“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. 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, saying, ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.’ And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed, 12,000 from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000 from the tribe of Gad, 12,000 from the tribe of Asher, 12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali, 12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh, 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon, 12,000 from the tribe of Levi, 12,000 from the tribe of Issachar, 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun, 12,000 from the tribe of Joseph, 12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed. 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, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ 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, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’ Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?’ 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. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

The Host of the Redeemed

Last week we left off on a heavy note. As the world is systematically unmade, shaken and moved from its very foundations, the people, rich and poor, great and small, cry out, lamenting their condition under the wrath of God. But they don’t cry to God, they don’t seek His mercy or beg Him to end His wrath. They call to the mountains – they beg the broken world to fall upon them, to hide them, shield them from the judgment of God. They show a tragic blindness, a commitment to sin, and an uncompromising brokenness. We end chapter six reading their plea to the mountains,

“Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

“Who can stand,” they ask. It’s a rhetorical question – they’re asking it of nothing, of an idol that they have placed their desperate hope in instead of the Living God, and yet the question is answered. Maybe not to them, but certainly to us as the reader. As we move into chapter seven, we are shown exactly who can stand in the day of the wrath of God – those whom He has chosen, those He has redeemed, those who stand, not by their own might, or will, or wisdom, but in Him. This is shown by the first of three interludes in Revelation. My brain always wants to associate “interlude” with “intermission,” but they’re far from the same thing. This is not an opportunity to pause, stretch your legs, and disengage from the events transpiring. Rather each interlude is a break in relaying the current plagues (seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls), and almost as an aside we’re given information and perspective outside of the active sequence of judgement that is taking place. It’s not disengaging or changing the subject, but rather allows us to see the other side of the same coin. We’ll discuss each of them as we move along through Revelation, but what we can see from this week’s passage, looking at chapter seven and the first interlude, is a clear and decisive answer to the question of, “who can stand?”

1. The Sealing of the Select

““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. 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, saying, ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.’”

There are interpreters who see this interlude as a literal pause in the judgment that is unfolding on the earth, a calm eye of the storm between the sixth and seventh seals. This stems from the four angels holding back the winds of the earth, which is seen as the progression of God’s wrath that is being stayed, as well as this instruction to refrain from harming the earth, sea, or trees until the sealing of God’s servants is complete. I, however, would disagree with this line of thinking – partly because we haven’t seen God’s wrath likened to a blowing wind anywhere in Revelation, and so while I have a vast appreciation for Biblical symbolism, I don’t see how wind = God’s wrath suddenly as we enter chapter seven. We do see times in Scripture where the four winds are tied in with judgment like Jeremiah 49:36,

“And I will bring upon Elam the four winds from the four quarters of heaven. And I will scatter them to all those winds, and there shall be no nation to which those driven out of Elam shall not come.”

Daniel 7:2–3,

“Daniel declared, ‘I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another.’”

and Zechariah 6:5,

“And the angel answered and said to me, ‘These are going out to the four winds of heaven, after presenting themselves before the Lord of all the earth.’”

The interesting thing is that all three of these passages make a point to call them the four winds of heaven, whereas today’s passage in Revelation specifically says, “the four winds of the earth,” which I take to mean the literal wind that spans the entire earth. Another reason I don’t agree with the “pause in judgment” view is that it’s not necessary – a lull in the judgment on the earth isn’t required for the things we read here to be true. First, let’s look at the wind, or rather the lack thereof. If it were wrath, it’s not being held back from the people, but rather the earth, sea, and trees. Despite the wealth of symbolic imagery that Scripture provides, when I read this passage concerning the four winds, I read it very literally – that under divine authority, there is no wind anywhere on the earth, and this is absolutely catastrophic. Coming from the first six seals, it’s hard to imagine things becoming physically worse on the earth – war, famine, plague, wild animals attacking, earthquakes, a darkened sun, a bloody moon, the sky ripped away, the stars falling, islands and mountains moved from their place – the world is very literally being torn apart. By comparison, no wind seems pretty mild, however this is in keeping with the increasing hostility of the natural world. I say with some confidence that most of us don’t think all that much about wind unless it’s being problematic. Under most circumstances, it goes largely unnoticed, and it’s almost mysterious. Jesus compares the unknowable movement of the wind to the working of the Spirit as He speaks to Nicodemus in John 3:8 saying,

