Revelation 7:1-14
7 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, 3 saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” 4 And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:
5 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed,
12,000 from the tribe of Reuben,
12,000 from the tribe of Gad,
6 12,000 from the tribe of Asher,
12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali,
12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh,
7 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon,
12,000 from the tribe of Levi,
12,000 from the tribe of Issachar,
8 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun,
12,000 from the tribe of Joseph,
12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.
A Great Multitude from Every Nation
9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11 And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
“Collateral Damage” is an all-too-familiar phrase that has unfortunately entered our vocabulary due to the many wars we have witnessed over these past several years across the globe.
“Collateral” comes from the Latin word “collateralis” which means “together with.” The phrase “collateral damage” is typically used in military contexts and refers to the unintentional damage that happens to buildings or civilians as a result of military actions targeted at enemies.
So, for example, you know the bad guys are hiding out in a building in the middle of the city. You destroy the building with a missile. The collateral damage is the damage done to the surrounding buildings from the explosion and the deaths of several people in that building that had nothing to do with the enemies.
Why bring this up? Because we read last week a description of the unleashing of God’s wrath upon the earth and it raises the question of collateral damage. How does God judge the entire world without any of His own getting hurt? This is at least one of the questions that chapter 7 is responding to. It anticipates that the question Christians may be asking is, “But what about us?”
Recall that, when Jesus opened the fifth seal, John was given a vision of those who had died of martyrdom and they are asking of the Lord, “How long will it be until our blood is avenged on the evil ones who killed us?” The answer came back that it would be “a little while longer,” and that the reason for the delay was that God is waiting for that number of believers destined for martyrdom to be complete. It is then that the end will come. We, then, fast forwarded to chapters 10 and 11 which revealed that Christians would profess their faith unto their deaths, and it would be their bold confession that would lead to the profession of faith of those final individuals whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The Lamb’s Book of Life is not a never-ending-story. It has within it a finite number of names. And, so, when the final martyr dies and the final name believes in response to their witness, then the end will come. On that day, the world will see the calamitous events that we read of in Chapter 6:12-17 which ends with this desperate cry of verse 17: “the great day of wrath has come, who can stand?” The answer to that question now comes to us in chapter 7.
Verse one begins with the phrase “after this” which could mean that we are moving on now to something unrelated to what has come before, but it certainly doesn’t have to. It is used repeatedly in Revelation and, in some places, it simply marks the continuation of one long scene and that is what is happening here. Many refer to chapter seven as a “pause” between the opening of seals 6 and 7, but this is all a part of the sixth seal. The opening of the sixth seal is a continuation of an elaborate three-part response to the cries of the martyrs in the fifth. First, their question “How long?” is answered in the fifth seal with- “Not long, wait until the final martyr is killed.” But then, the sixth seal continues by fleshing out some of the further details of this event by providing a description of the day of wrath and answers the question, “Are there believers who will have to endure this wrath of God?”
The answer comes back with an assurance that they will not as well as a glorious picture of the believers as God’s army with a preview of their eternal inheritance. We will be looking at the picture of God’s people in this post and, in the next post, we will consider their inheritance.
We see this message begin with the vision of four angels at the four corners of the earth- N,S,E,W, perhaps the same angels as the riders of the first four seals, and they are holding back the wind of God’s wrath. Jewish tradition actually tells a very similar story when it came to the flood. It is said that four angels were ready to set in motion the unleashing of the catastrophic flood but were told to wait until Noah finished the ark. Here we have a similar scene.
They are holding back the wind apparently in anticipation of letting it go when and another angel ascends from the rising of the sun in the East. This is another reference to Jewish tradition that claimed that God would come from the East in His glory to save His people. This angel has with him the seal of the living God and he calls to the four angels to continue to hold back the wind until the servants of God have received the seal of God upon their foreheads.
This echoes the scene of Ezekiel 9:1-5 in which Israel is to be judged for their pagan idolatry.
