Christ's control of history clear through to its planned climax when the age long conflict between good and evil is finally ended: that is John's theme.
The first eleven chapters supply an ordered statement of the principles on which He governs human life on earth, both in the church and in the world. Not until ch. 12 onwards is John occupied with God's final solution of the age-long conflict between good and evil - what he describes in 10:7 as the "mystery of God."
The end of all things is not described till half way through, but in these earlier chapters it is in view, and we need to understand this as we look at ch. 7, for in this chapter John is concerned with the Church's role on the stage of this world's life, and he is anxious that we should not lose sight of the final, glorious outcome of her struggles on earth.
So the first eight verses are concerned with the Church on earth, while the remaining eight verses show us the Church in heaven ... and way John evokes the after-life has for generations woven its supportive tendrils round our stricken hearts.
I would like to change the style of presentation a little in this chapter. It is bit boring if every theme is tackled in the same stereotyped way. Different styles are appropriate to different themes - as the Bible itself teaches us. There is very great variety within its compass in its presentation of truth: from simple story-telling, through poetry and parable, to reasoned argument and hard-hitting admonition. I should like to expand ch. 7 into a paraphrase, as though I were John himself elaborating this chapter, say, on a Lord's Day morning to his congregation in Ephesus. One slight difficulty about doing that is that it does not allow me to break off and explain why I interpret features of John's vision one way rather than another. So let me make one or two preliminary explanations.
First, why I take the 144,000 witnesses to mean the church, and not the Jews who will be converted during the period of the great tribulation. It is a reasonable question; the tribes are all mentioned by name in verses 5 to 8, and the Great tribulation specifically mentioned in v. 14.
True. Nevertheless we are dealing with the language of symbol in Revelation - to press such language literally will often lead to absurdity. In 6:9, for example, the souls of the martyrs are said to be "under the altar," which is a funny place for them all to be in heaven if you think John means it literally. How many of them are there, and how big must the altar be to fit them all in under it? And how are they all accommodated there? Do they lie there in their white robes all stacked one above the other on shelves like the coffins in the catacombs ... only ever stirring once in a while to poke their heads out and ask "How long, O Lord, how long?" It is absurd.
No, John describes them as being under the altar simply to suggest, by an association of ideas expressed in images, that they so lived in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings as to have laid down their lives like a sacrifice for their testimony to Jesus, and that they dwell for ever in safety under the cover of the blood He shed for them.
Now I take the 144,000 to refer to the church because ...
(1) The symbolism of numbers which John uses consistently all through the book of Revelation suggests it. It is 12 squared, times a thousand.
Twelve is the number of God's people on earth - the twelve tribes of Israel under the Old Covenant and the twelve apostles of the New. By John's day it had become quite customary to refer to the Church as "the twelve tribes." The Epistle of James, for example, is addressed to the "Twelve Tribes of the Dispersion," and it was clearly addressed to Christians - to the Church.
(2) Second, what is of decisive interest in John's use of the same figure of speech to describe the Church is that in spelling out the names of the tribes of Israel he gets them wrong ... or does he? He leaves one out - Dan - and brings in a substitute to make up the twelve by separating Manasseh from Joseph. Why do that? Simply because from the company of the twelve disciples of Jesus, one had to be dropped - Judas - and a substitute brought in - Matthias, as you read in the first chapter of Acts. And if you ask, "Well, if that's what John meant, why did not he say so plainly, instead of saying it in such a cryptic, roundabout way?" the answer is: the need he had to use a code to protect the Christian readers of his book from prosecution, as we noted in our first study.
By squaring the number 12 to 144, John intensifies the symbol - they are God's children, absolutely, in the most intense degree; and by multiplying the figure by 1000 he multiplies it to abundance, for it is many, not few, who will be saved. (Modern statistics show that across the world, 50 - 60,000 people a day are being converted to Christ?)