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

If there’s a hurricane blowing in, or a tornado heading your way, wind is probably near the forefront of your mind, but most days, it seems inconsequential, but to put it mildly, wind is doing a lot behind the scenes. If it comes to a complete stop, as we’re reading about in today’s passage, the world would suffer in several ways. First, the ocean would become almost completely still. The tide would still rise and fall, the waves would cease, as these are generated by wind. We also lose all ocean currents, partly because these are guided and influenced by wind, but also because they’re affected by temperature, and without wind this stops fluctuating region to region as it currently does. This freakish, mirror-smooth sea is something sailors sometimes witness in extremely still conditions far out in the ocean, and it’s often reported as disorienting, making it sometimes difficult to tell where the sea and sky differ on the horizon. This again is something that we could see as a breaking of the natural order, the ocean, always in perpetual motion, brought to a standstill. But while this may be troubling, it’s not cataclysmic in and of itself, just strange. The destructive part lies in what I mentioned before – the temperature. If there’s no wind, there’s no regional fluctuation in temperature, and we essentially lose what we know as the weather. Hot environments become extremely hot, with cold environments doing the exact opposite (estimated 120-160 degrees Fahrenheit around the equator, and -200 degrees Fahrenheit around the poles). We also lose all transportation of moisture, meaning that, depending on how long the winds are held back (since this is just for the time it takes for the servants of God to be sealed), areas near the ocean and large lakes will experience flooding, while other regions become deserts in as little as months, possibly weeks. There is a pause as we go into chapter seven, but not in the suffering that’s being brought against a rebellious and unrighteous world – the wind is stilled, the world seems to hold its breath, and as the angel that ascended from the rising sun comes forward to fulfill his mission, the suffering if anything intensifies. Next we can see that the judgment continues through the ones that are sealed – because if some are sealed (a number which we’ll look at later), that means that some are not. What does it mean to be marked with the seal of God on your forehead? Deuteronomy 6:4–9 says,

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

This is a passage that Jews literally observe through the use of tefillin, small leather boxes containing excerpts from the Law, one tied to the forehead, one to the arm during prayer (these are also called “phylacteries” in the New Testament, meaning that when Jesus calls the Pharisees out for their public prayer and says, “they make their phylacteries broad,” they were literally making the boxes on their arm and forehead bigger in order to really show people what they were doing…). It’s something we can symbolically understand in that the eyes see, the mind governs, and the hand acts out. If the Law of God, if your love for Him is above all else, then this sits before your eyes and over your mind, it’s the filter through which you see the world, through which everything is perceived – it’s your cornerstone and your key governing principle around everything in your life. When we arrive at Revelation 13 and the mark of the beast, we see that it is placed on the right hand or the forehead – we’ll discuss this in greater detail when we actually get to that section of Revelation, but we can easily understand that this is something that may govern a person’s thoughts, or it may govern their actions. But Deuteronomy calls for the complete Love of God to be before your eyes and on your hand. James writes in James 2:18,

“But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

This is not, as some try to make it, an appeal for works based salvation, but rather a testament to the fact that true faith gives rise to true works – you can say you believe something all you want, but you will ultimately act out what you believe – what covers your eyes, what fills your mind will be seen in the deeds of your right hand. This is what we can see of these that the angel visits and seals, placing the royal mark of ownership that is the name of the Lamb and of the Father, those who are truly and completely the servants of the Lord.

“And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed, 12,000 from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000 from the tribe of Gad, 12,000 from the tribe of Asher, 12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali, 12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh, 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon, 12,000 from the tribe of Levi, 12,000 from the tribe of Issachar, 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun, 12,000 from the tribe of Joseph, 12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed.”

