Revelation Class #22
We
ended up last week at the beginning of Chapter 7 where John says:
Revelation
7:1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the
earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind should blow on
the earth or on the sea or on any tree. (2) And I saw another angel ascending
from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out
with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth
and the sea, (3) saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until
we have sealed the bondservants of our God on their foreheads.”
We were talking about the fact that the sealing of God’s people on
their foreheads goes back to the book of Ezekiel chapter 9 where God is talking
about bringing judgement upon Jerusalem. Ezekiel
9:3 … And He called to the man clothed in linen at
whose loins was the writing case. (4) And the Lord said to him, “Go through
the midst of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and
groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst.”
What he’s talking about here is marking the people of God. I apologize
for the confusion last time when I said the Greek letter Tau, when I meant to
say the Hebrew letter Tau. The current form of the letter Tau is like a “T”
with the top slightly tilted. It’s the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. If
you go back in biblical history and study the history of the language, what you
find out is that the original form of the Hebrew letter Tau was a cross. So in
Ezekiel 9 when he says ‘put a mark’ (it is literally the Hebrew letter Tau)
it means to put a cross on the foreheads of the men who sign and groan over the
abominations… What he is talking about there is marking the people of God.
This is also what we see in Revelation. It’s not the mark of the beast
that we need to be concerned about as Christians. There is all this concern in
the world today that we’re going to have a computer chip on our forehead and
on our hands along with other strange things. I met someone who has a brother
that has written books on that subject. That should not be our concern because
as Christians we are already marked by God, which is what you see here.
Notice the four angels are told not to do anything “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees,
until we have sealed the bondservants of our God on their foreheads.”
You see that the theme throughout Revelation that even if all these terrible
things we see in Revelation were to come upon our world, which I don’t believe
they are, the Christians aren’t there. If you read Revelation carefully,
you’ll see the Christians aren’t there. We need to understand that all of
these terrible curses and things are upon the ungodly. I also believe they are
upon the ungodliness of Jerusalem.
Q:
So you’re saying it’s not a literal mark.
A:
No. It’s not a literal symbol. We should not all have crosses on our
foreheads. It’s the fact that we have the spirit of God. We are marked with
God’s ownership because we have the spirit of God. There’s only two types of
people in the world, the saved and the unsaved; the godly and the ungodly. Those
who are saved are saved with the mark of God. They have his ownership. Those who
are not are marked with the mark of the beast.
The
next few verses are difficult to understand. There has been a lot of conjecture
about them. John says: (4)
And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred and forty-four
thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: (5) from the tribe of
Judah, twelve thousand sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from
the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, (6) from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh twelve
thousand, (7) from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi
twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, (8) from the tribe
of Zebulun twelve thousand, from the tribe of Jesoph twelve thousand, from the
tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed. (9) After these things I looked,
and behold, a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and
tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,
clothed in white robes, and palm branches 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 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, 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 springs of the water of life, and God shall
wipe every tear from their eyes.”
The question comes up, who are the 144,000? If you’re a Jehovah
Witness, you believe they are a literal 144,000. Initially, the Jehovah
witnesses taught that only 144,000 would go to heaven. But obviously, as people
were designated one of the 144,000, they very quickly ran out of people. So they
actually generated another class of people who are not the 144,000. The Jehovah
Witnesses say the 144,000 go to be with God around the throne. The other saved
people actually live on the Earth. One of the books they hand out says you can
live forever in paradise on Earth. So they saw the problem with a literal
144,000. Of course, that’s the primary problem. If you believe that only
144,000 are saved, then what chance do you and I have? We look back through
history and we see the Martin Luthers and the Calvins and all of those and we
can very quickly get to 144,000. What is it talking about?
Q:
Does it mean just a lot, or many?
A:
Yes, in some sense it does.
Comment:
What makes it a little more difficult is that it explicitly describes twelve
tribes specifically of Israel.
Comment:
The fullness of the number of Jews.
