One Flock or Two?

Two Folds One Flock

“I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd”

John 10:16

“I have other sheep that are not of this fold,” Jesus told his disciples; “I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16).

Jehovah’s Witnesses build a remarkable doctrine on these words. They teach that faithful Christians are divided into two classes with two hopes: a heavenly class of exactly 144,000 “anointed” who will rule with Christ in heaven, and an earthly class — the “great crowd” of “other sheep” — who will live forever on a paradise earth but never see heaven. The two are kept apart in practice: only the anointed may partake of the bread and wine at the annual Memorial.

But is this what Jesus and the apostles taught? Or does the New Testament know one people of God, with one hope, one baptism, and one Lord? Let’s examine the question and see …

  • Does Scripture teach two classes of Christian with two hopes, or one flock under one Shepherd?

I invite your engagement with me on these questions. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Watchtower View

Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that faithful Christians fall into two distinct classes, with two distinct hopes: a heavenly class and an earthly class.

What They Affirm

The anointed 144,000 — a heavenly hope. A limited number, exactly 144,000, are “anointed” by God’s spirit to a heavenly calling. These are the “little flock” (Luke 12:32), chosen from Pentecost 33 C.E. onward, who will be resurrected as spirit creatures to rule with Christ as kings and priests in heaven (Revelation 14:1–3; 20:6). Witnesses take this number to be literal, drawn from Revelation 7:4–8 and 14:1–5.1

The great crowd of “other sheep” — an earthly hope. The vast majority of Witnesses belong instead to the “great crowd” of Revelation 7:9, identified with the “other sheep” of John 10:16 (“I have other sheep that are not of this fold”). These, they teach, are not called to heaven but will survive Armageddon, or be raised, to live forever on a restored paradise earth. They are God’s friends, declared righteous, but not his spirit-begotten heavenly sons. On this account the earth, not heaven, is humanity’s true and original home, as the meek are promised they “shall possess the land” and “inherit the earth” (Ps. 37:29; Matt. 5:5).2

1935: the dividing of the hopes. The Watchtower teaches that the gathering of the earthly class began in earnest in 1935. At a convention that year, J. F. Rutherford asked all who hoped to live forever on earth to stand, and declared, “Behold! The great multitude!” From that point the heavenly calling was regarded as essentially complete, and the great crowd was understood as a growing earthly class. (Earlier, the Watchtower had taught that the “great company” was itself heavenly.)3

The Memorial emblems — for the anointed only. Because only the 144,000 are in the new covenant, only they may partake of the bread and wine at the annual Memorial of Christ’s death. The great crowd attend and observe, but do not partake. Of the millions who attend worldwide, only a few thousand — those professing the heavenly calling — eat and drink.4

The location of the great crowd. Witnesses understand the great crowd of Revelation 7:9–17 to serve God on earth, not in heaven. Although the text places them “before the throne” and “in his temple,” the Watchtower interprets the temple (Greek naos) here as the earthly courtyard of God’s spiritual temple, rather than the heavenly sanctuary.5

Endnotes
  1. On the 144,000 as a literal number anointed to a heavenly hope, see “Who Really Have a Heavenly Calling?” (The Watchtower), and What Does the Bible Really Teach? (Watch Tower, 2005), ch. 7, “Real Hope for Your Loved Ones Who Have Died,” and the appendix “144,000—Who Are They?” The Witnesses cite Revelation 7:4–8 and 14:1–5; the “little flock” of Luke 12:32 is identified with this class. ↩
  2. On the “great crowd” / “other sheep” with an earthly hope, see “The Great Crowd to Live in Heaven? Or on Earth?” in Jehovah’s Witnesses—Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (Watch Tower, 1993), 159–167, and the Watchtower study article “The Great Crowd of Other Sheep Praise God and Christ” (January 2021). The great crowd of Revelation 7:9 is identified with the “other sheep” of John 10:16 and the “sheep” of Matthew 25:31–46, said to have “the prospect of living forever in Paradise on earth.” ↩
  3. Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom (1993), 165–166, recounting the 1935 convention at which Rutherford declared, “Behold! The great multitude!” and the consequent treating of the heavenly calling as essentially complete. On the earlier teaching that the “great company” was heavenly, see The Finished Mystery (1917), 103, which numbered it in the hundreds of millions in heaven. ↩
  4. On the restriction of the Memorial emblems to the anointed, see “The Other Sheep and the New Covenant” (The Watchtower), which states that “only the 144,000 members of the Israel of God have properly partaken of the emblems during the Memorial,” and the annual Memorial partaker figures published by the Society (a few thousand partakers out of roughly twenty million in attendance). ↩
  5. On the great crowd serving in an “earthly courtyard,” see “A Multitudinous Great Crowd” in Revelation—Its Grand Climax At Hand! (Watch Tower, 1988), which argues that the naos of Revelation 7:15 is “the earthly courtyard of God’s spiritual temple” rather than the heavenly sanctuary, and that the great crowd “does not attain to” the position of the 144,000 “round about the throne.” ↩

Catholic View

The Catholic Church holds that there is one people of God with one hope. The other sheep of John 10:16 are the Gentiles, gathered with believing Israel into a single flock — which is exactly what the verse goes on to say. The whole two-class system rests on that one sentence, and the sentence will not carry it.