(3) By the phrase 'the great tribulation' in v. 14, I take John to mean the general tribulation of life which all Christians were plainly told by Jesus and the apostles we must expect, because John has already indicated in v. 9 that they are a great multitude which no man could number out of every tribe and people and tongue on earth. That is hardly a fitting description of the remnant of believers who it is said will come to faith during the seven year period of the 'Great Tribulation.' John has already described himself - simply as a Christian in his own time - as one "who shares with his readers in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patience." (1: 9)
With those explanations (they could be amplified) let me imagine how John might have preached this chapter when he was free from the pressure of having to keep his words few because they would have to be written and copied many times over.
I have already showed you (John might say) that in a world under judgment, the People of God are not exempt from suffering; you remember what I said about the martyrs? For in a world that is hostile to God, there is no way those who bear faithful testimony to Him can avoid persecution.
Our Sovereign Lord left us under no illusions about that. "In the world," He said, "You will have tribulation" - as I wrote in my Gospel (John 16:33). Matthew too has reminded us that He told us plainly, "They will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by men of all nations for my Name's sake ... Many indeed will fall away ... but he who endures to the end will be saved." (24:9)
If we truly are God's children, you see, the sufferings we have to endure will not weaken our faith; rather they will strengthen it. We recognise in God's judgments a call to repentance, where unbelievers only see in them a reason to rebel. And so it happens that as each age comes to harvest, not only is it overtaken by judgments (such judgments as I described in ch. 6), but also a company of repentant and believing folk is gathered home to God. That is the purpose of God's judgments. That is their meaning.
Indeed, it is those very judgments which reveal who the true children of God really are by the way they respond to them. It is the tribulation of life that reveals the Sons of God!
They stand increasingly distinguished from the rest of men by the testimony they bear out of their very suffering to the saving love of God. They are persuaded that nothing can separate them from the love of God ... not tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword, nor even death, as our brother apostle Paul has so truly said. So out of the very judgments with which God afflicts the world, there rises from the Church's martyrs a testimony to His saving grace. Not only do they stand revealed by their suffering, but they proclaim God's redemptive love by it. His love is more precious and more to be desired than life, they say.
Where is there so marvellous an alchemy in the world as His alchemy of grace in men's lives, that takes the base elements of affliction - and even death - and transmutes them into a glorious testimony to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus?
That is the spirit of faith that is manifest in the martyrs - and the martyr spirit is present in all who are truly God's children, for the Spirit that is in them is the Spirit of Jesus. The world thinks to silence their voice by taking their lives. But it cannot understand that by their death their testimony is raised in volume a thousand times, till the whole universe echoes with their cry. And so it comes about that man's persistent resistance only serves to hasten on God's final triumph.
So let me tell you what I saw in my visions as I looked at God's People in the midst of their tribulation in the world, and what their end will be.
i. I saw first that for their sake the earth was held back from destruction.
For their sake, and for the sake of those who would yet believe because of their testimony, the world was preserved, just as God was willing to have spared Sodom and Gomorrah if even so few as ten righteous souls could have been found in them. For the righteous are the salt of the earth, and it is their presence that preserves it. (The world does not know this. Men think to preserve the world by the abolition of nuclear weapons, when really the way to preserve it is by the promotion of Christian witness! The witness of humble Christians does more to preserve the world than all the peace conferences of all the politicians in all the corridors of power.)
And now I looked, and saw God's people as they were on earth - those who in each generation keep their faith and make their witness in the midst of life's afflictions.
I saw them also as they are in heaven - those who in all generations God has gathered out of the world into His Kingdom, leading them through repentance to faith. They were the myriads I saw surrounding God's Throne in heaven.
I saw the whole people of God: the church militant on earth and the church triumphant in heaven.
Let me tell you then how I saw it was with the saints on earth. What was the secret by which they lived, a secret hidden from the eyes of the rest of the world?
ii. It was that those who trusted in God were kept by Him.
The mark of His ownership was put upon them, just as the King's seal is put upon his property to show that it belongs to him and enjoys his protection.
