Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

7:9
is presumably deliberate, for in the new dispensation
Levi is degraded. The priesthood is united with the
kingship in the tribe of Judah, as the writer to the
Hebrews so copiously explains; Levi has no special
standing (see especially Heb. 7:11 -14).” 12
The Great Multitude (7:9-17)
9 After these things I looked, and behold, a great
multitude, that no one could count, from every nation
and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before
the Throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes,
and palm branches were in their hands;
10 and they cry out with a loud voice, saying: Salvation 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 And one of the elders answered, saying to me, These who
are clothed in the white robes, who are they, and from
where have they come?
14 And I said to him, My lord, you know. And he said to me,
These are the ones who come out of the Great
Tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made
them white in the blood of the Lamb.
15 For this reason, they are before the Throne of God; and
they serve Him day and night in His Temple; and He who
sits on the Throne shall spread His Tabernacle over them.
16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
neither shall the sun beat down on them, nor any heat;
17 for the Lamb in the center of the Throne shall be their
Shepherd, and shall guide them to the springs of the
Water of Life; and God shall wipe every tear from their
eyes.
9 We have already noticed a literary device that St.
John uses to display his images from various angles:
hearing, then seeing. For example, in 1:10-13, St. John
hears a Voice, then turns to see the Lord; in 5:5-6, he
hears of the Lion of Judah, then sees the Lamb; in 6:1-
8, he hears a living creature say “come!” – and then sees
the object of the creature’s command.
The same pattern occurs here in this chapter: St. John
tells us, I heard the number of those who were sealed
(v. 4); then, after these things – after hearing the
number of the redeemed – I looked, and behold, a
great multitude (v. 9). This pattern, and the fact that
the blessings ascribed to both groups are blessings that
belong to the Church, indicate that these two groups
are, to some extent, two different aspects of the one,
universal Church. So, from one standpoint, God’s
people are definitely numbered; none of the elect are
missing, and the Church is perfectly symmetrical and
whole. From another standpoint, the Church is
innumerable, a great host that no one could count.
Seen from one perspective, the Church is the new, the
true, Israel of God: the sons of Jacob gathered into all
their tribes, full and complete. From another, equally
true perspective, the Church is the whole world: a great
multitude redeemed from every nation and all tribes
and peoples and tongues.
In other words, the 144,000 are the Remnant of Israel;
yet the fulfillment of the promises to Israel takes place
through the salvation of the world, by bringing the
Gentiles in to share the blessings of Abraham (Gal.
3:8). The number of the Remnant is filled by the
multitudes of the saved from all nations, just as the
New Jerusalem – whose dimensions are measured in
twelves and whose gates are inscribed with the names
of the twelve tribes – is filled with the glory and honor
of the nations of the world (21:12-27). Farrer says: “By
the contrast between the numbered tribes and the
innumerable host, St. John gives expression to two
antithetical themes, both equally traditional. God
knows the number of His elect; those who inherit the
blessing of Abraham are as numberless as the stars
(Gen. 15:5). Yet St. John cannot mean either that the
number of Gentile saints is unknown to God, or that
the number of righteous Israelites can be counted by
men. What he tells us is, that his ear receives a number
resulting from an angelic census; and that his eye is
presented with a multitude he cannot count, as was
Abraham’s when called upon to look at the stars. The
vision of the white-robed host, purified by martyrdom,
must in any case reflect Daniel 11:35. The theme is
continued in Daniel 12:1-3, where the same persons are
described as ‘registered in the book’ and as ‘like the
stars’; it is easy to conclude ‘numbered, therefore, yet
uncountable.’” 13
In St. John’s vision, therefore, the sealed Remnant of
Israel is the holy seed, the “first fruits” (14:4) of the new
Church, destined to expand into an innumerable
multitude gathered in worship before the Throne in
heaven. The nucleus of Israel becomes the Church,
redeemed from every nation in fulfillment of the
Abrahamic promise (Gen. 15:5; 22:17-18); and thus
the Church becomes the whole world. The salvation of
Israel alone had never been God’s intention; He sent
his Son “that the world should be saved through Him”
(John 3:16-17). As the Father said to the Son, in
planning the Covenant of Redemption:
It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob,
And to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also make of You a Light to the nations
So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.
(Isa. 49:6)
The actual number of the saved, far from being limited
to mere tens of thousands, is in reality a multitude that
no one could count, so vast that it cannot be
comprehended. For the fact is that Christ came to save
the world. Traditionally – although Calvinists have
been technically correct in declaring that the full
benefits of the atonement were intended only for the
elect – both Calvinists and Arminians have tended to
miss the point of John 3:16. That point has been
beautifully summarized by Benjamin Warfield: “You
must not fancy, then, that God sits helplessly by while
the world, which He has created for Himself, hurtles
12. Austin Farrer, The Revelation of St. John the Divine, p. 108, 13. Ibid., p. 110.
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