From what we’ve read, we can understand the condition of those sealed, those who are true servants of God. From this understanding alone we could think that the sealed are all believers who remain on the earth, but this doesn’t fit with the additional information, as we’re given a number of those sealed – 144,000. We could take the numbers as entirely symbolic, and indicating a kind of spiritual completeness, as we see the inclusion of the tribe’s names on the twelve gates of new Jerusalem in Revelation 21:12–13,

“It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates.”

And we see similar numbers to what’s in today’s passage in Revelation 21:16–17 as John describes the dimensions of the holy city,

“The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement.”

So someone could (and some certainly do), say that these numbers are entirely symbolic, this is representative of all Christians and their inclusion in the kingdom of God, and the tribes represent the inheritors of the legacy of the sons of Jacob – but there are several problems with that. First, this isn’t the only time we see the 144,000 mentioned in Revelation, as they come back into the picture in Revelation 14:1–5,

“Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.”

That was a lot of information, so in case you missed one pretty crucial qualifier, “It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins.” Suddenly, the 144,000 can’t be all Christians, because (without going into detail and keeping everything PG), all Christians aren’t virgins. So, if it’s not everyone, then who are the 144,000?… Short answer – I don’t know. Simple as that. This is a section where human curiosity begs us to miss the forest for the trees and get bogged down in theories, and while many are worth discussing, it seems like an apt time to follow Paul’s counsel to Titus in Titus 3:9,

“But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.”

I don’t know, you don’t know, no human being reading this actually knows. Is it a literal exact number, or symbolic? Are these actual people of Jewish heritage descended from these tribes who have converted to Christianity? Why in the list of the tribes is Dan missing? I. Don’t. Know. And that’s okay. The question is, what do we know? We know the 144,000 are true and devoted servants of God. We know that they are marked with His seal as belonging to Him. We know that they’re not the Jehovah’s Witnesses (yes, that is part of the JW doctrine, that there are 144,000 believers who are an “anointed remnant,” chosen between Pentecost and the present, who have become “spiritual Jews,” and will rule with Christ in new heaven over the people of the new earth… Am I straw-manning this a little bit? Yes. Is it because they’re technically a cult and I have no regard for their broken, blasphemous theology? Also yes). We also know that they are separate from what I’ll call “regular” Christians from their mention later in Revelation 14. They are marked as different, they are set apart, it seems for a particular task or role in regard to serving God. We are limited in what we can know, and there is danger in overspeculation, but something that can help our understanding is looking at the next group addressed in today’s passage – the innumerable multitude.

2. The Celebration of the Saved

“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, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’”

There’s an expression that Paul uses early in the book of Romans that I think about quite a lot. He writes in Romans 1:16,

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

And in Romans 2:9–11,

“There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”

“First the Jew and also the Greek.” This may be the simplest way for us to understand the 144,000 who are sealed, and then the great multitude who we see after. The 144,000 are set apart, they marked as different, just as the Jews were before the Christians. But Jesus didn’t come for the Jews alone, but for the Jews first, to fulfill promise and prophecy, and then to the Greeks, to the gentiles, the gospel shared to the world at large, the fruition of God’s words in Isaiah 56:6–8,

“‘And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’ The Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, ‘I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.’”

The Jews were called God’s people before we were called God’s people, but their history doesn’t grant them superiority any more than our newness does to us. We arrived at different times, were made to fulfill different roles throughout history, and ultimately all called to Christ, and the glory of holy God. Likewise we see the 144,000 marked, tied to Israel, set apart, and then we see this innumerable multitude coming forth from every nation to stand before the throne of the Lamb. They’re dressed in white, like the robes that the martyrs were given, like the robes that were promised to the one who conquers in Jesus’ address to the church at Sardis, the ones who are promised that they will not be blotted from the book of life. They wave palm branches in celebration of the Lamb’s victory, and they sing out praises to God in their joy.

“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, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”

It is fascinating and highly important that we acknowledge the unity that exists in praise and worship of God despite obvious differences. The 144,000 have their own designation, the innumerable multitude, who we’ll see are the ones who have come out of the tribulation, are different from them, and yet their hearts and minds are fixed on the same thing. They are all servants of the Living God. Likewise we see the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures – two very different groups in appearance, and yet united in their praise and message, who join in agreement with the multitude. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12:12–20,

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”

As we see unfold with the different groups of today’s passage, there are different functions within the body, and yet collectively, across the board we see the goodness of God honored and celebrated. There is no sense in debating the superiority of those who are all earnestly dedicated to the glorification of God, and we can see and marvel at the vastness of this example, and simply acknowledge the exceeding blessing of our salvation, and the eternal foundation we’re afforded in the One who sits upon the throne, and the Lamb. 

