El 31 de mayo de 1935, en una asamblea celebrada en Washington D.C., el presidente de la Sociedad Watch Tower, J. F. Rutherford, anunció que la gran muchedumbre no era en absoluto una clase celestial, sino terrestre, y el cambio se publicó en La Atalaya del 1 y del 15 de agosto de 1935.

“These flashes of prophetic light prepared the ground for the historic discourse on “The Great Multitude,” given May 31, 1935, by the president of the Watch Tower Society, J. F. Rutherford, at the Washington, D.C., convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“In 1935 a bright flash of light revealed that the great crowd mentioned at Revelation 7:9-17 was not a secondary heavenly class. It had been thought that the ones mentioned in those verses were some of the anointed who had not been fully faithful and so were standing before the throne instead of sitting on thrones reigning as kings and priests with Jesus Christ.”