, state. But before we do that, here's a different view of the end times views.

The one thing again, that I ended with was that to be an orthodox view, you have to, you have to believe that Christ will return bodily in the future, that there is a future kingdom, and that there is a bodily resurrection of the saints, and that we will live and dwell with him forever.

There are heretical views that don't hold to this, and we'll talk about one of them. I just wanted to have one heretical view just for contrast sake. So now we're actually going to go in to specific end time views.

So these specific end time views are essentially branches or variants of the three millennial views. And then there's also a focus in some of them around the timing of the rapture, which we'll talk about first.

So all of the views with the exception of the hyper-preterist view, which I'll also cover, are orthodox. So all the views are orthodox. It's fine to hold to whichever one you want. I have my own views.

I hold my view very loosely. I'm open to my mind being changed on it. Hyper-preterism, however, is a heretical view, and we'll talk about why in a minute. So, again, to reiterate, we shouldn't divide over.

If I'm a preterist, I'm not, but if I'm a preterist, and Rich here is a pre-trib, pre-millennialist, that's okay. We can debate that, but we shouldn't divide over. I'm a pre-trib, pre-millennialist.

I thought you might be. That, by the way, is the most popular view. So we're going to first talk about post-millennial preterism. So post-millennial preterists hold that the tribulation actually happened a long time ago.

The view here is that the tribulation happened before 70 AD. 70 AD is when the temple was destroyed by Rome. It also holds that Satan is currently bound. And the justification for Satan being currently bound, I have a hard time believing Satan's bound when you look around at the world, but the belief is that Satan was able to stop the gospel from going forward and that he must be bound now because the gospel is moving forward.

I'm going to strongman, not strawman, but strongman each of these arguments. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the detractions. I might mention one or two sort of weaknesses in these arguments, but I'm not going to spend a ton of time because we could literally, quite literally spend months on each of these views just going into all of the detail and rationale and weaknesses and so forth.

Again, this is a 100 level class, not a 400 level class. So we will do this. And then if you guys are interested, we could come back to this later on and do deep dives into each of these views if you guys are super interested in that.

But it holds that Satan is currently bound because the gospel spread around the world and it isn't only the Jews who can know God. Preterists believe that the millennium is either happening now or will happen soon.

And it's not necessarily a literal thousand years. Some believe it is a literal thousand years that's going to start at some point soon and some believe that it's a figurative thousand years. But preterists are very, it's a very sort of optimistic view in that they believe that the world is going to get better and better and that the world will ultimately be one for Christ prior to Christ's second coming.

That eventually we will usher in a Christian government and rule or a theocratic government. I don't know about you, but I'm not seeing much of that happening when I look at our current government. So it is a very optimistic view.

I actually like preterism because of its optimism. One of the personally having, and I'll talk about some prominent preterists, but I've watched a lot of apologists, both podcast apologists, you know, man on the street, like street preacher preterists, street preacher apologists.

And some of them are preterists. And one of the things that I really love about preterism is because it has this optimistic view that the world has to get better and better. And that eventually the world has to be one for Christ.

It is a very evangelistic view, right? They feel like it's our duty. Like we are now trying to usher in this, this, you know, Christian government that we, they, they're very involved in politics. They're very involved in trying to overturn abortion laws.

For example, they're very involved in trying to push legislation and push the legislators to pass legislation that, that is ushering, you know, virtuous things in. And so it's a very optimistic view. They also do a lot of street, you know, preaching.

They do a lot of, you know, standing outside abortion clinics and, and, and debating people. They do a lot of debates. They do a lot of that stuff because their view is very optimistic. It is very, you know, it's, you know, we are here to win the world for Christ.

Now, this is very, this is going to be very, there's going to be a big contrast between that and say premillennialism, specifically pre-trib premillennialism, because it's a, it's the opposite. It's a very pessimistic view.

And we'll talk more about that in a bit. But this is one of the things I really love about Preterism, is the fact that it has, you know, the people that hold to it have this sort of view that's very evangelistic, which I think we all should have, regardless of our eschatological view.

