The chapter opens with a count and then abandons it.
Revelation 7 begins with a number: a hundred and forty four thousand, sealed, twelve thousand from each of twelve tribes, listed one at a time. It is precise, and it is orderly, and it takes eight verses.
And then verse nine begins with two words that change the register completely.
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their handsRevelation 7:9, King James Version
After this.
The counting stops. Something arrives that cannot be counted, and the text says so explicitly: which no man could number.
That is not a figure of speech about a large crowd. It is a statement about the failure of an instrument. John, who has just watched somebody count carefully to a hundred and forty four thousand, looks at this and reports that counting is not available here.
And I want to be plain about what this passage is and is not. It is not a timetable, and there is nothing in it to identify with anything in the world today. It is an unveiling of who is standing in front of the Lamb, and the answer is: more than can be counted, out of everywhere.
Four words for where they came from
Look at the four categories, because they are chosen to overlap and to leave nothing out.
All nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.
Nation is a political thing. Kindred is a family and clan thing. People is an ethnic thing. Tongue is a language thing. They are four different ways of dividing humanity, and the verse runs all four and puts all in front of the list.
That is a deliberate method. Divide the human race any way you like, by any of the four systems people actually use, and the crowd includes some from every division.
You are not the last one where you live. Revelation 7:9 says no man could number and all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes that off a page and puts it over a street with one believer on it.
Now I want to name what the isolation actually does to a person, because it is not loneliness and it is not persecution and it needs its own word.
It is the slow suspicion that you might be wrong.
Not a crisis. Nothing dramatic. Just the arithmetic that runs when you are the only person you know who does this: everybody I work with, everybody in this street, everybody at my daughter's school, and me. And after enough years, a person starts to feel less like a believer and more like a holdout.
You have been running a survey with a sample size of one street. The written word says the crowd could not be numbered by anybody, and the same Spirit who kept that clause is the reason a local count was never the real total.
Then the robes, and the question, and the answer, because this is where the passage gets tender.
What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?Revelation 7:13, King James Version
An elder asks John, and John says sir, thou knowest, which is the same honest non-answer Ezekiel gave in the valley. And the elder tells him.
These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.Revelation 7:14, King James Version
Came out of great tribulation. This crowd is not made of people who had an easy time of it. Whatever else is true, the passage is explicit that they came through something.
You have been standing among people who came through it rather than around it. Revelation 7:14 says came out of, and it is His Spirit who keeps that phrase in front of somebody who has assumed that a hard road means a wrong one.
And then the last two verses of the chapter, which are the reason I chose this passage.
For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.Revelation 7:17, King James Version
The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them. The Lamb is the shepherd. And the last clause of the chapter is God wiping tears off faces in a crowd that could not be counted, which means He is close enough to reach individual faces in a crowd of that size.
You have a face in a crowd that could not be counted and a hand that reaches individual faces in it. Revelation 7:17 ends on wiping tears in the middle of the uncountable multitude, and the same Spirit who joined the scale and the touch in one verse is the reason neither cancels the other.
So stop taking your street as the sample.
You have been surveying a radius, and the radius is real, and the count in it is accurate, and it is not the number the passage is talking about. Revelation 7 opens with a precise count and then deliberately sets counting aside.
You are in a crowd whose size defeated the instrument, and John says so about a man who had just been counting. Revelation 7:9 says which no man could number, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the reason that reaches a village of four hundred rather than staying a vision.
You have four different ways of dividing humanity in that verse, and the word all standing in front of every one of them. The written word names nations and kindreds and people and tongues, and the same Spirit who chose four overlapping categories is the reason nobody's division leaves you outside.
And I will not lay one gram on you: nineteen years of being the only one is not a sign that you were mistaken. The crowd in this chapter is described as having come out of great tribulation, and nobody in it is asked to account for the road. What God gathers, nobody has to justify, and He has never once required a person to have company nearby before He would count them in.
Declare this over yourself
- Count I have taken of my own street, you are accurate and you are not the total. Revelation 7:9 abandons a precise tally and says no man could number, and His Spirit reads the larger figure over this house. I am not the last one where I live.
- Suspicion that being alone means wrong, get out, in the name of Jesus. You have been building a case out of a radius, and the written word says all nations and kindreds and people and tongues, which ends you, and the same Spirit who preserved it is pressing it on you now. What God gathers, no postcode measures.
- Lord, You are the Lamb in the midst of the throne who feeds them and leads them, and You are doing that here. Scripture ends the chapter wiping tears off individual faces inside a crowd that could not be counted, and Your Spirit joins the scale and the touch. I am saying my own street out loud, and then the four words that come after it.
Revelation 7:9
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