Not that they were granted shelter. All that happened on the earth happened to them too: tribulation, distress, persecution, peril and sword afflicted them as these things affected the rest of men; but none of these things was able to separate them from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus their Lord. In the midst of all these things, even while they suffered them, they were more than conquerors. They were not saved from trouble; rather they were brought triumphantly through it, for as our beloved brother Paul has said, "it is through much tribulation that we enter the kingdom of God." (Acts 14:72). Their faith did not make life easy, but it did make it great.
This was the quality - this quality of perseverance by which they kept faith when others round them lost it - that marked them as being God's true sons. They were, so to speak, His picked men (His elect); they were His true Israel. They fulfilled the dream God had had for His chosen people from the beginning. His seal was on them not only as a mark of His possession of their lives, but as a guarantee of their quality.
And so I saw them as they streamed through the gates of death into their promised land of heaven - a great multitude - a vast company - as the sand which is upon the seashores of all the world for number, as our father Abraham was promised long ago. They streamed in from every tribe and people and tongue, for in Abraham all the peoples of the earth have been blessed.
And there they stood: not knelt as though they were slaves, but stood ... like sons about their Father's throne, clothed in white robes, for the cleansing of forgiveness through the blood of Jesus was theirs and the gift of a resurrection body like their Lord's; and they held palm branches in their hands, for they were victors all, who had overcome the world with the victory of faith. They sang - and all their song was of salvation, and of Him Who was their Saviour.
This was how I saw it, my children - the Community of the Kept on Earth, and the Community of the Redeemed in Heaven.
When I had seen this, I was able to understand God's purpose for His Church in the world. I understood that as the seals of time were broken open one by one, and God's judgments overtook the world, the Sons of God stood increasingly distinguished from the rest of men.
1. They stood distinguished first by their unshaken confidence in God's love.
They were as those who were sealed. Nothing was able to separate them from God's love - not death nor life, not principalities nor powers, not high things nor low things, not anything.
2. They stood distinguished also from the rest of men by the repentance with which they responded to God's judgments.
Disaster and distress did not embitter them and turn them away from God: rather these things impelled them to seek Him the more.
Like our Prince Emmanuel, the faithful and true witness, who in the hour when evil drew its net around Him so that He was permitted no escape from death, reached up to God from the place where He could no longer move, and entrusted His spirit to God, so like Him, they grew more resolute in faith, as the tribulation of life grew more grim.
God's judgments issue in the revealing of His children, His true sons in faith.
Just as there is a sealed book to be opened - so there is a sealed multitude to be revealed. They are the evidence to an unbelieving world that it is governed by a God of righteous love, and it is in their testimony that God Himself stands revealed - and only as that testimony is borne out of suffering will men be persuaded that it testifies to the truth.
Oh my children, as our beloved brother Paul has said, "The suffering of this present time is not to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. The whole creation is impatient, waiting with a great hunger and a hope to see the Sons of God revealed." This groaning earth is on tip-toe to see the marvellous sight of the Sons of God coming into their own in all their strength and splendour. Then it will recognise its rightful masters and yield with gladness to their rule and share their liberation from the tyranny of change and decay.
So let us be careful always to hear in God's judgments and life's tribulation His call to repentance and faith, and His appeal to us to bear our testimony.
In all your troubles, never lose sight of the issue of them that God showed me.
Remember what I saw.
• I saw them
before the throne of God, for they have inherited His Kingdom.
• I saw that they served Him day and night within His temple,
for they have come to the perfection of their powers so they have no
need of rest from their exalted labours, and worship is the
inspiration of them.
• They are forever safe under the sheltering panoply of their
Father's kingly love.
• They neither hunger nor thirst, for in the instant noble
desire rises in them it is satisfied.
• The sun shall not strike them nor any scorching heat, for
nothing accursed is there, and no torment can ever touch them.
• The Lamb in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd -
they shall want for nothing, and eternity shall be as if it were one
unending summer day. He will guide them to springs of living water,
so their vitality knows no diminishment but is ever at the peak.
• And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, for death
shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain
any more, for all the old things shall for ever have passed
away.
"Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God for ever and ever. Amen."
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