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In the middle of chapter 7 of his book of Revelations of Jesus Christ, John again describes another scene of the redeemed standing in front of the throne of God. This should be a scene of worship and jubilation such as has yet to be experienced by mankind in all of history to date. And so it begins this way, but the ending contains a twist. We begin by setting the context, John has recently been describing a series of events that occur as each of the six seals are loosed on a book that God the Father offered only to one who was worthy to open it. Jesus Christ the Lamb had taken this book and so far, has opened six of its seals. Upon the sixth one, He returns to take the redeemed home. However, John interrupts the sequence for a moment to pause, and show in the first part of this chapter, a special sealing of the people of God nearly right before He returns. This sealing identifies 144,000 servants who will have a special role throughout the end of earth’s history and will remain especially dedicated in the kingdom of heaven. However, John seems to want to be clear from the next section of his vision, that it is not ONLY the 144,000 that will be the redeemed who stand before the Lamb in the kingdom He prepares for us now.
So John continues in verse 9 … “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 hands;” Notice first, John describes seeing a great multitude which were beyond the numbering. He could have said thousands times thousands times thousands for it is clear from later passages he understood the concept of numbers this high. But he did not. Instead he is clear that this throng or multitude is too great to even categorize in this limited way. Next, John is clear to write, that these people are discernable to be from ALL nations AND kindreds AND people AND tongues. Talk about diversity. The salvation of God is NOT limited only to the Jewish nation descending from Abraham. But instead it includes people like Melchizideck a priest of God alive in the time of Abraham, and the sheik of Midian who fathered Zipporah the wife of Moses and was aware of the God who sometimes seemed present on Mt Horeb, it includes the harlot of the wall of Jericho, and Ruth the Moabitess daughter-in-law of Naomi and grandmother of David. All through Biblical history salvation was always intended and available to any who sought to find the redemption of the true God. His hands were alive from the lives and visions of Pharaoh in the time of Joseph, to that of Nebuchadnezzar in the time of Daniel. And since His ascension, the gospel was going to ALL nations and the harvest described here was great; people from EVERY ethnicity, group, and language. The crowd standing before the throne had the commonality of white robes, and palms in their hands. Despite our diverse origins, our fate of salvation has us ALL stand equally before the throne of the Father, and of His Son Jesus Christ, both discreetly identified in this passage.
John continues in verse 10 … “And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” Notice again the shouts of praise are directed at BOTH our God upon His throne, AND unto the Lamb who is also present. It is clear this is the shouts of praise from mankind dressed in the white robes the Lamb has provided to everyone there, His righteousness for our own. For our chief reason for being there, is on the topic we praise Him for, our salvation. This praise elicits a wider response as John continues in verse 11 … “And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, [verse 12] Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.” The innumerable host of the redeemed are joined by the entire throng of angels who add their own praises to ours as we all worship our God and the Lamb. Notice too, that even when the work of our redemption has been completed, still present at the throne room of heaven, are specifically listed the 24 elders, and the 4 beasts or other life forms John has already described.
And as is the practice of those in heaven, who love to hear of the goodness and salvation of our God, one of the elders poses a somewhat rhetorical question to John as he writes in verse 13 … “And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?” The elder gives John a chance to reflect on the enormity of the harvest that the love of God has been able to redeem. John answers in verse 14 … “And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Therein is the key to our salvation. It is not a lack of trials and tribulations that sees us made free. It is an embrace of them. It is for us to go through these things, and grasp to Christ, to find His righteousness instead of our own. We are made pure through His love, imparting purity within us when none existed there before. We wash the filth of our attempts at self-salvation in the purity of His sacrifice of blood of our behalf. It may be our tribulation that drives us to the foot of the cross. It may be our hardships that remind us of our so great need. It may be the things we want and are denied that teach us to want something more, and something different, than just what would satisfy our naturally selfish desires. It is a reform of who we are, that is what we need, and what He offers. It is our tribulation and clinging to Christ throughout it, that sees us take our place in the vision John describes. Perhaps he looks directly at you in this scene. He would not know you by name, because you were born so many years after his passing. But he may recognize you once again as we are all reunited in the scene he foretells that will come to pass here.