The Other Sheep Are the Gentiles

Put the question as a first-century disciple would have heard it. Why would Christ mention in passing a class of Christians His hearers would never meet, who on the Watchtower’s account would not begin to be gathered for nineteen centuries — and then say nothing further to explain it? The natural reading is the one the apostles reached within a few years: the fold is Israel, and the sheep “not of this fold” are the nations.

The grammar points that way. Christ says these sheep are not of this fold — Greek ek, “out of, from” — which is language of origin, not of destination. The contrast is not between sheep bound for two different places but between sheep drawn from two different starting points, Jew and Gentile, who are then made one. The setting confirms it: He is speaking to Pharisees who took for granted that the Jews alone were God’s flock (John 9:40–10:16). To such hearers “other sheep not of this fold” could mean only the nations.1

John supplies the interpretation himself a chapter later, telling us Christ would die “not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11:51–52). And the disciples would have remembered these words exactly when Peter baptized Cornelius and his household and the gospel went out to the nations.

One Flock, One Shepherd

The decisive word stands in the very verse the doctrine is built on. Christ does not say there will be two flocks, or one flock in two divisions with two destinies. He says the opposite: “there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). The entire point of bringing in the other sheep is that the two become one. To read the verse as the charter of a permanent two-class system is to make it say the reverse of what it says.2

An older English rendering, “one fold,” once blurred this. The Greek is unmistakable: mia poimnē, one flock. There is one Shepherd and one flock that heeds His voice. The favorite proof-text, read to the end of its own sentence, is among the clearest refutations of the doctrine it is used to support.

The Number That Refutes Itself

The Watchtower insists the number is literal. Very well — but the rule must then be applied evenly, because the passage that gives the number gives the description in the same breath and the same plain words.

Revelation says the 144,000 are sealed “from every tribe of the sons of Israel,” and then names them: twelve thousand from Judah, twelve thousand from Reuben, and so on through the list (Rev. 7:5–8). It adds that they are men “who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins” (Rev. 14:4). If the number is literal, so are these. Heaven would then be reserved for exactly 144,000 celibate Jewish men — which shuts out the apostle Peter, who was married; shuts out the Virgin Mary, who was not male; and shuts out Charles Taze Russell, founder of the movement, who was not of the tribes of Israel. A reading that locks the founder of the Watchtower out of heaven has refuted itself.6

The escape from that absurdity is to read the tribes, the celibacy, and the maleness as symbolic — which is precisely what is refused for the number standing beside them. One cannot have it both ways. If “Israel” and “virgins” are figures for the whole people of God and their purity, then 144,000 is a figure too; the passage gives no hint that the number is to be treated differently from the description surrounding it. Taking one literally and the rest symbolically is not exegesis. It is selection, governed by the doctrine the number is needed to support.

What the Number Means

Once the literalism collapses the true sense is clear, and it is generous rather than restrictive. Revelation is a book of symbolic numbers — seven churches, seven seals, a thousand years — and this is among the most transparent of them. It is twelve times twelve times a thousand: the twelve tribes of Israel multiplied by the twelve apostles of the Lamb, multiplied again by the biblical figure of vast completeness. It is the number of the whole people of God, old covenant and new together, brought to their full number with not one missing.7

The Multitude Before the Throne

Immediately after the sealing, John lifts his eyes and sees what the two-class scheme cannot accommodate: “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9). The great crowd is assigned to earth. But the text could hardly be plainer that they are in heaven: they stand before the throne of God, they “serve him day and night in his temple,” and the Lamb at the center of the throne shelters them and leads them to springs of living water (Rev. 7:15–17).8

This is the same throne-room in which John has already seen the twenty-four elders seated (Rev. 4:4), the living creatures, and the numberless angels. To place the multitude there, before that throne, and then declare them an earthly class is to read into the vision a geography it does not contain. John sees one scene, one throne, one redeemed people gathered before it — heard as 144,000 in the first image, beheld as an uncountable host in the second. Not two crowds in two places. One people, seen twice.

