---
title: Revelation 14:20
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/revelation-14-20/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/revelation-14-20.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Revelation 14:20
testament: NT
section: Prophecy
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Revelation 14:20

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and the blood that flowed from it rose as high as the bridles of the horses for a distance of 1,600 stadia.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "blood came out of the winepress as high up as the bridles of the horses for a distance of 1,600 stadia"

## JW Usage

Watchtower interpretation today reads Revelation 14:20 as a symbolic image of the comprehensive judgment that falls on the wicked at Armageddon. The 1,600 stadia is taken as a number of symbolic completeness (4 × 4 × 100 — totality squared, multiplied by 100), not as a geographic measurement. This is a significant retreat from the Watchtower's original 1917 reading.

## Protestant Usage

The story of this verse in Watchtower history is itself a testimony to the 1919 unfalsifiability problem. The Finished Mystery (1917) — published two years before the supposed 1919 inspection that selected the Bible Students as Jehovah's faithful slave — taught that 1,600 stadia equalled the distance from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Watchtower headquarters in Brooklyn. The reading is now quietly abandoned, but Jehovah supposedly chose this organisation for "faithfully dispensing spiritual food" while it was teaching it. The verse itself describes a comprehensive judgment scene; the Watchtower's history with the verse describes the recurring need to retroactively redefine prior teachings as "old light."

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The 1919 Inspection](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/1919-unfalsifiability.md) — An Unfalsifiable Claim [Authority]