So Preterists view that everything up to Revelation 20, verse 6, has happened already. And that beyond verse, chapter 20, verse 6, is future. So Revelation 20, 6 and 7, I'll read it. Revelation 26 and 7 said, Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection.

Over such, the second death has no power. But they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. That's already happened, right? Up to that point, that's already happened.

Here's, here's verse 7, the defeat of Satan. And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison. So that's the point at which Revelation becomes future, in the Preterists' view.

So everything up to that. Now, just to recap what has happened up to verse, chapter 20. We've had the seals, we've had the trumpets, we've had the bowls, we've had mountains being moved, we've had islands being moved, we've had stars falling out of the sky, we've had the sun being blackened, we've had the moon turned to blood, we've had all of the, we've had everything in the sea die, we've had everything in the freshwater die.

We've had all of this stuff happening, right, up to, up to chapter 20. But in the Preterists' view, this has already happened. Really? Yeah. The way this is routinely justified is by viewing Revelation as apocalyptic language, right?

So when it uses terms like the world, it doesn't actually mean the world, right? What it means is Israel, Israel, and not the entire world. Apocalyptic language is essentially poetic hyperbole. For those of you who are not English majors, I'm not an English major either.

But for those of you who are not English majors, an example of this would be when David said his bed was swimming with tears in Psalm 6 .6. So Psalm 6 .6 says, I am weary with moaning, every night I flood my bed with tears, I drench my couch with my weeping, right?

Did David really weep so much that he actually flooded? No, this is a poetic hyperbole. And so the Preterists takes the view that Revelation, Revelation is like that, right? That these things are not necessarily literal, but they are apocalyptic and poetic in nature.

So Preterists view also Revelation six through 18, which is, again, the seals, the trumpets and the bowls, as a retelling of the same event, right? So, and this is why it's important to understand some of the justification they have for that is, if you actually look at the similarities between some of these judgments, not all of them, they don't line up exactly.

But they some of them line up where in the trumpets, you had a third of the freshwater and a third of the sea, you had a third of the sun, you know, the stars and the moon. And then in the bowls, you had the entire sea, and the entire, you know, rivers and springs, and the sun was blackened, and the stars fell out of the sky, right?

So you had sort of like it's proportions that got worse and worse. Now, they don't line up exactly. But some of them do line up so similarly. So in the Preterists view, they don't think that these things were actually separate events that happened consecutively, but rather a retelling of the same same event, it was just a different way of telling the story, right?

And Preterists will often quote Josephus to to try and justify their interpretation of Revelation. So in Revelation 614, it says the sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up and every mountain and island was removed from its place, right?

Every mountain and island was removed from its place. I don't think so. Have we seen something like that? So in Revelation 614, when it talks about the mountains being removed, a Preterist will quote Josephus, talking about the Roman workmen, who would go ahead of the armies and flatten the roads, right, they would level the roads, so that the Roman armies could come through.

And, you know, the soldiers could walk through and and attack. Right. And so, though, again, this is taking when it says the world, right, the mountains in the world, it's talking about just Israel, right.

And when it's talking about the mountains being removed, they're saying, Oh, well, that's the protection being removed from Israel by the Roman workmen flattening out the the, you know, the the land so that the armies could come through.

So it's actually removing their protection. So in Revelation 615, and 17, it says, then the kings of the earth, and the great ones and the generals, and the rich and the powerful, and everyone slave and free, hid themselves in caves, among the rocks and the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of wrath has come and who can stand, right.

So this is, this is all the people, right, hiding themselves from God's wrath. Well, the preterists take the view, right, in Revelation 615, and through 17, when it talks about the people hiding in the caves, right, they equate the kings of the earth, as the leaders in Israel.

And they will quote Josephus talking about people hiding in caves underground from the Roman troops, right. So, you know, again, they're taking the tribulation and basically overlaying it with Rome, you know, leading up to the destruction of the temple in 17.