The Meek and the Earth

Against this stand the texts promising that the meek will inherit the earth (Ps. 37:29; Matt. 5:5). But Christ is quoting the psalm, and in both the language is the covenant language of inheritance — the promised land as the pledge of what God will give His people. Hebrews says exactly what the patriarchs understood by it: they died without receiving the promises, because they desired “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:13–16). Nor does the Christian hope despise the earth. Scripture ends with “a new heaven and a new earth” and the holy city coming down (Rev. 21:1–2) — one renewed creation for one redeemed people, not two destinations for two classes.9

Heaven Is the Vision of God

What is heaven for? Not first to rule, though Scripture promises the saints will reign with Christ, but to see. The deepest word for heaven in the Christian tradition is the vision of God: the direct, face-to-face knowledge and love of God Himself, in which the whole longing of the human heart is at last satisfied. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). “We shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12).10

And it is held out to everyone. The Beatitude does not say “blessed are the 144,000” but “blessed are the pure in heart.” Christ promises His Father’s house not to a sealed quota but to His disciples as such: “in my Father’s house are many rooms … I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am you also may be” (John 14:2–3).

One Body, One Hope

What John states in the image of the flock, Paul states in the language of the body: “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Eph. 4:4–6). One hope, named explicitly, for all the baptized. A doctrine of two hopes — heavenly for the few, earthly for the many — runs straight against a confession that hammers the word “one” seven times.3

And the unity Paul means is precisely the joining of the two folds. Christ “has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility … that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two” (Eph. 2:14–16). The Gentiles, once “strangers to the covenants of promise,” are “brought near” and made “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:12–19). The whole movement of the gospel is from two into one. The two-class system runs it backward, rebuilding inside the Church the very dividing wall Christ tore down — no longer between Jew and Gentile, but between a heavenly 144,000 and an earthly multitude.4

One Mediator, One Table

The division cannot be confined to the future hope; it works backward into the present life of the congregation. Paul writes that “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5–6). The two-class scheme requires that most believers relate to God as friends rather than children, and to the new covenant at one remove.

It shows most painfully at the Lord’s table, where only the anointed partake, so that the great majority pass the bread and the cup along untasted. But Christ said, “drink of it, all of you” (Matt. 26:27), and the covenant He was inaugurating in that cup is the one He shed His blood to make. A system that turns most of the body of Christ into spectators at His own table has mistaken the nature of the gift.5

The Reply in Brief

One verse carries the whole doctrine, and it is the verse that refutes it. Christ says the other sheep will be brought in so that there shall be one flock under one shepherd. The sheep are the Gentiles; the grammar is grammar of origin; the setting is a dispute with men who thought the flock was Israel alone; and John tells us plainly a chapter later that Christ died to gather the scattered children of God into one.

Paul says the same in the plainest terms available to him — one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all — and describes the gospel as the demolition of exactly the kind of wall the two-class system rebuilds. There are not two Christian hopes. There is one, and it is offered to everyone Christ calls.

This is the short answer. The full treatment adds the history of how the two-class doctrine was arrived at and when the earthly class was first announced, what the New Testament means by the new covenant and who is party to it, the “friends of God” language and what Scripture actually does with it, and full documentation for everything asserted here. It is available as a Word document at the end of this page.

Endnotes
  1. John 10:16, with the preposition ek denoting origin. The setting runs continuously from John 9:40, where the Pharisees are the immediate audience. On the identification of the other sheep with the Gentiles as the traditional Christian reading, see the standard commentaries; a modern Catholic reference work glosses the verse as Christ’s announcement of the future extension of His kingdom to the nations. ↩
  2. The Greek is mia poimnē, heis poimēn — one flock, one shepherd. The King James rendering “one fold” follows the Latin ovile and obscures the distinction between the fold (aulē) of v. 16a and the flock (poimnē) of v. 16b; modern versions correct it. ↩
  3. Ephesians 4:4–6. The sevenfold repetition is deliberate and is the passage’s whole rhetorical point. ↩
  4. Ephesians 2:11–22, on the dividing wall, the one new man, and the Gentiles as fellow citizens rather than resident aliens. Compare Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11. ↩
  5. 1 Timothy 2:5–6; Matthew 26:27–28, with Mark 14:23–24 and Luke 22:20 on the cup as the new covenant in Christ’s blood. The restriction of the emblems is treated on the companion page Do This in Memory of Me? ↩
  6. Revelation 7:4–8 for the tribal enumeration and 14:4 for the description of the sealed as male virgins. The point is not that these details must be pressed literally, but that the Watchtower does not press them literally while insisting the number in the same sentence must be. ↩
  7. 144,000 as 12 × 12 × 1,000: the tribes of Israel and the apostles of the Lamb, multiplied by the conventional biblical figure for a vast complete number. Revelation’s numbers are consistently symbolic — seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, the thousand years of ch. 20 — and nothing marks this one as an exception. ↩
  8. Revelation 7:9–17. The multitude stands “before the throne,” serves God “day and night in his temple,” and is sheltered by the Lamb “in the midst of the throne” — the same heavenly setting as Revelation 4:4 and 5:11. Locating them on earth requires importing a geography the vision does not supply. ↩
  9. Matthew 5:5 quotes Psalm 37:11; compare Psalm 37:29. On the land-promise as pledge of a greater inheritance, Hebrews 11:13–16, where the patriarchs are said to have sought “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” On the renewed creation, Revelation 21:1–2 and Romans 8:19–23. The Christian hope includes a redeemed earth; what it does not include is two peoples with two destinies. ↩
  10. On the beatific vision, see Catechism of the Catholic Church §§1023–1029, with Matthew 5:8; 1 John 3:2; 1 Corinthians 13:12. ↩

