Original Meaning

REVELATION EXPLICITLY CONTRASTS the second multitude (7:9–17) with the first one (7:1–8). John “heard” the first number and “saw” the second group (7:4, 9); the first was numbered (7:4) and the second “no one could count” (7:9); the first was Jewish (7:4–8) and the second “from every nation” (7:9).1 The image probably draws from the Jewish expectation of an end-time pilgrimage of Israel’s survivors along with survivors from the Gentiles (cf. also 21:24–26).2

But does John’s vision simply borrow the traditional Jewish image unmodified, or does it adapt and transform the image? If, as we argued above, the first vision portrays symbolically God’s end-time spiritual army, then this second vision is a more literal interpretation of the first.3 All of us as God’s people are his end-time army, and we vanquish our foes not by killing them but by martyrdom at their hands (11:7; 12:11; 13:7; 15:2; 21:7). In this, we are like our Lord (5:5–6).

That the multitude is countless probably echoes the promise to the patriarchs (Gen. 13:16; 15:5; 32:12). But here the promised multitude is gathered from all nations; the hope of the gospel has touched all peoples.4 It is striking that Christians appear here as a group “no one could count” (numbering at minimum in the millions; cf. 5:11), “since the number of Christians, both Jews and Gentiles, living toward the end of the first century A.D. cannot have been very large.”5 This vision would encourage John of the success of Christian witness.

“White robes” are appropriate for worship (see comment on 4:4) but also may reflect their victors’ attire and may well connect them with the martyrs of 6:11 and other overcomers of 3:4–5, 18. That they are washed in the Lamb’s blood (7:14) may also suggest that they overcame by martyrdom, just as he did (12:11), though the focus of the image is sharing the effects of Christ’s expiatory sacrifice on their behalf (cf. 1:5; 1 John 1:7).

“Palm branches” (7:9) sometimes recall the Feast of Tabernacles, which in turn recalls deliverance from slavery in Egypt and God’s presence with his people in the desert until he brought them into their final inheritance.6 But most often they reflect any military triumph, as with Maccabean princes and probably with expectations during Jesus’ Triumphal Entry in John (John 12:13).7 The end-time army John has heard about (7:1–8) actually hails the ultimate Victor, Jesus, who has led them to triumph. Like the Lamb, they “conquer” through their own deaths (5:5–6; cf. 6:9–11). Heaven functions like an antiphonal chorus (cf. Ex. 15:21), with the martyrs hailing God and the Lamb, who have led them to their victory (Rev. 7:10), and all of heaven responds with further praises.8

When the elder deliberately asks John a question that must provoke him to admit his need of the elder’s answer (7:13), he does not expect a knowledgeable answer. Instead, he follows an accepted pedagogic technique of John’s culture. Such promptings appear in apocalyptic texts, as do unsolicited questions and consequent responses; questions and answers were part of the standard rhetoric of the genre.9 When the Lord asked Ezekiel a rhetorical question, the latter responded, “LORD, you alone know” (Ezek. 37:3; cf. Rev. 7:13–14 here). Identifying the saints in white robes as those “who have come out of the great tribulation” (7:14) undoubtedly refers to the superlative tribulation of Daniel 12:1 (cf. also Dan. 9:25; cf. Jer. 30:7), which Matthew (Matt. 24:21) also calls a great tribulation (“great distress”; on the duration of this Tribulation, see comment on 12:6).10 They have endured the dramatic end-time Tribulation and proved faithful to death.

If triumph in martyrdom sounds like an oxymoron, so does washing one’s robes white in blood (7:14).11 But such vivid contrasts with human expectations prepare the hearer for the graphic picture of blessedness for those who have suffered this world’s hostility. These people refused to deify the enthroned emperor; now they are before God’s throne (7:15). They resisted the temples of Caesar and other false gods; now they serve continually in God’s temple (7:15). They suffered economic deprivation for refusing to serve the world system (13:17); now they are freed from suffering and sorrow, and all their needs are provided (7:16–17).12

That this throng serves God day and night (7:15; cf. 4:8) reminds us that the saints are a kingdom of priests (1:6; 5:10), doing what priests and Levites did in the temple courts (1 Chron. 9:33; Ps. 134:1). Ironically, these priests are probably intended as identical with the sacrifices they have offered (see comment on 6:9; also 5:5–6). God’s spreading his tabernacle over his people (7:15; cf. 13:6; 21:3) probably alludes to Isaiah 4:5–6, where God promised to restore his people Israel and cover them with his glory as a protective shelter. That text in turn promised a new exodus (cf. Rev. 12:14) by alluding to God’s dwelling with his people in the desert, subsequently evoked annually at the Feast of Tabernacles.13

Revelation 7:16–17 especially recalls Isaiah 49:10. In that passage God had already promised that in the time of Israel’s restoration, his people would no longer hunger or thirst, nor would heat or the sun beat down on them (Isa. 49:10; cf. Rev. 21:23).14 Further, God as the One with compassion on his people (cf. Isa. 49:10–15) would “guide them and lead them beside springs of water” (49:10; cf. Jer. 31:9).15 God himself also promised to wipe away the tears of his people (Isa. 25:8).

