The 144 thousand are not the Great Crowd

1. If all numbers in Revelation are symbols or figures of speech, no number in the book can be taken literally.

2. John never calls the Church "Israel" or "the 12 tribes," etc. The same is true for the rest of the [NOTE Gal 6:16 is qualified by “the Israel of God,” which is distinct from what Paul calls “the Israel of the flesh.”]

3. The 12 tribes are counted and the “great multitude no one could count”! 

4. The 144k are from the 12 tribes of Israel whereas the great crowd is from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages"! Therefore, they cannot be the same group.

5. The fact that some tribes are left out and others added doesn’t make them somehow Gentiles.

[NOTE Wycliffe Commentary “In about 18 lists of the sons of Jacob or Israel in the OT, different tribes are omitted at different times….the absence of Simeon and Issachar from Deuteronomy 33, of Simeon and Judah from Judges 5, and of Gad and Asher from 1 Chronicles.”]

6. By saying “after these things I looked" John means a different group from the previously mentioned group. John is not contnuing a description of one and the same group. 

7. Some scholars [Baucham; Ladd; Beal; Colin Brown] argue that there is a “hearing-seeing” pattern in Revelation. They say that when John hears something then he sees the same thing. But Rev 7 begins with seeing not hearing. You can’t just start in the middle and choose to hear first.

8.In Rev 14 John sees the 144k he heard about in Rev 7, once again breaking the so-called "hearing-seeing" pattern.