Summary

The Watchtower divides faithful Christians into two classes — a heavenly 144,000 and an earthly “great crowd” — with two hopes. The New Testament knows one people of God with one hope. The two-class system divides what the gospel was given to unite, and rests on readings the texts will not bear.

The “other sheep” are the Gentiles. The whole earthly class hangs on John 10:16. But why would Jesus mention, in passing, a class of Christians his hearers would never meet — and never explain it? The natural sense is that the “fold” is Israel and the “other sheep” are the Gentiles, soon brought in — which John himself confirms a chapter later: Jesus would die “not for the nation only, but to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11:51–52).

“One flock, one shepherd.” The very verse the Watchtower relies on ends by declaring the opposite of two classes: “there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). The point of bringing in the other sheep is that the two become one. The Greek is unmistakable — mia poimnē, “one flock,” not the older “one fold.”

One body, one hope. Paul names “one body … one hope … one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4–6) — one hope for all the baptized, not two. And the gospel he preaches is the breaking down of “the dividing wall” to make “one new man in place of the two … in one body through the cross” (Ephesians 2:14–16). The two-class system rebuilds inside the Church the very wall Christ tore down.

The 144,000 is a symbolic number. It comes from the most symbolic book in Scripture and is “sealed out of every tribe of the sons of Israel” (Revelation 7:4–8). Pressed literally, heaven would be open only to celibate Jewish men (cf. Rev. 14:4) — which the Watchtower does not believe. Read as Revelation asks, 12 × 12 × 1,000 is a figure of completeness: the whole people of God, not a numerical ceiling.

The great crowd is in heaven. In Revelation 7 the great crowd stands “before the throne and before the Lamb” (v. 9) — exactly where the 144,000 are (14:3) — in a scene where “all the angels” fall down and worship (7:11). They serve “in his temple,” and God spreads his “tabernacle” over them; but Revelation locates God’s tabernacle among “those who dwell in heaven” (13:6), and hears “a great multitude in heaven” (19:1). The single vision cannot be split, the 144,000 raised to heaven and the great crowd left on earth. Decisively, “temple” in 7:15 is the Greek naos — the inner sanctuary, which only priests could enter — not hieron, the outer courts open to all. The Watchtower itself conceded in 2002 that the great crowd are in the naos, yet still placed them on earth without explanation.

“The meek shall inherit the earth” is not a second hope. Christ is quoting Psalm 37, and in both the language is the covenant language of inheritance. Hebrews says what the patriarchs understood by it: they died without receiving the promises, desiring “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:13–16). Nor does the Christian hope despise the earth — Scripture ends with “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1–2). One renewed creation for one redeemed people, not two destinations for two classes.

Heaven is the vision of God, offered to all. The deepest meaning of heaven is to see God face to face (Matt. 5:8; 1 John 3:2; 1 Cor. 13:12) — the beatific vision, the end for which every human being is made. Christ promises His Father’s house not to a quota but to His disciples as such: “that where I am you also may be” (John 14:3).

The table withheld. Christ made partaking the condition of life: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53), and “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) was said to all his disciples. Yet the Watchtower forbids the great crowd — most of its members — to partake, withholding from millions the very thing Christ said they could not live without.

One mediator for all. “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men … who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6). To restrict Christ’s mediation to the 144,000 contradicts the apostle where he is most emphatic about its universality.

No room for the martyrs. If only 144,000 in all of history go to heaven, and the calling closed by 1935, the count cannot hold the hundreds of thousands martyred in the first three centuries alone. Yet Revelation shows them in heaven — the souls “under the altar,” given white robes (Rev. 6:9–11) — and Tertullian read the martyrs into Revelation 17:6 around A.D. 200. The two-class arithmetic cannot find room for the very saints the New Testament places before the throne.

In short: Scripture divides humanity not into a heavenly class and an earthly class, but into those written in the Lamb’s book of life and those who are not (Revelation 20:15). For all the redeemed there is one destiny — the new heaven and new earth made one, where “the dwelling of God is with men” (Revelation 21:1–3). There are not two kinds of Christian: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one flock gathered from every fold into the household of God.

For a more complete essay on this topic, download One Flock One Hope (.docx)