9 Then he (the LORD God) cried in my ears with a loud voice, saying, “Bring near the executioners of the city, each with his destroying weapon in his hand.” 2 And behold, six men came from the direction of the upper gate, which faces north, each with his weapon for slaughter in his hand, and with them was a man clothed in linen, with a writing case at his waist. And they went in and stood beside the bronze altar. 3 Now the glory of the God of Israel had gone up from the cherub on which it rested to the threshold of the house. And he called to the man clothed in linen, who had the writing case at his waist. 4 And the Lord said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.” 5 And to the others he said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity.
What is the mark or seal on the forehead specifically? Revelation 14:1 informs us that the seal is the name of Christ and the name of the Father. Is this a literal mark on the forehead? It is no more a literal mark here than it was in Ezekiel. The seal represents the fact that God knows who are His. In Ezekiel, the city of Jerusalem was full of Jews. What distinguished one from another was whether or not their spirits were troubled over the idolatry in the city. God knows the hearts of His people. And before He unleashes His judgment on Jerusalem, he promises to spare those who were His. And the way He communicates that He knows who are His is by saying, “My mark, or my name, is on them. And so it is here.
And the number of those sealed are 144,000. In chapter 7, we are told that these 144,000 are from every tribe of the sons of Israel. The 144,000 represent the total number of Christian martyrs and they are the same group of people who will be described again in verses 9-15 as a “great multitude that no could number.” Recall that this is a part of the response to the cries of the martyrs in chapter 5 and is given for the encouragement of the saints.
These “servants of God” (vs. 3) are pictured as the army of the Lion of Judah. That is why there are 144,000 listed according to tribes. Readers need to understand that, when a census of the tribes of Israel was taken, it was typically to determine the military strength of the nation. We have an example of this in 2 Samuel 24 when David sent out his military commanders to number how many battle-worthy men there were in Israel. A detail that supports this idea is in chapter 14. How are the 144,000 described? Verse 4- “It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever He goes.”
So Jesus only protects those who are sexually pure- is that the point? No. This is a puzzling detail until you consider the 144,000 as the army of God- and then it makes sense. Those who were in the military were to be ritually pure because to go to battle for the Lord was to offer yourself as a sacrificial offering. And so we see laws regarding their purity when it comes to sexual matters in Leviticus and an example of this concern given in 1 Samuel 21:5. David, speaking of his mighty men that have gone to battle with him: “Truly women have been kept from us always when I go on an expedition.” And, in a statement where I think he is referring to their sexual purity, he continues, “The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy.”
We also hear echoes of this in 2 Sam. 11:11 with the story of David and Bathsheba when David tried to get her husband Uriah to go be with his wife in order to cover up David’s affair. Uriah responded: “Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink and to lie with my wife? As you live and your soul lives, I will not do this thing.” Lastly, in relation to this, the word “blameless” in Rev. 14:5 is the same word used to describe animals acceptable for sacrifice in Exodus 29:38; Leviticus 1:3, 3:1.
And it makes sense that they are with the Lord on Mount Zion where the Psalmists and prophets proclaimed that the King would dwell with His people and that “vengeance will rise in Zion.” Why 144,000? It is using the numbers 12x12x1000 to indicate multitudes of people. These are symbolic numbers just as the use of 12 in chapter 21 is. Verse 17 has the measurements of the New Jerusalem and it says that 144 cubits by human measurement is the same as an angel’s measurement. What in the world does that mean? The numerical value of the word “angel” in Hebrew is 144. The other measurement was 12,000 and it is all pointing to the same thing: the enormity of the size of the city to contain the multitude of those who will inhabit it.
Why, are these 144,000 are the same as the multitude from many nations and not just saved Jews?
1) The entire chapter 7 is dealing with the (vs. 3) “servants of God”- this would be believers from every nation- which is what we see explained in verse 9- the crowd is a great multitude “from all tribes and peoples and languages.” Presumably that includes the tribes of Israel. Indeed, we will find in Revelation 22:4 something that will confirm this. Speaking of believers from all the nations, we are told that “His servants will worship Him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads.”
2) In chapter 14, another description of those 144,000 gathered in Zion is that (verse 5) “In their mouth was no lie found.” This is a quote from Zephaniah 3:13 which is speaking of the conversion of the nations and it speaks of the people of God from all nations as those who are daughters of Zion and they are those who “Do no injustice and speak no lies.”