Response:
All of those are very good. David Chilton in his book Days of Vengeance, goes
into a separate section (which by the way is the most boring part of the book),
and he points out how this is actually put together. Interestingly enough,
remember that we’re talking about a worship service and that Chilton and
others have seen that what’s being pictured here in Revelation is a picture of
the tabernacle in the wilderness. Remember that in the tabernacle you had a tent
that was pitched, around which was the white linen curtain with the altar of
sacrifice in the front, the baptismal laver, and then the table of the presents.
The tent was divided into two. The table of the presents had the show bread, the
twelve loaves and the wine. Then on the other side you had the lampstand and
incense altar right in the front. In the inner part of it, the holy of holies,
was the tabernacle, where God himself dwelt between the outstretched wings of
the cherubim. Then what you see is around the tabernacle, were the twelve tribes
of Israel. They were camped in a specific manner. If you go through the Old
Testament, you will see they were camped in a specific order around the
tabernacle, and that order does not match what is here in Revelation. Chilton
and others have done a lot of work trying to figure out what the order in
Revelation is different than the one on the Old Testament. I’m not going to
bore you with all of that.
But why 144,000?Twelve times
twelve thousand equals 144,000. There were twelve tribes. Remember the
Israelites didn’t have numbers like we do, they actually used letters of their
alphabet and they had meaning. Our numbering system is more like our names,
there’s a label, a very definite kind of thing. But to the Hebrew, numbers had
meaning. When you look at for instance, the number 5. The number 5 in Scripture
has to do with grace. The fact that Abram was called out of the Caldes. When God
made the covenant with Abram, he changed his name to Abraham, he added a
“hey” which is the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. He gave grace to
Abram. We see that over and over in Scripture. To the Hebrews, the number 3 was
perfect unity. We have a triune God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A perfect
unity. The number 7 meant completeness. God made the world in six days, and on
the seventh he rested. A completeness. So if you have a perfect unity and a
completeness, 10 to the Jews was a perfect number. They saw that as a perfect
number. So 10x10x10 was a complete perfection, which is what’s being talked
about there.
I think, (as do Chilton and others, I didn’t come by this
myself), that what’s being talked about here is that God’s people are
perfectly numbered. There is a specific number of people. I said in the sermon
this morning that when the earth is going to end, God is going to come back when
the last sinner says ‘God, please forgive me and make me one of yours.’
Because in God’s own perfect timing, his plan will be done. There’s another
reason I think that. If you go though the book of Revelation, you’ll see a
pattern developing. In chapter 6:1 John says … and
I heard one of the four living creatures… and then in verse
2 he says And I looked,
and behold, a white horse,… In verse 3 …I heard the second living creature saying come
and I saw something. So you see this pattern of John hearing something and then
seeing something. Notice in chapter 7 verse 4, I
heard the number of those being sealed.
Verse 9, After these things I looked, and behold, a
great multitude
If you were reading along,
would you think the 144,000 were part of the great multitude? I wouldn’t. If I
were reading this as a while male in the 20th century, that would
mean to me a definite 144,000 people and a different group that was a great
multitude. But when I look at Revelation, and I see this pattern structure. When
John says I heard one of the four living creatures and I looked and saw
something that related to that. Then I read (4) I heard the number of those being sealed.
Verse 9, After
these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude
I think John has told us who the 144,000 really are. And what he is saying
there is that God’s people are definitely numbered. What does it mean to be
elect? It means to be picked out, chosen, numbered. So God’s elect are
numbered. God knows exactly how many are going to be saved. There’s no
question in his mind when someone is going to be saved or if someone is going to
be saved. If there was a question in God’s mind, he wouldn’t be God, would
he? He wouldn’t be omniscient. He wouldn’t know all things. So God
knows the number of those who are going to be saved, and they are a great
multitude.
