1 Peter 1:1
1 Peter 1:11Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the elect who are exiles of the Dispersion throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen
The Watchtower treats as ordinary epistolary framework — Peter writes to believers "scattered about" in five Roman provinces. What the verse is not pressed to do in Watchtower literature is anchor the readership of the letter when ("you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood") is reached. The standard JW reading restricts 2:9's royal priesthood to the 144,000 anointed, which requires the letter's audience in 1:1 to be either restricted to that class or partitioned somewhere unmarked in the text.
Start 1 Peter at 1:1, always. Peter names his audience: "the temporary residents scattered about in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia." That is all the Christians in five Roman provinces — at minimum tens of thousands of people by AD 65. One chapter later Peter calls these same scattered believers "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (2:9). Either all the Christians in five provinces were already part of the 144,000 (which would mean the 144,000 was nearly full by the time 1 Peter was written, decades before John wrote Revelation), or the royal-priesthood language applies to ordinary believers and the two-tier restriction is an addition to the text. Use 1:1 and 2:9 as a paired unit in the conversation — they are designed to be read together, and they expose the partitioning move the Watchtower has to make.