3) What does chapter 14 say that the 144,000 are doing? 14:3 – “They were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders.” What song is this new song? It is the song that is being sung in 7:10 by the multitude who are, “Crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels who were standing around the throne, and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying “Amen! Blessing and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
4) The way the tribes are listed is really unusual and it leads one to believe that, in light of these other things, this is done purposely to symbolize the people of God as a whole rather than a specific number of Jews. What is unusual? First, Judah is named first. That doesn’t happen unless a point is being made. Clearly, it is because that is the tribe that Christ came from and this army is following their King from that tribe. Additionally, although it says “every tribe,” 2 tribes are missing. First, the tribe of Dan is omitted. The reason that we believe that tribe is missing is because Jewish tradition held that the tribe of Dan fell away from God and came under the power of Satan. In fact, some early church teachers argued that Judas was from the tribe of Dan for that reason. And, then, we have in the list the tribes of Joseph and Manasseh. Typically, Joseph would not be there but it would the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim- his two sons. So it should be Dan and Joseph or it should be Manasseh and Ephraim. The fact that it is not these suggests that there is something that is being communicated here. At the very least, what is clear is that if it meant a literal specific number of people from each tribe of Israel, this is not typically how they would be described.
5) Lastly, if these were only Jews, we would be left wondering why Christ has divided Jew from Gentile when: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, but you are all one in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 3:28); “God has made us both one” (Ephesians 2:14); “It is not the children of flesh who are the children of God, but the children of promise are counted as offspring” (Romans 9:8); “Abraham is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations” (Romans 4:16-17): and the fact that Gentiles have been grafted onto the vine of Israel so now we are one plant (Romans 11).
And so, what we are going to find in the pages to come is that there is a war to be fought. Chapters 12 through 13 will describe that war in which the dragon and the two beasts are described as being successful in their efforts against God’s people. In chapter 14, however, we find 144,000 gathered on Mt. Zion with their Messianic King to oppose the dragon and the beasts. Who are they? Chapter 7 has told us.
They are the multitude from every nation who (7:14) have come out of the great tribulation, having given their lives in service to their King. We find that the battle is a spiritual battle and it is won by following the example of our King Jesus, the Lion who led like a Lamb to the slaughter. Revelation 14 declares: "Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this,: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”
Applications:
1) The servants of God are the army of God. That is the way that God sees us. This should be no surprise in light of the OT warfare imagery, but it is given a profound meaning when we come to the New Testament. If we imagine a battle of Armageddon in which believers are taking up swords to vanquish our foes, we are not thinking very Christianly. No where in the Scriptures are followers of Christ encouraged to do anything but to love our enemies and to leave vengeance against them to the Lord. There will not come a day in which you will finally get to unleash your pent-up anger and go shedding blood in the name of Christ. The only blood you will have shed in the battle for God’s kingdom will be your own. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12 “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Therefore we take up our spiritual armor- righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, the word of God, and prayer. That is how the battle is fought. And it is by engaging in a spiritual battle even if it costs us our lives.
2) A major point of this section is that the delay of the coming judgement is due to God’s provision of safety for His own people against the fury of His wrath and all that it involves. Now we talked about that last week, but it bears repeating here- that if you are a follower of Christ, you need not fear the coming day of God’s wrath. Now it is clear, that the absence of God’s wrath is not the absence of suffering. This multitude that no one could number from all tribes and peoples and languages are those who are “coming out of the great tribulation.” What does this mean? These are those who have lost their lives during the tribulation. Those in the fifth seal who were slain for the word of God are given a white robe as they cry out to God. The flip side is to remember that the presence of affliction is not an indication of God’s displeasure. It is to be expected and we are reminded so here but we also remember that we are more than conquerors in him.
