Revelation 7:9
Revelation 7:99After this I looked and saw a multitude too large to count, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.
("After this I saw, and look! a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb") is the Watchtower's primary text for the "great crowd / other sheep / earthly class" half of its two-tier salvation system. Read together with Rev 7:14 ("these are the ones who come out of the great tribulation"), it is used to argue that this group is a distinct class from the 144,000 anointed of v4-8, that their destination is paradise earth rather than heaven, and that they are the visible body of Jehovah's Witnesses being gathered today. The Watchtower applies this verse to more than 99% of current Witnesses — the rank-and-file who pass the Memorial emblems untouched because they do not see themselves as partakers of the new covenant. Together with , Rev 7:9 forms the textual scaffolding for every distinctive Watchtower practice that flows from the heavenly/earthly hope distinction.
says the opposite of what the Watchtower needs it to say, on three independent fronts. (1) Location: the great crowd is "standing before the throne and before the Lamb." The Greek phrase enōpion tou thronou ("before the throne") appears nine times in Revelation and is used elsewhere of angels (7:11), the twenty-four elders (4:10), and the 144,000 themselves (14:3) — all groups the Watchtower agrees are in heaven. The phrase cannot mean "in heaven" for angels and elders but "on earth" for the great crowd in the same chapter. Rev 7:15 doubles the point: they "render him sacred service day and night in his temple," and the Greek word is naos (inner sanctuary) — every other naos in Revelation refers to the heavenly temple (11:19, 14:15-17, 15:5-8, 16:1, 16:17). Even the NWT preserves the location-marker. (2) Identity: the great crowd and the 144,000 are not two groups but one, described under the hear/see literary pattern that runs throughout Revelation. In Rev 5:5-6 John "hears" of the Lion of Judah and "sees" a slain Lamb — same person, two descriptions. In Rev 7 he "hears" the number 144,000 (v4) and immediately "sees" a great crowd no one could number (v9). The pattern demands that hear and see refer to the same reality. The selective literalism of taking the number literally while symbolising the gender (Rev 14:4 — male virgins), ethnicity (12 named tribes, 12,000 each), and tribal arithmetic has no textual signal to support it. (3) Universality of the invitation: is the final invitation of the entire Bible — "let anyone thirsting come; let anyone who wishes take life's water free." Even the NWT preserves "anyone." The Watchtower cannot make 22:17 mean "anyone, except 99% of you." Cross-reference Eph 4:4 ("one body, one Spirit, one hope") — Paul's "one hope" cannot be split into two without making "one Lord" and "one faith" splittable as well. The two-class system requires Rev 7:9 to bear more interpretive weight than the verse can carry — and the rest of Revelation, plus Pauline ecclesiology, reads against it.