“The Lamb” in 7:17 clearly fulfills a role Isaiah assigned to Yahweh; John is assuredly claiming Jesus’ deity. The image is striking for another reason: God’s compassionately leading his people to water presents him as a shepherd (Ps. 23:1–2; Isa. 40:11); yet in Revelation, the Lamb is the shepherd (7:17).16 Lambs were the weakest members of the flock (Isa. 40:11), but Jesus is the Shepherd precisely because he was the slaughtered Lamb, the one slain for his people (John 10:11; cf. Isa. 53:7) and whose mortal weakness became the conduit for God’s power (2 Cor. 13:4).17

God promised an end to sorrow when he restored his people (Isa. 35:10; 51:11); but here eschatological rest from pain for the righteous is available immediately upon death (cf. Rev. 21:4; cf. Isa. 57:1–2).18 Most notably a biblical promise to Israel becomes the hope of believers from all nations grafted into Israel’s heritage of obedience to the true God (Rev. 7:9).

Bridging Contexts

THE GOSPEL FOR ALL. The international focus of Revelation goes far beyond its contemporaries’ expectations and proves central to New Testament teaching because it is so radical: Gentile Christians can be grafted into God’s people. In contrast to the early church, no one today is surprised to discover that many Gentiles are Christians, but we can still learn from the principle that God embraces those whom we do not expect. Sometimes we harbor our suspicions about various groups’ receptivity to the gospel (e.g., Hindus or Muslims). Some peoples may be more open to the gospel because they have experienced more positive exposure to it; ironically, Jewish people, from whom the gospel spread to the Gentiles, have often been turned off to the gospel by centuries of “Christian” hostility, including being tortured during the Inquisition, burned on crosses, and forcibly drowned in the name of baptism.

Yet the gospel challenges our prejudices. I and my multicultural teammates had the opportunity to lead many African-Americans, many Puerto Ricans, and a few Anglos to Christ doing personal evangelism in New York City; during the same time I was unsuccessful in leading to Christ any of the Russian Jews among whom I also ministered. But many did begin to listen to us, and a harvest came later. We have no right to decide who will receive God’s good news, and we may be grateful that those who witnessed to us or to our spiritual predecessors did not prejudge its proper recipients. But if we claim any loyalty to Christ’s gospel, this requires us to transcend our cultural prejudices both to witness to and to lovingly embrace believers from all cultures (cf. Rom. 1:14–16; 1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:28).

Interpreting positive images. We should also be careful to interpret the accumulation of positive images positively. A literal lack of all heat (pressing 7:16 as far as it can be pressed) would spell death to every human long before the temperature dropped to absolute zero. Yet the image is a positive, not a negative, one: Just as shepherds guard their flock from excessive heat, removing them from direct sunlight during the hottest time of day, so Jesus will protect us from uncomfortable exposure (Ps. 121:6).19

Some believers wonder how there can be joy in heaven unless God erases any memory of loved ones who have perished without Christ, and appeal to the lack of tears in 7:17. But the text says nothing about erasure of memory; God may just put events in a magnificently broader context. But one wonders whether in the hereafter we will ever contemplate the fate of the damned. Contrast the lack of tears with traditions such as those found in the first-century Similitudes of Enoch, in which those in the heavens could observe what was occurring on earth (1 En. 57:2); in that work, the wicked might remain as a spectacle for the righteous after the judgment (62:12) but then be banished forever from their sight (62:13).

Contemporary Significance

TRUE HEROES. Our society is full of celebrities, and the church often trots out its own celebrity cult as well (cf. 1 Cor. 1:12; 3:4).20 But the biblical conception of heroes differs markedly from our culture’s conception. The great end-time army of God (Rev. 7:1–8) turns out not to be powerful warriors who slay the wicked for God, but an army of martyrs who die for proclaiming God’s message (7:9–17). They hail the ultimate hero, their leader Jesus (7:9). The world’s temporary favor allows us to get some work done (Matt. 21:8–11; Acts 2:47; cf. 1 Sam. 18:7–8, 16, 30), but is always fleeting (Matt. 27:22–25; Acts 12:3; cf. 1 Sam 25:10). May we aspire not to be great heroes according to the world’s values, but according to God’s.

This text reminds us who the true hero is. Almost every hero in the Bible exhibits some flaws, whether major flaws like Samson and Jephthah or minor ones like Abraham and Samuel. The one exception is Jesus, the only true hero in the ultimate sense. That the martyr army holds palm branches to praise their conquering general reminds us of our dependence on Jesus and summons us to worship. Referring to the Second World War, Colson notes that “many soldiers died to bring about the victory in Europe. But in the Kingdom of God, it was the death of the King that assured the victory.”21 The text reminds us most of all that our triumph rests on the finished work of Christ (7:14), and our future hope is in fellowship with him (7:15–17).

