A Royal Priesthood — Every Believer is a Priest
Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the 'royal priesthood' of 1 Peter 2:9
applies only to the 144,000 anointed Christians who will rule with
Christ in heaven. The 'great crowd' of other faithful sheep have only
earthly hope and are not part of the new covenant priesthood. The new
covenant, on this view, is mediated through the anointed class to
the great crowd — and the great crowd's relationship with God flows
through the organisation that the anointed class superintends.
Hebrews 10:19-22's invitation to enter the Most Holy Place therefore
applies only to the anointed.
This is one of the cleanest doctrinal contrasts between the Bible's text and the Watchtower's two-tier system. The argument is positive and invitational — it lifts up Christ's finished work and the believer's direct access.
- Open in their NWT together. Read the verse slowly: 'But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for special possession.' Ask: 'Who is Peter writing to? Look at .' Peter writes to 'the temporary residents scattered about in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia' — ordinary believers in five Roman provinces. Not 144,000 specifically. Not a remote anointed class. Ordinary churchgoing first-century Christians.
- Note the source of the language: Peter is quoting , where God called the whole nation of Israel a 'kingdom of priests and a holy nation' — every Israelite, not a subset. Peter is deliberately applying that whole-nation priesthood to the whole church. The application is universal, not partitioned.
- Read : 'and he made us to be a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.' Note who 'us' is in context. praises Christ for loving 'us' and freeing 'us' from sins by his blood. The 'us' is everyone whom Christ has freed from sin by his blood. That is every believer, not 144,000 only.
- Read : 'You were slaughtered, and with your blood you bought people of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and you made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God.' This is the key verse. 'Every tribe and tongue and people and nation' is the Watchtower's own definition of the great crowd (compare ). And Revelation 5 says those very people — every tribe and tongue — have been made priests and kings. The Watchtower divides the group; Revelation 5 unites them.
- Read : 'we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus... let us approach with a sincere heart.' Ask: 'Is the writer of Hebrews here addressing only the anointed class — or all his Christian readers?' The 'us' is universal. Every believer enters the Most Holy Place by the blood of Christ. That is the priesthood Peter and John are talking about.
- Note the historical event: — at the moment Christ died, 'the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.' The veil that separated worshippers from God's presence was rent. Not by human hands. From the top down — God's act. The Mosaic system of mediated, restricted priestly access was dismantled at the cross. Christ did not tear the veil only for 144,000.
- The decisive question: 'In your Bible, where does it say "the priesthood applies only to 144,000"? Where is the verse that limits Peter's "you are all a royal priesthood" to a subset?' That verse does not exist. The Watchtower's two-tier reading is added to the text, not drawn from it.
- Close warmly: 'If you are a believer in Christ, Peter says you are a priest. You have direct access. The veil is torn. You don't need to go through 144,000, and you don't need to go through Warwick. You go straight to the Father through Jesus, the one mediator ().'
Peter calls the whole church a royal priesthood by deliberately echoing — where the whole nation of Israel was a kingdom of priests. explicitly says people of every tribe and tongue have been made kings and priests by Christ's blood. The two-tier 144,000-vs-great-crowd reading splits what the Bible unites and restricts what Christ's death made universal.
1 Peter 2:9 only applies to the 144,000 anointed Christians, not the great crowd.
Where does the text say that? Read again. Peter writes to 'the temporary residents scattered about in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.' That is all the Christians in those five Roman provinces — at minimum tens of thousands of people. Were all of them in the 144,000? If so, the 144,000 were already nearly fulfilled by AD 65 when Peter wrote — long before the seven other books of the New Testament were written. If not, Peter is calling people outside the 144,000 a 'royal priesthood' — which contradicts the Watchtower's restriction. Either way, the two-tier reading collapses.
Revelation 5:10 in our NWT says they will 'rule as kings over the earth' — that proves the priests rule from heaven while others are their subjects on earth.
