God's Arborists (Part One)

In Romans 11:17-24 Paul likens the general apostasy of Israel, the coming in of the Gentiles, and the possibility of Jews to come to faith to the pruning of natural branches on a cultivated olive tree, the grafting in of the branches of a wild olive tree, and the grafting in of the broken-off branches respectively. Witnesses see in this passage a blueprint of how God is able to complete the Anointed class, a group that they say will total 144,000 persons. The branches that remained, were added, or were re-added to the tree are “the full number of the secondary part of Abraham’s offspring”, which is another way they refer to this group of 144,000 people, who alone, they say, are spirit-anointed Christians who will reign with Christ. (w80 7/15 p. 24; mwb19 February p. 6)

As part of their interpretation, they recognize that the broken off natural branches are “natural Jews who rejected Jesus”. (mwb19 February p. 6) They teach that most Jews were severed from the Abrahamic covenant in 36 AD and, accordingly, cannot in such a state make up this secondary part of Abraham’s offspring. (w83 8/15 p. 18) In their view, in order “to replace them, God turned to the non-Jews or, as it were, to a symbolic wild olive tree, to extract sufficient ‘branches’ to graft into the spiritual garden olive tree that was to be composed of 144,000 branches” (i.e. Anointed Christians). (w82 2/15 pp. 23-24)

On the Witness view one branch equals one person. This is indicated by three things. First, their replacement thesis: that for every Jewish branch that was broken off either a Gentile branch would have to be added to the tree or a Jewish branch would have to be reattached so that the tree will have its “full, foreordained membership”. (w74 2/15 pp. 127-128) Because of this “the number of branches in the trunk of that tree would stay the same.” (w80 7/15 p. 24) Second, that they say that there are 144,000 branches in the tree corresponding to 144,000 spirit-anointed persons whom they say make up the Anointed class also shows that they interpret one branch to be one person. (w/45 5/1 p. 135; w82 2/15 pp. 23-24) Third, it is indicated in this statement in a Witness article concerning a potential first-century Jewish convert. “If any individual Jew did not remain in his lack of faith, Jehovah God was willing to graft him back into the symbolic olive tree and make him a member of the spiritual seed of Abraham.” (w83 8/15 pp. 21-22) In other words, that Jewish convert counted for one branch in the cultivated olive tree.

This raises the question. How many branches were broken off from this tree? Given the Witness interpretation, which rightly identifies the broken-off branches with ethnic Jews, our answer will at least be roughly identical to the number of Jews who were alive in the first century. Witness literature does not state how many Jews were alive in this era, but it is beyond dispute that there were at least many hundreds of thousands of Jews alive in those days. Therefore, on the Witness view there must have been at least many hundreds of thousands of branches in the tree that were broken off. However, this undermines their claim that there can only ever be 144,000 thousand anointed persons. If, as they themselves say, each branch represents one person, then their own claim that “when one of the natural branches was broken off . . . a branch from a wild olive tree would be inserted in its place” (w80 7/15 p. 24) entails that there ought to be at least many hundreds of thousands of anointed persons when all is said and done.

With the exception of citing an undeniable fact of history (the number of Jews in the first century), this is an entirely internal critique of the Witness claim that there will only be 144,000 spirit-begotten children of God. Further arguments, I think, will include increasingly external criticisms. I will make one below.

Witness literature acknowledges that if a Jew (at least a first century Jew) were to come to faith, “God was willing to graft him back into the symbolic olive tree”. At this time the status of the branches was to be part of the Anointed class. So he would be one of the putatively 144,000 spirit-anointed believers. This raises the question, what if all or most of the Jews of this era were to believe? Witness literature does not comment on this possibility directly, but Paul does give a clear answer in the very passage from which they make this statement about an individual Jew. “And they also, if they do not remain in their lack of faith, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them back in.” (Romans 11:23 NWT) Who is this “they” that may be grafted in? It includes up to all of the Jewish branches that have been broken off. They have been broken off, but God can graft them back in!

Witness literature teaches that not all Jewish converts can be grafted back into the cultivated olive tree, at least any longer. “Those speaking Yiddish or Sephardi or the original Hebrew of Palestine will be given no separate and distinct outstanding palace, as of special reservation. They will have to take, and some are now taking, their place among the ranks of the ‘great multitude’”. (w/45 5/1 p. 138) They can become part of (to use the contemporary Witness term) the great crowd, a distinct group from the 144,000. There are just no longer any spots left for them. For Paul, however, the only thing preventing the many hundreds of thousands of Jews (at least, Jews of his time) who were broken off from the cultivated olive tree from being reattached was their continued unbelief. It was not the fact that there was such a small quota.

One – or two, depending on how you look at it – further problems exist for the Witness position. I will give hints to them here. First, what was the status of the Jews prior to their being broken off, and what would have their status been if they did not reject Christ. Second, given what Paul says about potential Jewish reversion (which we above arbitrarily limited to only the first century), what would happen if the end-times generation of Jews were to convert en masse?