In Revelation 14, are the 144,000 literally virgins or is this figurative? Are they the same 144,000 described in Revelation 7? Okay, when we get to Revelation, I wish we had a lot more writings from the early church on that subject because we would, I think, all be so curious how they were seeing everything. And we do have some, but it's very incomplete. Now, concerning the 144,000, several people do comment on that.
They seem to all understand the part of being virgins to be literal, because there was a lot of emphasis in the early church about people who would be voluntary eunuchs for the kingdom of God. Jesus had mentioned that. They don't mean physical eunuchs, but living a celibate life, never marrying, being a virgin because you have chosen that as a way of life to focus your life on Jesus Christ. And you had lots of men and you had lots of women. It was a very common thing.
It's something I see in the New Testament, but it got so out of hand in the Catholic Church that the Protestants totally rebelled against it. And so in our circles, Anabaptist, evangelical, whatever, you just don't find it at all. I mean, there are people who aren't married, but usually it's because they just never happen to get married, not because they chose a vocation of I'm going to be a virgin for Jesus Christ, and there's no support in the church for that.
So they understood that, the ones who comment on it as being literal. But yeah, we get into issues with that because I don't think anyone took all three parts. There's three parts. There's the number 144,000. Is that number literal? And then is it literal virgins? And then number three, is it literal Israelites from these different tribes of Israel? And they seem, in general, the ones who comment to take the virginity part literal. The number 144,000, not necessarily literal. They're ambiguous on that.
And then the Israelite part, I don't think anyone took literal, that they believed that speaking about spiritual Israel. But of course, all of Revelation is figurative. And yet parts of it seem to be literal. And so for all of us on every verse, it's always hard to know, yeah, what do you take literal? What do you take figurative? And there's certainly no dogmatic answer from the early church. But I think I can say definitely the virginity part they took literally.
You mentioned something there that Grant Miller also asked. I had it later in the question list, but I thought since you kind of touched on it briefly, I might go ahead and throw that on here as well. And you might not have anything more to add than what you've already said, but are the Israelites in Revelation 7 the actual descendants of Jacob's sons? If it's only talking about the church, it seems contrary to specify that there are 12,000 from each tribe. Right.
So like I said, there's only a few who commented on it, and they all believe it was figurative Origen. He comment, he said, of course, if you're taking the virgins literally, he said, there's not even 144,000 Jewish Christians, period, let alone 144,000 virgin Jewish Christians. And it certainly didn't grow from there. Now, of course, what you had in the New Testament, we don't know for sure. Some of the things that might indicate it's figurative. But again, I mean, what it's going to be, it's going to be.
I mean, it's something I don't feel very strongly about either way. Those 12 tribes, I'd have to say it would be ironic that there's exactly 12,000 from those tribes because the tribe of Judah is the one that most of them come from. It's why we call them Jews because the vast majority are from the tribe of Judah. And so it would be odd if it's literal Israelites that it just comes out exactly equal from each tribe.
Well, I say each tribe, if you notice when you go through the list of tribes, the tribe of Dan isn't listed. So are we to believe that no Israelites from the tribe of Dan got saved or at least are included in the 144,000. And then it lists the tribe of Joseph, which there wasn't a tribe of Joseph. You have Ephraim and Manasseh. Manasseh listed, but not Ephraim. So yeah, there are a little bit of problems if you take the tribes literal. But yeah, why he lists it that way? If it's figurative, good question.
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