I don't want to make this real drawn out, because I realize we could spend forever. So I think probably just about everybody in this room could look at Revelation and say, this is the purpose of what's going on in Revelation.

It's God's judgment on a Christ rejecting world. What would the preterist view of Revelation be? It was God's judgment on Israel. Just Israel. So every time it says, for those who dwell in the earth, doesn't mean for those who dwell on the earth, the.

Earth, the world, it's Israel.

Amen. One glaring inconsistency I can see with preterism is they're interpreting events in 70 AD from a book that was written in 95 AD.

Yeah, we're gonna get to that. We're gonna get to that.

Also, man, one thing. Are they also aligning what Jesus said in terms of at the end times that instead of instead of going, we're gonna get to that too.

I've got it lined up. Again, I'm strong man in this best arguments that I may or may not agree with, but doing a great job. I'm trying. I'm trying. Fantastic. So in Revelation 914, it says, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates, right?

It talks about drying up the river Euphrates, right? Well, Revelation 914, when it talks about the angels, they'll quote Josephus 6 .5 .3 of the Jewish wars. And we'll also also they quote Tacitus, who actually might have gotten it from Josephus, but the quote there refers to these visions of angelic armies around 70 AD.

And for the part about the river Euphrates, they'll say that the river Euphrates touches Syria, which happens to be where four Roman legions were kept, drawing reference to the four angels as the four Roman legions, right?

Because remember, the four angels had 200, 200 million, you know, mounted troops and stuff, right? We talked about that when we were going through Revelations last week. Revelation, I always do that, I add an S to it.

Does anybody else do that? I do that all the time. So this is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. But this is how they're trying to tie these things together and correlate them. Now we get to Revelation 1911 through 16.

It says, then I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse and the one sitting on it is called faithful and true. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a like a flame of fire.

And on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood. And the name by which he is called is the Word of God. So we're talking about Jesus here, right?

And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure were following him on white horses, right? From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron, he will tread the wine presses of fury of the wrath of God, the Almighty.

On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written King of Kings, Lord of Lords. So Revelation 1911 through 16, the rider on the white horse is clearly Jesus, right? No other way to interpretate, interpret that the Word of God, right?

The preterists would view this as already having happened. Right? They would not consider this the actual second coming of Jesus though, it is more Jesus's judgment on Israel in 70 AD. This is a pretty weak point, but this is kind of how they how they view it.

And in Revelation 13, when it when it's and this is where it really gets off the off the rails. Revelation 13, we're talking about the first beast, right? Actually, it's not with the first beast, it's with the second beast that they have a problem, but the first beast, they believe so the first beast is the Antichrist, right?

They believe that the first beast was actually Nero. And you know how the mark of the beast is said to be 666? Well, if in Hebrew, they would represent numbers with Hebrew letters. And if you actually take the Hebrew version of Nero Caesar, Neron Caesar, and you represent that in Hebrew, the translation to numbers equals 666.

So it's an interesting thing. But so the beast persecutes in Revelation talks about the beast persecuting 42 months of major persecution and Nero did persecute for about 42 months, and did things like dipping Christians in tar and setting them on fire.

Terrible, dude. But one failing of the predators view is that they often skip over passages that don't kind of like line up. Although, we're probably all guilty of that when when it comes to trying to defend a particular view.

But the second beast is really where the predators have a problem because the second beast, which is the prophet, right, the beast's prophet, remember, he comes and he makes everyone worship the first beast, and he creates the idol to the first beast, and he makes the idol talk, and, and kills those who don't worship the beast.

And there's really no, like clear correspondence to this anywhere in in Preterist commentaries. And he makes fire come down from heaven. Yeah, that's the other thing. Yeah, that didn't happen either. Right.

So I said earlier, also, the whole Satan being bound thing is kind of difficult to imagine, given, you know, what we see in the world. Although, again, just like last week, I will warn you not to not to try and make too close of an alignment between all events and and revelation.

I'm not saying that it's not the case. I'm just saying like, lots of people make predictions, and have made predictions that have not come true around, you know, the coming of Christ.

