The sealed servants and the great multitude: who can stand?

Chapter 7 is an interlude between the sixth and seventh seals. The sixth seal ended with kings and slaves hiding from 'the wrath of the Lamb' and the question 'who is able to withstand it?' (6:17). Chapter 7 gives the answer: God's servants, sealed and protected, and a multitude from every nation standing before the throne. The pattern of a pause before the climax recurs in the book, and the interludes are where the church is shown most clearly.

The first hearers were small congregations scattered among large, hostile cities. They would hear of 144,000 from the tribes of Israel and then of a crowd 'too large to count', and they would recognise a picture of the people of God. The tribal list recalled the census of Israel's fighting men at Sinai (Numbers 1) and the sealing of the faithful in Ezekiel's vision before Jerusalem's destruction (Ezekiel 9:3-6). The multitude recalled the promise to Abraham of descendants like the stars, too many to count (Genesis 15:5), and the Feast of Tabernacles, in which palm branches were carried (Leviticus 23:40).

Two rules apply.

• First, the book often reports what John hears and then what he sees, and the second interprets the first. In 5:5 he hears of a Lion and sees a Lamb. Here he hears the number of the sealed (7:4) and sees 'a multitude too large to count' (7:9). Whether the two groups are the same people under two aspects, or different peoples, is the main question.
• Second, the numbers in Revelation carry meaning. Twelve is the number of the tribes, and 144,000 is twelve squared multiplied by a thousand, a figure of completeness. Whether the arithmetic is literal is part of the dispute.

The approaches divide most sharply here. Dispensational futurists, such as John Walvoord and Charles Ryrie, take the 144,000 as literal Jews, 12,000 from each tribe, saved and sealed during a future tribulation and distinct from the church, which they hold has been taken up. Their strongest argument is that the text names the tribes individually and distinguishes the 144,000 from the multitude of 'every nation'. Historic premillennialists, such as George Eldon Ladd, often take the 144,000 as the church, or as Israel including the church, and place the multitude's coming 'out of the great tribulation' within the church's experience of the final trouble. Amillennialists and idealists, such as William Hendriksen and G. K. Beale, take the 144,000 as the whole church under the name of Israel, with the multitude as the same people seen from another side. Richard Bauckham sees the number as the army of the Messiah, mustered in the way Israel's army was counted in Numbers 1, and the multitude as the same people in their victory. Their strongest argument is that Revelation elsewhere applies Israel's titles to the church (1:6; 2:9; 3:9; 21:12-14). Preterists, such as Kenneth Gentry, take the sealed as believers, often Jewish Christians, protected in the crisis of the Jewish War, and the multitude as the church of all nations. Historicists have usually read the sealing as the preservation of the true church in a time of upheaval. Postmillennialists, such as Jonathan Edwards, often connect the sealing to a hope for the conversion of Israel and the nations.

All these readers know the book's pattern of using Old Testament names for the new people of God, and all know the rival pattern of the letters in which 'Jew' has an ethnic sense. The millennial views enter in two ways. Premillennialists, especially dispensational ones, connect the 144,000 with a future role for Israel in the kingdom. Amillennialists connect the multitude with the saints in heaven and in the new creation. Our understanding is that the chapter's firm claim is that every servant of God is sealed and none is lost, and that the multitude is the Lamb's redeemed from every nation. The identity of the 144,000 is one on which the text can be read in more than one way, and the interpretation chosen shapes the reading of the rest.

Verses 1 to 3. Four angels stand at 'the four corners of the earth' holding the four winds. The winds are agents of judgment in Jeremiah 49:36 and Daniel 7:2 and are directed by God in Zechariah 6:5. Another angel comes from the east with 'the seal of the living God'. The command is to harm nothing 'until we have sealed the foreheads of the servants of our God'. The sealing recalls Ezekiel 9:4, where a man marks the foreheads of those who grieve over the city's sins so that they are spared, and Exodus 12:7 and 13, where the blood marked the houses. A seal marked ownership and protection. In 14:1 the sealed carry the name of the Lamb and his Father on their foreheads, and in 13:16-17 followers of the beast take a counterfeit mark. Sealing does not exempt believers from death (see the martyrs of 6:9) but marks them as God's and secures them in the judgment.

Verses 4 to 8. The list has twelve tribes of 12,000 each. Judah comes first, the tribe of the Messiah (5:5). Reuben follows, though he was Jacob's firstborn. Dan is missing, and Ephraim is absent by name, replaced by 'Joseph', while Manasseh, Joseph's other son, is included. Levi, which had no land inheritance, is counted. No other list in the Bible has this arrangement. Why Dan is omitted is unknown. Some early writers, such as Irenaeus, connected Dan with the idea of an antichrist, and the tribe is linked to idolatry in Judges 18 and 1 Kings 12:28-30. These explanations are conjecture. The point of the list is the number twelve. The census of Numbers 1 counted men able to go to war. If the 144,000 is the army of the Lamb, it is an army that wins by dying, as 12:11 states.

