Revelation 7:9-17--A Great Multitude from Every Nation

Revelation 7:9-17
English Standard Version

A Great Multitude from Every Nation
9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs 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 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 “Therefore they are before the throne of God,
    and serve him day and night in his temple;
    and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
    the sun shall not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

---

We've been zoomed in for a bit just on the throne of heaven and the creatures and elders and martyrs that are surrounding it.  We now zoom out to get a fuller picture of all those who are citizens of the kingdom of heaven who are absent from the body and present with the Lord.  There is already a great multitude of men from every tribe, tongue, and nation there before the Lamb who are clothed in white robes (dressed in the righteousness of Christ alone) with palm branches in their hands.  They are getting ready to welcome the King of Kings and Lord of Lords for real.  They were singing out the words to the song that I've included today--Salvation Belongs to Our God.

All the saints in heaven:  “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Angels, elders, and four living creatures:  “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.” (notice how their song has not really changed, but they are now responding to song of salvation from the great multitude of worshipers, starting and endings with "Amen" to say "This is true."

​One of the 24 Elders approaches John to ask him if he knows who all the multitude dressed in white robes are and where they have come from.  John says he does not know, but he knows that the Elder knows and is asking because he wants to tell John.  “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

So, we started off with 144,000 witnesses from the Twelve Tribes of Israel, but now we have an uncountable multitude of people who have come out of the Tribulation (presumably because they were killed for their faith) who are also dressed in white robes and John's view is filled with these Tribulation saints.  They are from every tribe, tongue, and nation in fulfillment of The Great Commission and God's plan for the nations from the very beginning.

To put a finer point on this, the Elder starts summarizing several different passages of Scripture in a poetic form to let John know  that this is a moment that God has prophesied about for a long time, and now it is being fulfilled before John's eyes (though it is still chronologically in the future for us, we are certain that John saw this and we are certain anyways that God will do everything that He promised He would do in His perfect time--we just get a better sense of when that "perfect time" is through this passage). 

15 “Therefore they are before the throne of God,
    and serve him day and night in his temple;
    and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
    the sun shall not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

This is the kingdom of priests that we have been waiting for since Exodus 19, and the restoration of God and His people dwelling together in the same place that we have been waiting for since Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.  This is the first glimpse of the new people that are prepared for a new place--a place where there is no more hunger or thirst, no more pain and suffering (not even from a scorching sun, because He will be the Light of that City as we'll see later).  Last, but not least they are no longer sheep without a shepherd, because the Good Shepherd now gathers His sheep together and cares for them so that they need nothing.  He guides them to springs of Living Water (we'll see in other passages that these flow from His throne), and He will wipe away every tear from every eye--there will be no more sorrow or sadness, for the former things will be forgotten. (See Revelation 21:4 for the ultimate fulfillment of this passage that is only partially fulfilled in this time and place, but points forward to an even greater fulfillment that we see at the end of this book and at the end of days).

We'll zoom out once more before this is all done and over with, but if these are just the Tribulation saints, imagine John's reaction when He sees all the redeemed from every tribe, tongue, and nation that God has been saving all throughout the history of mankind.  This is just a small sliver, but it shows us that even in this time that we think of a God giving up on the world, God is still winning--there are still an uncountable number of people during the days of the Tribulation who died, and we're still not done seeing God utterly dominate the so-called kingdom of Antichrist (the kingdom of this world) by talking everyone that He wants for Himself, and there is nothing that Satan or the Antichrist or the False Prophet can do to stop Him.  Not a single soul that belongs to Him will be lost in the coming judgment, and that judgment will not begin until all of His sheep that belong to Him are gathered together from all the different sheepfolds around the earth to make one flock of all kinds of people who follow their one Shepherd King.  With all that said though, the prayers of the Tribulation saints of "How long O Lord?" are about to be answered.