The elder speaking to John continues to describe what happens next in verse 15 … “Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.” The redeemed are welcomed into the very throne room of God the Father, and have the high privilege of serving him for all eternity. The concepts of day and night become irrelevant. Perhaps the concept of time itself is to become irrelevant as we grow tired of measuring it in the light of the infinite. The elder continues in verse 16 … “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.” Here the elder destroys all the priorities of our life on earth in a single sentence. We spend the majority of our lives here on earth struggling to survive and meet our most basic needs. We need to eat, to drink, and to find shelter to cover us from the elements. We rationalize how much of our spiritual lives we are willing to sacrifice in order that our basic needs are met first. In one sentence the elder speaking to John, addresses these so paltry concerns. We shall hunger no more, nor thirst, nor are we to worry about the heat of the sun, or the cold of the night. These so high priorities were NEVER supposed to be something we worried about. Not in heaven, nor in this world. For His promise was to see our needs met in this life as well as the next. We simply do not trust Him enough to fulfill His promises here and believe we must ‘help’ Him do so. So we offer like Cain our best efforts, and reflecting the trust of Cain in our worry and reality that they are simply not enough nor could they ever be. Yet the promise here says plainly our needs are to be met.
The elder continues in verse 17 … “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.” Here the elder cuts to the heart of the matter. We shall hunger no more because we are to be fed, again not of work of our own making, but by the Lamb Himself. As He promised us here on earth and we failed to heed Him on the matter, in heaven we are to “led” unto fountains of living waters. We do not find them on our own, or through the work of our hands. They are a gift He leads us to find. We cannot find them when we attempt to lead ourselves there. Nor can we find food and water while we are too busy to allow Him to do as He promised; instead we find ourselves always distracted by the work we think we must perform in order to eat and drink. Our American ethic lives in contrast to the word of God. As Americans we believe it is our hard work that sees us survive and succeed. His Word tells us that our survival is His gift to us, that He offers freely. Should we elect to let Him lead us, we can free ourselves from the worry and stress of our survival and enter into His peace and surety that what we need will be provided in the day in which we need it, according to the mercy of His so great love.
But there is in this last text in chapter 7, a phrase which is too often overlooked. The elder promises John that God the Father will “wipe away all tears from their eyes”. One could apply many meanings to this text. In a scene of such jubilation, we could assume these are tears of joy, but then, why would God feel the need to wipe away tears of gratitude and thanksgiving, for those are sure to be repeated nearly every time we ponder the enormity of His gift to us. No, I believe the tears here described are those of a profound sadness, we have yet to ever even consider. Despite our surroundings, perhaps even because of them, I believe a sad recognition is to come upon us. On this day, no matter how far we progressed in the re-creation of His love in us here on earth, in heaven we will finally know the fullness of His re-creation of who we are. We will on this day, truly know what it means to love as He loves. We will truly know the full absence of self-centered, self-focused, self-motivated lives. Instead we will be in perfect harmony with Him. We will be in like-mind with Him, a pure reflection of His image without the distortion of self to cloud it. In this setting we will at last be made perfect, and know perfect love for others.
And then it will dawn upon us. That great and final day of judgment Christianity has long feared. Not the scenes of courtrooms where the damned attempt to plead their case before a punishing God judge ready to pronounce sentence of eternal torture. This is not what John just wrote. But instead, surrounded by the perfection of heaven, standing and welcomed even in to the throne room of God the Father Himself. Our perfection completed by the work of Christ within us, and no tempter or accuser of the brethren present to torment us. Only us. We will stand in perfection of love for others and come to the realization of just how little we did while still on the this earth for the millions who did not share our fate of His mercy. We will realize like Oscar Schindler at the end of Steven Spielberg’s movie that even if he had done just a little bit more, another life could have been saved, another life could have been there enjoying protection from the chaos and destruction of evil that surrounded them. We, like Oscar, are doomed to repeat this scene, and repeat this knowledge. It will not be a vengeful God who stands in judgment of our pathetic earthly lives. It will be us. It will be our purity that remembers with infinite precision the slights we did to others on this earth. We will remember our sins with perfect clarity and know how little we did to help others see the heaven we now reside within. We will remember even worse the actions we took that drove others away from the source of love.