Over and over in Scripture we
read there is going to be a remnant that is going to be saved. What is a
remnant? A tiny little portion. But in God’s economy, over the course of
history, that remnant is going to be huge. It’s going to be as if the whole
world had been saved. In fact, it is going to be the whole world of the elect,
of those who are chosen by God. It is going to be a great multitude that no one
can number.
Q:
You’re probably going to get to this, but it has always bothered me when I was
first a Christian reading in Genesis and reading here that there are different
lists for tribes. Why is that?
A:
I simply don’t know. Chilton has an idea and he goes through that extensively
in his book. There is another man, whose name was Alston Ferrar, that Chilton
looked at who went through the order of the tribes in Revelation. Chilton has
some diagrams in his book which shows the layout and why he believes the tribes
are in the order that they are in. But they’re also different in Ezekiel.
Ezekiel has a different order from Genesis and Revelation. I confess I simply
don’t know. You can go through Chilton’s stuff and you can agree or
disagree.
Comment:
In Genesis, when the tribes were laid out, they were also given land.
Response:
The Levites, the tribe of Levi, did not have a particular portion of the
promised land. Their portion was right around the tabernacle because they were
the priests. They were the ministers, so their portion was with the tabernacle.
That’s part of the confusion there. The other part is that remember Joseph had
two sons, Manassah and Efram. So that enters into how the land was portioned
out.
Comment:
Matthew Henry talks about Dan being omitted from the order because of their
idolatry.
Response:
Remember Dan was in the far north part of the promised land. There was a lot of
idolatry in the tribe of Dan. I believe Samson was up in that area and he was
dealing with a lot of idolatry. The word “Dan” means judge so maybe
there’s some of that in there. Maybe God is saying judgment against the tribe
of Dan. Danielle means “God is my judge.” I think we will learn about the
order of the tribes when we get to heaven. We can speculate, but I don’t think
there is enough there to tell us why the order is the way it is.
I’m sure that the people to
whom John was writing knew why this order was here. They would have been steeped
in the Old Testament traditions and history. They would have understood
immediately what John is saying. We don’t have the benefit of that Old
Testament training, so it’s confusing to us. But there is certainly a reason
for it. The thing that I would like you to consider in this, is that because of
the pattern that we see, where John says I heard, then I saw and those two
things are together; John says I heard the number of those that were sealed and
I looked and I saw a great multitude. My personal belief is that they are one in
the same. Remember we are Israel. We may not be able to trace our lineage back
to Efram or Manassah or Reuben or whoever, but Paul makes it very clear in the
New Testament that not all are of Israel who are descended from Abraham. It is
we who have been circumcised of heart who are the true Israel. We are all
Israelites. So looking at the teaching of the whole Testament, I think what’s
being taught here is that God knows exactly the number who will be saved.
Q:
Would that be a distinctive or reformed theology?
A:
Yes. The fact that God knows the number of the elect and that we are the true
Israel. The pre-millenial dispensational or broader evangelical church, whatever
label you put on it, thinks in terms of the church and Israel. That’s why the
focus on the Zionist movement in the world today. Remember that they interpret
Ezekiel literally. That we’ve got to go in there and wipe out the Moslum
mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and rebuild the temple and re-institute the
sacrificial system so that Christ can return. My thinking there as we talked
about at the beginning of this class, is that is why God wiped out the temple.
Because Jesus Christ sacrificed himself. He was the ultimate sacrifice. He was
the reality which all of the sacrifices pointed to. The Jews didn’t understand
that and continued the sacrificial system in the temple. I think you can see
clearly in the Old Testament that God says I’m going to come back and wipe
them out because they continued the sacrificial system. They continued the
shadow after the reality was accomplished. Thinking in that basis, if they ever
did succeed in building a temple on the dome of the rock and re-instituting the
sacrificial system, I think I can stand up here and be a prophet and know
exactly what would happen. That God would wipe it out.
Q:
Is that because Israel, in continuing the sacrificial system, was
rejecting the sacrifice of Christ?
A:
Yes, obviously. They still believe that Christ was a great prophet. But not that
he was the Lamb of God, not that he was the Messiah, not that he was the one who
was sacrificed for them.