Verses 9 to 12. 'After this I looked.' The multitude is 'too large to count' (Genesis 15:5; 22:17), 'from every nation and tribe and people and tongue', echoing the Lamb's purchase in 5:9. They stand before the throne in white robes with palm branches. White robes are the garments promised to overcomers (3:5). Palm branches mark joyful victory, as at Tabernacles and at Jesus' entry into Jerusalem (John 12:13). Their cry, 'Salvation to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!', credits salvation to God and the Lamb together. The angels respond with a sevenfold 'Amen' blessing.

Verses 13 to 17. The elder asks John who they are, and John returns the question to him, as Ezekiel did. They have 'come out of the great tribulation'. The Greek has the definite article and recalls Daniel 12:1 and Jesus' words in Matthew 24:21. Futurists take it as a specific final period of intense trouble, usually of three and a half or seven years. Others note that John calls himself a partner in 'the tribulation' in 1:9, and read it as the trouble that attends the church throughout the age, which intensifies near its end. The verb 'come out' is present tense, 'those who are coming out', which suggests an ongoing stream. Preterists place the great tribulation in the first-century trouble of the Jewish War and the persecution of the church. They 'washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb', a paradox: blood does not whiten, but the Lamb's blood cleanses (1 John 1:7). Their service in the temple day and night, and God spreading his tabernacle over them (a verb related to John 1:14, 'tabernacled'), fulfil Ezekiel 37:27 and Leviticus 26:11. The closing promises draw on Isaiah 49:10 ('never again will they hunger... thirst... nor will the sun beat down') and Isaiah 25:8 ('God will wipe away every tear'). The Lamb is 'their shepherd', as in Psalm 23 and Ezekiel 34:23, and leads them 'to springs of living water' (Psalm 23:2; Jeremiah 2:13; John 7:37-38).

All the main readings agree on what the chapter says about God's people. They are sealed before the harm comes, which means that God marks his own and none of them is lost. They are drawn from every nation. They are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. They worship before the throne and are shepherded by the Lamb himself. Salvation belongs to God and to the Lamb. The final verses gather the great promises of the Old Testament: no more hunger or thirst, God's tabernacle over his people, living water, the wiping of every tear. This is the church's hope stated in the form it will take. Futurists, preterists, historicists and idealists, and premillennial, postmillennial and amillennial readers, all affirm it.

The chapter contributes to the biblical account of the end by showing that the final judgments are not indiscriminate. Ezekiel 9 and Exodus 12 provide the pattern of judgment that distinguishes. Paul states the same distinction when he says that those whom God foreknew he also called, justified and glorified (Romans 8:30). The chapter also answers the cry of the martyrs of chapter 6. The Lamb's people suffer, and the sealing does not mean escape from death. It means that death does not undo them. The picture of a multitude standing before the throne is the church's destiny in the intermediate state and in the new creation, and the Catholic Church reads verses 2 to 4 and 9 to 14 on the feast of All Saints for that reason.

What is debated is the identity of the 144,000, the relation between the 144,000 and the multitude, and the nature of 'the great tribulation'. These questions lead directly into questions about Israel and the church and the sequence of the last things, which Christians have answered in several ways: that the church replaces Israel as the people of God, that it includes Israel, that a future salvation of ethnic Israel will come (a view held by many who differ otherwise, drawing on Romans 11:25-26), or that the two peoples have distinct futures. This chapter alone cannot decide among them. Other passages, especially Romans 9 to 11, enter the discussion. The text does show that whatever the sealed and the multitude are, they belong to the Lamb and they are safe.

The Lamb appears as the source and the shepherd of salvation. 'Salvation to our God... and to the Lamb' puts Christ with God as the giver of salvation. The multitude is white because of his blood, and the shepherd's care is the Lamb's. This is the shepherd of Psalm 23 and Ezekiel 34, where the LORD promises to be shepherd to his people and sets over them his servant David (Ezekiel 34:23), fulfilled in Jesus, who said 'I am the good shepherd' (John 10:11). The paradox in 7:17 is that the shepherd is 'the Lamb in the center of the throne': the sacrifice and the shepherd are one person.

He is also the one whose name the sealed bear. Judah heads the list, because the Messiah comes from Judah (5:5; Genesis 49:10). Whatever view one holds of the 144,000, they belong to him and are protected by him. In John's Gospel Jesus says that no one will snatch his sheep from his hand (John 10:28), and the sealing in Revelation is the apocalyptic form of that promise. The living water is Christ's own gift in the Gospel (John 4:10; 7:37-38). The wiping of every tear, first in Isaiah 25:8, is repeated in 21:4 when the Lamb's work is complete.