Ephesians 1:11
Ephesians 1:1111In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will,
The Watchtower teaches that Jehovah foreordained the group — the 144,000 as a class — but not the individuals who would compose it. The NWT 2013 study note on this verse states that position directly. Predestination of individuals is rejected because it is held to make Jehovah responsible for evil and to remove free will, which the Watchtower's permitted-issue theodicy exists to protect.
This is a closing-week argument, not a doorstep one. Do not open with it, and do not try to convert anyone to Reformed theology. The aim is narrower: to ask whether the class-not-individuals carve-out holds. Read the verse in their own Bible. Foreordained according to the purpose of the one who accomplishes all things as he decides according to his will. Two phrases to notice — accomplishes all things, and as he decides according to his will. Then ask which is the harder claim: that God foreknows and chooses the entire pattern of human history, which the Watchtower affirms, or that he foreknows and chooses individual people inside that pattern, which it denies. If the compatibilist mechanism works at the scale of an eschatological class without violating anyone's will, it works at the scale of a person. The carve-out has no independent support. The same structure appears at , where what Herod and Pilate freely did was what God's hand and counsel had determined beforehand. Close kindly. The Watchtower built this framework to protect God's goodness, and that concern is right. Compare , , .