This is the JW's strongest NWT defence, and it deserves a careful answer. Three observations. First, the Greek preposition epi can mean both 'over' (with authority) and 'on' (location) — the NWT itself uses 'on' in parallel passages (e.g., 'the earth, because it is God's footstool'; NWT: 'they will rule as kings with the Christ for the thousand years'). The rendering 'over' in is a translator's choice, not the only possible reading. Second, even granting 'rule over,' the verse still says who rules over the earth: the people Christ bought from every tribe and tongue and people and nation in verse 9 — which is the Watchtower's own definition of the great crowd in . So even on the 'rule over' reading, the Bible is saying the great crowd rules over the earth. The Watchtower cannot have both 'great crowd = every tribe and tongue' in Revelation 7 and 'rule over the earth = only 144,000' in Revelation 5 — the same phrase ('every tribe and tongue') cannot refer to two different groups within three chapters. Third, and most importantly, verse 10 says 'you made them to be a kingdom and priests' — the priesthood identification applies to the same group 'bought from every tribe.' The NWT's 'over' translation does not change who the priests are. The priests are the bought. The bought are from every tribe. That is every redeemed believer.
But the great crowd has earthly hope, not heavenly — they aren't priests in the temple.
The 'temple' language in Revelation is about who has access to God, not about geography. says every believer enters the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus. That is direct priestly access — every believer, no two tiers. And says the great crowd is 'before the throne of God; and they are rendering him sacred service day and night in his temple.' The great crowd is in the temple, serving God as priests do. The two-tier reading requires that the great crowd be both 'in the temple serving day and night' and not in the priesthood — and that contradicts how priesthood works in Scripture.
We honour the priesthood — we just understand it differently.
I appreciate that you take the verse seriously. Here's a gentle question to take home: if every believer is a priest — even just in some sense — then every believer has some direct access to God that does not require an intermediary. What does that direct access look like in your daily life? When you pray, are you praying through Warwick, or are you praying directly to the Father through Jesus the mediator ()? If your experience is the latter, then in practice you already experience what promises — and the question is just whether the Watchtower's official theology matches your real relationship with God.
There has always been a distinction between the priests and the people — even in the New Testament with elders and bishops.
Elders and bishops have a teaching and shepherding role (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, ) — but not a priestly mediating role. The New Testament never calls elders 'priests.' It carefully reserves priest language for two things: (1) Christ himself, the great High Priest (), and (2) all believers as a royal priesthood (). The Old Testament's tiered priesthood (high priest, priests, Levites, lay Israelites) is not reproduced in the New Testament. Elders shepherd; they do not mediate.
John 10:16 — Jesus said 'I have other sheep, which are not of this fold.' That's the two-tier structure: one fold (the 144,000) and the other sheep (the great crowd).
Read Jesus's words carefully: 'I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; those too I must bring, and they will listen to my voice, and they will become one flock, one shepherd.' Jesus's entire point is that the 'other sheep' become part of one flock under one shepherd. The word 'fold' in Greek (aule) refers to a sheepfold enclosure — and Jesus is almost certainly contrasting the Jewish sheepfold (the first-century Jewish church) with the Gentile sheep he will bring in from outside. This is the same point Paul makes in : Christ 'made the two groups into one and broke down the wall of partition... that he might create the two peoples in union with himself into one new man.' The entire thrust of the New Testament's 'other sheep' teaching is the unity of Jew and Gentile in one people of God — not a two-tier salvation with one group having heavenly hope and another earthly. To use as the charter for a permanent two-tier system is to read into the text the very division Jesus said he was abolishing.
Priests need people to serve — if everyone is a priest, who receives the priestly ministry?
That is a good question because it reveals the Old Testament assumption the Watchtower is still operating under. In the Old Testament, priests mediated between God and the people — the people had no direct access. But in the New Covenant, the mediating work was done once for all by Christ (, 10:10, 10:14). What priests do now is no longer mediate — it is offer spiritual sacrifices. says believers are a holy priesthood 'to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.' says 'present your bodies a sacrifice, living, holy.' says 'let us always offer to God a sacrifice of praise.' Every Christian's daily life is their priestly service — offered to God directly, through Christ alone, without a mediating class. The priesthood doesn't need a 'non-priest' class to serve because the priesthood is not mediatorial anymore. It is Godward worship offered by every believer, to God, through Christ.
Do not be triumphalist or imply the JW is being deceived. Many Witnesses genuinely want a personal relationship with God and experience one in private even when their official theology denies it. Honour that. The argument is not 'you don't really know God' — it is 'the Bible says even more about your access to God than the Watchtower has told you.'
Read and then together. Then read and side by side. Notice that 'every tribe and tongue and people and nation' appears in both passages — and ask yourself why the Watchtower says it means one group in Revelation 5 and a different group in Revelation 7.