So, Matt, do you remember when we went on our retreat back in May, something like that? May, June? Yeah. And Pastor Jeff gave us the Preterist post Mill view. Yeah. Because of the optimism that you had talked about.

And it wasn't based upon the power of the church in a sense that we are going to buy our power, you know. But Pastor Jeff's point is, God is sovereign, and God can do whatever he wants. And there may be a great revival before all of this stuff happens.

Yeah. And he was trying to encourage us to say, hey, if the Preterists are going out and sharing their faith like this, if the Preterists are getting involved in their culture, and going and doing this, he said, we need to be doing it.

Yeah, 100%. You know, we don't have a pessimistic view, we have a God-centered view, and he can do whatever he wants.

Absolutely. And again, I really do love that about the Preterist view, because it really sort of forces them to take that on. And we'll talk about pre-millennialism soon, and how it kind of leads people into sort of an almost apathetic despair around evangelism.

So Revelation 20, verse four, it says, Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those whom the authority to judge was committed. Also, I saw souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God.

And those who had not worshipped the beast, or its image, and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands, they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. So Revelation 20, verse four, there are two resurrections, and the Preterists view the first resurrection as a spiritual resurrection and the second resurrection as a physical resurrection.

So even though it's clearly referring to two resurrections, they have to make the first one non-physical. So one of the strengths of, I think this is the next slide, one of the strengths of the Preterist argument is all the passages that reflect that the end is soon, right?

So this is Revelation 1 .1, Revelation 1 .3, Revelation 20, verse six, Revelation 22, verse 10, and the Olivet Discourse. So it talks about Matthew 24, 34, Matthew 16, 28, where it says things like this generation, you can see it up here, I hope you can see it up here.

It says, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, right? There are some of those who are standing here, who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom, right?

You will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes. So it talks about Jesus' return being soon, right? So all of this sort of soon language is, you know, this is probably the one of the stronger things, you know, for the Preterist view.

But the criticisms, and again, I'm not going to straw man too much, but the criticisms of Preterism is that it stretches symbolism to a breaking point. It also downgrades Revelation from being a world affecting thing, right, a worldwide thing to being just something about Israel, at least up until, you know, the things that happened in the past.

It seems to have two comings of Christ, the 70 AD one, where the temple was destroyed, and then the second coming, which is going to be in the future. And also, and this was the point, I can't remember which one of you made it, I think it was Rich.

Or maybe it was Ivan. This is the point where the writing of Revelation, right, for it had to happen before 70 AD, right? So 70 AD, the destruction of the temple, so you would have to date Revelation to somewhere around 65 AD, right?

But some of the problems with this are, you know, the timing with Nero, right? And also the scholarly sort of consensus is that Revelation was most likely written in the 90s AD, right? So rather than, you know, like, so let's say AD 95 versus AD 65.

So that's like a 30 year span. And you have that sort of pivotal point there at 70 AD where the temple was destroyed. So it forces a very early dating of Revelation that most don't believe what was actually true.

There are, however, some, well, one other thing, the early Church Fathers, Preterism is a more recent view. So it's not, Preterism wasn't something that the early Church Fathers held to. It's something that came along later.

I don't know off the top of my head. I think it was, I think it was the, I could be wrong on this. So I hesitate to quote it. But I think it was around the 1600s. But I could be wrong on that. I'll have to go back and look that up.

But it was, it was later than the early Church Fathers. The early Church Fathers in the first few centuries were not Preterists. Although, it is probably the most up and coming view. So while pre-millennialism is the most popular view, and pre-Trib, pre-millennialism being the most popular branch of that, Preterism is probably one that's gaining more steam recently, for whatever that's worth.

And there are some very prominent Preterists that I know I respect, and I know many of you respect as well. So there's R .C. Sproul, who's a Preterist. Doug Wilson's a Preterist. James White's a Preterist.

Jeff Durbin's a Preterist. James White and Jeff Durbin are part of Apologia Ministries. I got turned on to them because they do a lot of street preaching. They do a lot of like going outside of Mormon, Mormon Tabernacles, Tabernacles?