Q:
So anytime they sacrificed an animal, they were in effect saying that the blood
of that animal was more important than the blood of Christ.
A:
After the sacrifice of Christ, every time they sacrificed an animal, yes they
were saying that the sacrifice of that animal was more beneficial than the
sacrifice of Christ. That’s why in churches today teach Christ Plus. Christ
plus baptism. Christ plus eating a certain way. Christ plus dressing a certain
way. This is blasphemous because Hebrews very clearly teaches the sacrifices of
bulls and goats was for nothing. It was a pointer to Christ, and that alone. It
is Christ and Christ alone. As the multitudes say (10)
and they cry out with a loud voice saying “Salvation to our God who sits on
the throne, and to the Lamb.”
It is only through the Lamb that sacrifice comes.
Q:
In ungodly societies, does God wipe out the ungodly societies or does he wipe
out the individuals for their wicked acts.
A:
Yes, to both. God very clearly judges the nation based upon the acts of the
individuals in that nation, and upon the leaders of that nation. That’s what
you see in the Old Testament. Remember I said that when you see the fact that
there were good kings and bad kings in the kingdom of Judah, and when the king
was good and the people were good, the nation was blessed. When the king was bad
and the people were bad because they weren’t confronting the king, the nation
was cursed. I think we see that in the world today. That when the nation’s
leaders are godly, and people are godly, the nation is blessed. When the
nation’s leaders are ungodly and the people are ungodly, the nation will be
cursed by God. I think we can see some glimmerings of that in the U.S. today.
Q:
Is the great multitude there the entirety of those who are saved?
A:
No. Very clearly from the context it is talking about a certain part of that
group. .” (11)
And all the angels were standing around the throne and 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, to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
(In the Greek it is very definite as to the blessing and the
glory and the wisdom and the thanksgiving and the honor and
the power and the might belong to our God. The Greek is very
definite that it’s not just some honor but the honor) (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.
If you interpret Revelation in a futuristic sense, that the Great
Tribulation is still to come, then these are those who come out of the Great
Tribulation. But remember my position is that the Great Tribulation that Jesus
is talking about in Matthew 24 was the great tribulation that occurred in the
2-3 years prior to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. We’ve gone through
how Josephus details all of that, and the terrible things that we going on. What
I think it’s talking about here are the martyrs of the first century. Remember
that you had the Christian church that was beginning to blossom, and you had the
Jewish system, the leadership of which was saying this is a cult, this is
blasphemous, this is terrible, and they were executing people. Remember Paul was
a guy that went out initially and captured Christians and brought them back for
execution. So the Jewish church was persecuting the Christians for their belief,
along with the Roman government. So they were faced with this terrible
tribulation and I think Jesus is writing through John and saying to them, ‘you
will be saved even in this. Because 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;
Notice it’s not futuristic. In the Greek it’s very clear. These are the
ones who are what we what we call a presentindicitive. It’s happening now.
These are the ones who are coming out of the Great Tribulation. Present tense.
They are right now, before the throne. So it was a case of this happening
now, not sometime in the future.
Comment:
You might be interested to know that Matthew Henry shares that same view.
Response:
Remember my thesis is that if you go back in church history, you’ll find
virtually nobody talking about his futuristic pre-millenial dispensational point
of view of Revelation. Matthew Henry and others who wrote before the 1850’s,
that never even crossed their mind.
Q:
Given the idea that is was not a futuristic thing, when we talked about the fact
of the 144,000, what’s to prevent us from saying there was 12,000 from each
tribe that were saved, or the elect or whatever, from that period of time of 70
AD, and they were literally from those twelve tribes?
A:
Nothing. Again, I said I don’t have enough information to decide why the list
is the way it is. I’m saying that I think the 144,000 is not a literal
144,000. That it is symbolic of the fact that God knows exactly how many are
going to be saved. Yes, we could say that they are from the tribes of that time
because we’re dealing with present tense here. So I would have no problem with
that interpretation at all.