3. The Deliverance of the Shepherd

“Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?’ I said to him, ‘Sir, you know.’”

One of my favorite quotes in all of Scripture are the words, “O Lord God, you know.” For context, we see this said in Ezekiel 37:1–3,

“The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ And I answered, ‘O Lord GOD, you know.’”

I love this passage as a whole, but I love Ezekiel’s response to God’s question because he had options for his answer, and he chose the right one. The naturalist answer to whether or not a valley filled with dry, desiccated bones can live would be a resounding “no.” You may then think that the best answer would have been a yes, but the problem there is that it presumes God’s actions or intent. Short of His miraculous will, the bones can’t live. The truth is that the bones will live if God moves, they will remain lifeless if He doesn’t, and so Ezekiel doesn’t lean on his own understanding or presumption, he neither doubts, nor assumes what God is going to do. Instead he admits the truth that he doesn’t know, but rather than say, “I don’t know,” which would contribute nothing to the dialog, he defaults to the One who does know, the One who defies what flesh and blood might think of as possible or impossible. I say these words in my own life as a declaration of faith – I don’t know, but that’s immaterial because He does. I bring this up because we see John deliver a similar response to one of the elders in today’s passage. John is in, what I’ll lightly call, a highly charged situation. He’s in the throne room of heaven, he’s witnessed the first six seals broken and untold judgment and destruction pour out on the earth. There are spiritual forces moving and events happening that dwarf human comprehension. John doesn’t give us a constant commentary of what he’s thinking and feeling, but it would be fair to assume that he’s experienced extreme terror, or unbridled joy and excitement, or quite possibly both. This seems like a really easy situation to blurt out something ill-conceived and foolish. But John doesn’t do that – instead, when the elder asks him a question and directs his attention back to the multitude in white, John calmly responds with humility, he defers back to the elder, who has considerably more knowledge than he, a visitor does. And in his humility, for his deference, John is given a response – a response that validates the faith and suffering of every believer.

“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. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

The interlude does not remove us from seeing the active judgment of the first six seals, it doesn’t pull us away from witnessing the wrath of God or distract from His vengeance. It does however provide perspective, in that this multitude who come out of the tribulation don’t present themselves before the throne lamenting what they’ve been through or mourning the destruction unfolding on earth. Rather, they come before God with joy and excitement, and we see the relationship embody the words of Psalm 100,

“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”

Their testimony is that of Isaiah 54:10,

“‘For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,’ says the LORD, who has compassion on you.”

They have come out of a world that is torn apart by war, famine, pestilence, and natural disaster on an unprecedented scale – the mountains and hills have literally been removed from their places, and the only thing we see is joyous praise. And why wouldn’t we, when we see the promised inheritance that they are receiving. Paul writes in Romans 8:18,

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Because this God whom they come before is not some aloof or distant figure, He’s not some tyrannical judge who vents His fury without cause. His love is personal, His care sincere. He is not just a figurehead, but our compassionate, almighty Shepherd. We see, as He promises in Ezekiel 34:22–27,

“I will rescue my flock; they shall no longer be a prey. And I will judge between sheep and sheep. And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken. I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild beasts from the land, so that they may dwell securely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods. And I will make them and the places all around my hill a blessing, and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. And the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be secure in their land. And they shall know that I am the LORD, when I break the bars of their yoke, and deliver them from the hand of those who enslaved them.”

We look upon the multitude and we see joy because we see freedom. Jesus promises the living water of life, the freedom from the slavery of sin. We are made beloved children, servants in the presence of the Living God, and it is our great awaiting hope that even in the midst of the greatest peril, that the hand of God is upon us and that the provision of our chief Shepherd is eternally complete.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2olsCHDGHzI