Our sins have long caused ripples of pain that resulted in the sacrifice of Christ’s blood to redeem us. And our hearts remained unmoved. We never fully appreciated how much our burden was upon Him until now. And now as we share a like-mind with Him, we begin to know what it means to see love rejected. We begin to see even worse how our own lives and actions may have driven others away from God, away from forgiveness. We may have prompted others to do evil with us, or to do evil because of us. In so doing, we were agents of evil, that drove others away from His redemption and to a fate we ourselves deserve. Perfection is no barrier to memory. This is the true judgment all Christianity should fear. Not one of a vengeful God inflicting eternal torture by flame which is a myth of His character and in reality is scheduled to have a final end anyway. But one of infinite remorse, and regret, for what we today refuse to do; to love others.
Our lives spent in hateful words of condemnation that bear no fruit. That is the saddest picture of Christianity there will ever be. Instead of working with Him in like mind to love others back to the throne of grace, we spend today finding it convenient to ignore our brother’s need, or worse, add to it. When the perfection of love finally embraces us. It will cause us to remember a time when we refused to be so molded. And when in our stubborn refusal, we did evil in the sight of the Lord, and caused pain to those who are not present to forgive us. We will never know the forgiveness of those who were lost because we could not find the energy to love them in spite of what they did to us. We, whether victim or perpetrator of evil by those who are not present in heaven, will bear the heaviest of hearts at their absence. It will not be a thing celebrated. It will not be a thing of threats used to condemn others and make ourselves feel better about our own inadequacies. It will instead be a thing of great personal pain that we simply DID NOT DO MORE. Oscar Schindler had a list that in retrospect he believed was just not long enough. So will you. So will you see your own list of those who you just did not love enough, or love rightly. This list will haunt you in the halls of perfection.
It is for this reason, that God the Father MUST wipe away the tears from our eyes. If He did not, we would spend the eternity of heaven mourning those who refused to be a part of it with us and because of us. If He did not, we would not ever be able to forgive ourselves as He has forgiven us. But the lesson is not only intended to show us His final infinite mercy. It is to remind us that there is YET TIME TO LOVE. There is yet an opportunity to show love to your spouse, or your children, or your parents, or your friends, or more important still – to those who would call you their enemy. The distinction of enemy will no longer exist in the perfection of heaven that is to come. There, you will only call brother, who now you would use other names to describe. There, you will finally recognize the extreme value and importance of he or she who now you perceive to be the bane of your existence. There is NO enemy you carry in this world, who you will not one day mourn with the heaviest of hearts for your personal part in their lack of attendance in the jubilant scenes of worship. And there is no forgiveness you will be able to offer yourself, for the loss of someone dear to you, who also you simply did not love enough while there was yet time to do it. We will NEED for God to once again wipe away the tears from our eyes lest we never cease for weeping. But despite knowing our past will one day require this mercy from the Lord, there is still YET TIME TO LOVE.
No act of love you perform in this life will ever be cause for regret in the next one. The Revelation of Jesus Christ that should be most salient to us all is His life of purest love for others while He lived it in this world. We should take the time to submit ourselves to Christ, so that while there is yet time in this world, we can be re-created in His image, and come to know what it means to love others as He loves them and us. As we are molded into a purer reflection of His love, we will find ourselves with renewed energy to love others and think nothing of the ‘cost’. Those acts of selfless love, will be the acts that move others closer to the throne of grace. They will be in our memory a stark contrast from the acts of self-love that pulled others away from the presence of Christ. Acts of love for others will not require a wiping away of our tears, and there is yet time to see them done, and to know joy in the doing of them.
The first verse of chapter eight resumes with the opening of the final seventh seal. John records there … “And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.” The pause is over. The sealing is completed. The Lord has returned to claim us in the sixth seal. The scene of praise John has just described in heaven is about to take place. Perhaps upon the opening of the seventh seal, heaven is silent because we who have been redeemed are on our way back to it from the recently destroyed earth. We are journeying home to the Father. Our earthly lives completed. The time to love here on earth at an end. We carry now, only the list of those to who we loved, and those who we did not. Our jubilation will yet be tempered by our tears. But His mercy and love are greater still and will see those tears yet wiped from our eyes …
And further Revelations were still to come …
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