Comment:
We would also be saying that no descendent of Dan would be saved. Presumably.
Response:
Yes, presumably. I would have a problem with that because we could go back
through the Old Testament and find people who were from Dan that were saved.
Comment:
I’m referring to that period of time that happened in 70 AD, that there would
be no one from Dan during that period of time who would be saved.
Response:
Again, it’s speculation. There’s nothing wrong with thinking in those terms,
but I don’t think there’s enough information in the Scripture, and that’s
what is important to me. I can go as far as the Scripture, but no further.
Comment:
Sometimes its dangerous to do this kind of reading, but also that no commentator
that you and I would respect represents that kind of view.
Response:
Again, they may not have thought of it. Just because it’s not written down
doesn’t mean its not true, it just means that God has not moved someone to
think in those terms before. But we need to be very cautious and be able to
prove our point from Scripture. What I want you to understand is to not
speculate on what the Word says, but to study and see what the Word says.
Comment:
Again about taking this 144,000 literally saved. There had to have been some
that left Jerusalem and there weren’t that many left. There really weren’t
that many who had actually left that could have actually survived.
Response:
Exactly. There were like 1 ½ million killed in Jerusalem.
(15) “For this
reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him
(present tense)
day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the
throne shall spread His tabernacle over them. This word ‘tabernacle’ has
to do with a covering. When you look at the Old Testament you see the pillar of
fire and the pillar of smoke, the cloud, covering over Jerusalem, they
tabernacled. The feast of booths was because of God reminding them of this
tabernacling.
Chilton says ‘This is
referring to shade provided by the glory cloud, this column of fire and column
of smoke which hovered over both the earth at its creation, (remember that its
says the spirit was hovering over the earth. This cloud was hovering or covering
over the earth at creation) and Israel in the wilderness. All this was
summarized in a prophecy of the coming new covenant church when the Lord has
washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and purged the blood of Jerusalem
from her midst by the spirit of judgement and the spirit of burning. Then the
Lord will create of the whole area of Mt. Zion and over her assemblies a cloud
by day, even smoke and the brightness of a flaming fire by night for all the
glory will be a canopy (or covering). The same word is used to discover the
position of the carved cherubim that hovered over the arc of the covenant.
(Remember it covered over the arc of the covenant) This term is also translated
booths or tabernacles in Leviticus where God commands his people to erect booths
of leafy branches to dwell in during the feast of tabernacles. As the
restoration prophet saw this feast was acted out prophecy of the conversion of
all nations, the filling out of the covenant people with the entire world.”
“On the last day of the
feast of tabernacles, God spoke through Haggai: ‘I will shake all the nations
and they will come with the wealth of the nations and I will fill this house
(the temple) with glory. Zechariah 2 prophesied of the meaning of this feast in
terms of the conversion of the nations and the sanctification of every area of
life. Zechariah 14.”
What is important for us to
realize is that Jesus Christ, now on the last day in John 7, the great day of
the feast, and it’s the feast of tabernacles that’s in view here. Part of
the ritual was that on the last day, the great day of the feast, the high priest
would stand up and he would pour out water symbolizing the pouring out of the
spirit of God into all the world bringing the good news, the conversions of the
nations. Jesus Christ, on the last great day of the feast, stood and cried out
saying “If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes
in me as the Scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water.” But this he spoke of the spirit, whom those who believed in him were
to receive for the spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified
What is being symbolized here
when the high priest poured out that water was a pouring out of the spirit and
what Jesus says is the spirit is poured out in your life and in my life, and
it’s through us that the river of life will go out to the nations from the
throne of Jesus Christ. It’s that water, or spirit flowing from us that will
reach out into the darkness and bring the light of the gospel.
The passage in John is talking
about the spirit being poured out at pentecost. It’s looking backward. It’s
looking at the tabernacle. The fact that the word ‘tabernacle’ has to do
with the covering, with God’s providential care of us.