The nature of triumph. That these believers overcome by suffering and the victory of the Lamb rather than by armed resistance redefines for us the nature of triumph for the present age. Christ reveals his power more clearly through the broken than the powerful, more through the Mother Teresas than through the Stalins, more through the cross than through the sword. One Jewish writer observes her respect for one sort of Christianity: “When Christianity speaks of God’s strength being revealed in weakness, I understand it best through the deeds of evangelicals who do not overlook those who are weak and apparently powerless.”22

Examples of such grace evident in weakness often move even hard hearts. Some homeless teenagers who grew up on Philadelphia’s streets beat to death a Korean honors graduate from Eastern College doing graduate studies in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The victim had been mailing a letter to his family at home in Korea. The parents sat silently through his murderers’ entire trial, asking merely for an opportunity to speak at the end. After the guilty verdict they knelt before the judge, and

before a stunned audience these parents begged … the judge to release their son’s murderers to them so that they could give the boys the home and care they had never had. They were Christians, they explained to the judge, and they wanted to show something of the grace they had received from God to those who had done them such grievous evil. The judge, who newspaper reporters claimed had a reputation for being hard and unemotional, had tears in his eyes as he explained, “That is not the way our system of justice works!”23

By their forgiveness, the parents testified of a kingdom utterly different from the kingdoms of this world, a kingdom for which all long who dare to believe its existence.

John does not explicitly tell us that all who leave the Tribulation (7:14) die martyrs’ deaths, but this is the only particular exit from the Tribulation he elsewhere specifies for believers.24 Not every individual Christian has the privilege of martyrdom, but we are a martyr church, fueled by passion to evangelize the world no matter what the cost. As Tertullian put it, thinking of the martyrs of his day (late second and early third centuries A.D.), “So we have conquered, when we are killed; we escape when we are condemned.” When we are surrounded by firewood and burned alive, “this is our garb of victory, the robe embroidered with the palm; this our triumphal chariot.”25

Most of us today, at least those in comfortable lifestyles and with families, do not think of martyrdom as a privilege. Yet if we must die in some manner if the Lord tarries, should we not wish our deaths, as well as our lives, to bring God as much glory as possible? Here the martyrs, like suffering apostles before them (Acts 5:41), joyfully praise their eternal commander for leading them to this victory through their refusal to compromise his honor (7:10).26 If we take this vision seriously, it may invite some dissonance for those of us who are too comfortable with this world. Just how much does the honor of our Lord Jesus Christ matter to us?

From all nations. How should we envision Revelation’s multicultural throng? Both archaeology and writings from John’s day show us that his audience knew of not only the Mediterranean world, but also of kingdoms and traders from west and east Africa, India, China, and the British Isles, all peoples so remote from the first Christians that the image of “every tribe” may have demanded considerable faith. Our geographical knowledge today is richer, and the gospel entrenched in far more cultures.27 Imagine the multicultural chorus of saints from all ages—ancient Israel’s Levite psalmists, clapping African saints with joyful praises, European Reformers with their majestic hymns, monks with their Gregorian and Ethiopian Coptic chants, Latin American Pentecostals with shouts of triumph, messianic Jews dancing the horah, and a generation of North American street evangelists doing gospel rap!

Many Christians today think that the gospel obliterates cultural distinctions (and sometimes expect Christians from other cultures to simply join their churches and assimilate into their “normal” cultural style of worship). But this text suggests that, far from obliterating culture, God takes what is useful in each culture and transforms it into an instrument of praise for his glory.28 One of my professors in my missions concentration during my seminary career was Morris Williams, for the previous decade the U.S. missions director for a Pentecostal denomination in Africa.29 It was he who first opened my eyes to the fact that this text suggests not the obliteration of cultures in the world to come, but the celebration of the gifts God has given each people and culture (and mixture of cultures) offered for his glory.

As Charles Wesley cried, “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer’s praise!” Worship in the Spirit (see comment on 1:10) transcends cultural prejudices, but often brings forth God-given elements in various cultures, because God is too big to be limited to a single culture’s worship style, even if it is a dominant culture that thinks it has the only normative way of offering praise! This is not to suggest that we can or should try to blend or represent all these expressions in one local congregation, which must prove relevant first to its own community. But it offers a hope for the future as well as an ideal for the present. God has sown into thousands of cultures through history aspects of his image in humanity; just as human immune systems are stronger the more genetically distinct their parents, so the body of Christ is strongest when it incorporates the perspectives of all its members.30

William Seymour, the African-American leader of the Azusa Street revival that birthed the hundreds of millions of Pentecostals and charismatics in the world today, concluded that the greatest sign of the Spirit’s work was love, especially and necessarily as expressed across racial and ethnic lines.31 We should not be too surprised to think that biblical writers shared a similar emphasis (Acts 1:8; 2:5–11; Eph. 2:18, 22).32