Mormon Tabernacles and debating Mormons, going to Jehovah Witness halls and debating with them, going, you know, to abortion clinics and debating people there, and just street evangelism, generally speaking.

Again, evidence of the sort of evangelistic nature of their particular viewpoint. So, and R .C. Sproul, I mean, I don't need to say much about R .C. Sproul, but R .C. Sproul was a Preterist as well. So that's Preterism in a nutshell.

Again, we could spend ages going through all this stuff, but I'm going to stop it there and go through some some other views. So now this gets us naturally to the first heretical view, which is hyper-Preterism, which I'll bring up here.

Hyper-Preterism is something that is heretical and we should divide over. So this is the one exception to the other views that I'm going to talk about tonight. But it holds that everything in the Bible has already been fulfilled.

Everything in the Bible has already been fulfilled. That the Second Coming has already happened. We're now living in the eternal kingdom. There is no literal resurrection. There is no eternal life. That we are in the new heavens and earth.

I don't know how anyone could hold this view, but I'm just telling you what it is. It denies central tenets of Christianity, right? It rejects the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed. And I don't really want to spend a ton of time on it.

I just wanted to bring it up and talk about how it differs from Preterism. It's called hyper-Preterism. It should be called something else because Preterism itself is a, you know, I may not agree with it, but it at least is orthodox to the point of not being heretical.

But hyper-Preterism is, I guess the reason they call it that is because it extends Preterism to everything after Revelation 20, verse 6 as well. But I, you know, I don't know how anyone can look around and say we're in the new heavens and earth and that everything's already happened.

They hate Satan and sin are not supposed to be here.

Right. All right. So that gets us into the premillennial views. I'm going to talk about a few of them. And I'm going to talk about a few subcategories that talk about the timing of the rapture. So I'm going to talk about pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, post-tribulation, and pre-wrath.

But first, this is the premillennial dispensational view. So I first have to talk about what dispensationalism is. So this premillennialism is the most popular view. It was, there are some different views around the rapture, as I said.

But it's also probably the easiest, at least for me, it's the easiest one to grasp when reading Revelation, right? Because it reads Revelation as future. And so for me, it allows you to take things more literally.

And I always say, if the word says something, I shouldn't have to allegorize it to make sense of it. I shouldn't have to say, you know, I shouldn't need a decoder, right? To basically figure out what's what.

It takes Revelation pretty much chronologically.

It does. So it is apocalyptic language, no doubt. But it can be taken more literally than in some other views. But to just talk about dispensationalism versus its alternative, which is covenant theology.

The covenantal view is a view that there was a covenant of works and a covenant of grace. Some of them have a covenant of redemption, but we'll just talk about the two there. So essentially, covenant theology holds that in the covenant of grace, the new covenant, Israel is replaced by the church.

So whenever the Bible and the New Testament is talking about Israel, it's actually talking about the church, right? And so all of this sort of language in Revelation, remember, we talked about the 144 ,000, right?

144 ,000 Jews, 12 ,000 from each of the 12 tribes, right, were saved, right? They couldn't be harmed. They won innumerable multitudes of people to Christ, right? It talks about them in Revelation. Well, covenant theology would say that that's spiritual Israel for the church.

To which I say, if I'm one of the 144 ,000, which tribe do I belong to? Right? So I have a problem with, exactly. I have a problem with, you know, kind of allegorizing that. I think I heard a reference on one of the videos I was watching where it said, you know, when it was talking about the temple, and it talked about a spoon and the depth of the bowl of the spoon and the length of the handle that a covenant theology would allegorize that to say, you know, the depth of the spoon is the depth of God's grace and the length of the handles.

And I'm like, maybe it's just talking about the depth of the spoon and the length of the handle, right? So sometimes you can just read things literally and say it's just talking about what it's actually talking about.

So when it says 144 ,000 ethnic Jews, 12 from each of the 12 tribes, it just means 144 ,000 ethnic Jews, 12 ,000 from each of the 12 tribes.