3) Lastly, Jesus told a parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13. He likens the visible church to a wheat field. In that wheat field, there is the wheat, but then there are weeds. It seems like that parable is speaking of the same thing we just read here in Rev. 7, as the servants of the master wanted to yank up the weeds but the master tells them to wait, because if they yank up the weeds, they will likely create collateral damage- they will inadvertently, yet inevitably, yank up some wheat as well. So he says, wait until the day of harvest, then we’ll separate them one from another. The wheat to go into his barn, the weeds to be burned. The point is clear- any time we gather, we are a mixture of wheat and weeds. We may not know the difference, the angels may not even know the difference, but God knows the difference and He puts His seal of ownership on all who are His. Which are you? The wheat are those who have God’s name and the name of Jesus Christ written on their foreheads- presumably by the Holy Spirit as we are told in Ephesians that He is the one by whom we are sealed. This, of course, is referring to the fact that one who is wheat belongs to Christ and because they belong to Him, they belong to the Father. Do you belong to Christ? The way you know that you do is that you have recognized and confessed that you are a sinner who is in need of forgiveness and that you have repented and believed upon Christ, the Son of God, as the One who died for your sins, was buried and raised on the third day. He has risen to the right hand of the Father and will return again for His own. You now live in the awareness of your identity as His. You are His son or His daughter and your life belongs to Him as you await the blessed hope of an eternal inheritance with Him. The only other option is an eternal inheritance apart from the joy of His kingdom but rather, with the expectation of His wrath. Come unto Christ.
Questions for Discussion
Several doctrines are raised in the above account, any of them could prompt a full discussion. It seems wise to focus on one in particular at this juncture: typology.
One of the reasons that people have such a hard time in the Book of Revelation is that they are unfamiliar with the subject of typology, or the use of “types” in the Bible. A biblical type can be a person, a place, event or a thing that serves God’s purposes in His redemptive plan until they are fulfilled in or through Christ Himself (“These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” Col. 2:17). If we look at Matthew 12 alone, we find Jesus referencing David, the Temple, Solomon and Jonah all in ways that reveal them as “types” of Christ in the sense that Christ is greater than all of them and they serve to point to the reality of who Christ is. In these cases, Christ is the “anti-type,” meaning, that to which the type is pointing.
1) In John 3:14, Jesus says “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus is referencing the events of Numbers 21:4-9.
What is the type and what is the anti-type in this example?
2) Hebrews 12:22 declares to believers: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable angels in festal gathering.”
What is the type and what is the anti-type in this example?
3) The temple in the OT was a type that functioned on several different levels.
a) Hebrews 8:1-5 and 9:23-24 teach us that the tabernacle/temple was but a “copy and shadow of the heavenly things” and “copies of the true things.” What do you think this means?
b) Hebrews 9:9 says that the “first section” of the temple “is symbolic for the present age.” What does that mean?
c) John 1:14 says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt (literally “tabernacled”) among us, and we have seen His glory.” What do you think is being communicated here?
d) Jesus refers to Himself as the temple in John 2:18-22 and that He was “greater than the temple” in Matthew 12:6. What are the implications of these statements?
e) The tabernacle/temple’s architecture bore a resemblance to details from the garden of Eden. In Revelation 21 and 22, descriptions of the new heavens and new earth and the new Jerusalem share images from both the garden of Eden and the temple. What are the types and antitypes here? What is the message?
f) In 1 Peter 2:4-5, the church and what takes place in it is likened to the temple and its activities. Romans 12:1 says that we are to offer ourselves as “living sacrifices.” Hebrews 13:15-16 says that the sacrifices we offer are praise, acknowledging His name, doing good, and sharing what we have. What is the type/antitype?
Let’s consider the example of the temple. Taking all of these things together (and there are other places in Scripture we could look at too), how do you think we, as Christians, are to understand the temple of the Old Testament? Why did God make the tabernacle/temple central in the worship of His people?
A Messianic Jewish organization “Jewish Voice” declares that a day is coming when the temple will again stand in Jerusalem complete with its Levitical priesthood. They approvingly report of a number of Orthodox Jews who are reviving the Sanhedrin, reconstructing various temple utensils, and even going as far as planning to use the frozen embryos of red angus cattle from the United States to breed red heifers in Israel for the coming sacrifices.
How does a reflection on the use of types influence (if at all) your reaction to this story and your expectation in as far as it relates to a future temple being built in Jerusalem?
