Revelation 7 (ESV) — 1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, with the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, 3 saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” 4 And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel: 5 12,000 from the tribe of Judah were sealed, 12,000 from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000 from the tribe of Gad, 6 12,000 from the tribe of Asher, 12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali, 12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh, 7 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon, 12,000 from the tribe of Levi, 12,000 from the tribe of Issachar, 8 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun, 12,000 from the tribe of Joseph, 12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin were sealed. 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.”
The summer after my high school graduation, I worked in retail, a store similar to Best Buy. I was on fire for Jesus and couldn’t devour God’s word fast enough. I would bring my Bible to work and read it during lunch. A co-worker noticed one day and sat down to talk about the Bible. I thought, “Okay, this may be good,” right? I soon realized the person was a Jehovah’s Witness. Instead of enjoying Christian fellowship, I found myself defending the Christian faith.
Just to be clear, the Jehovah’s Witnesses (their official name is The Watch Tower Bible Society) is not a Christian denomination. They are a different religion. They may be some of the nicest people you meet, but The Watch Tower Bible Society opposes the Bible, the Gospel of Grace, the person of Jesus Christ, and the Character of God as revealed in Scripture.
I bring them up because one of their main teachings centers on the 144,000 in Revelation, Chapter Seven. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe this number--144,000-- is to be taken literally (not symbolically). They believe this is the exact number of those who will actually go to heaven when they die. Only 144,000 will get to go to heaven. So, unless you were one of the first 144,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses, like the founder himself, Charles Russell, then you don’t go to heaven when you die. What happens if you are not one of the 144,000? When you die, your soul will go to sleep. This is called “Soul-Sleep.” You will stay asleep until this earth evolves into a paradise. Then you awake in paradise—just like, poof. Those same special, elite 144,000 will rule over you forever. I don’t see this world evolving into a paradise, do you?
Nothing about their belief in the 144,000 is Biblical. Nothing about the Watch Tower Bible Society is biblical. Nothing.
This morning, we are going to look at who or what these 144,000 are within the context of Scripture. We’ll look at Scripture and use our minds to put the pieces together. It is my hope that when we are finished this morning, this portion of Scripture will be clear to you, and you will be able to explain it to others.
We begin with a reminder of the main message God is speaking to His People through the Book of Revelation. By the way, this book is written to Christians, not unbelievers. The main message: The Lamb Wins. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, wins! He is winning, though it doesn’t appear sometimes, but He will have the final say in all things. After all, He is God the Son.
The injustice, suffering, persecution, pain, and sorrow that you go through in this life, and we see around the world, will one day cease. The spiritual warfare against the Church of God will cease. It will happen suddenly, and it will end swiftly. In the meantime, all the evil and injustice in this world, all of the brokenness and suffering, all the work of the devil, God is using to His ultimate end. This we can be 100% confident in. Again, in the meantime, as Romans 8:18 says, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
When other people are wringing their hands in fear and staying awake at night in anxiety of what is going on in this nation and around the world, you as a believer should be able to say with confidence, “This is not the last Act in this story of mankind. My Savior is returning! And He Wins. The Lamb of God Wins!”
The last time we were in Revelation, we found that Chapter Seven has one main focus. It is answering the question in Chapter 6, verse 17, “for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” The answer to that question is mentioned five times in this chapter. It is in the word, sealed. Those who have the Seal of God will stand free of the wrath of God and the Lamb. As it is written (1 Thess. 1:10), Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come. In the great tribulation, Christians will suffer tremendous persecution and suffering, but they will be saved from the wrath of God that will be poured out on mankind. That is the main point of Chapter Seven. The true Christian is kept by God for God forever. Amen! (c.f., Luke 21:16, 18, “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you will be put to death.… But not a hair of your head will perish.”) This Chapter in Revelation speaks to the believer. It gives assurance and comfort to the followers of Christ. If you belong to Jesus by faith, you are the Sealed of God, by God, for God, forever.
The Anger of God towards sin and evil is about to be poured out. Rev.6:15-16 describes the fear and dread of the enemies of Christ. It is so terrible that they wonder who could withstand such wrath and anger from God? To them, no one can. God is Righteous in His Anger. He is justified in His retribution. There is no one holy who does not deserve Justice. They know it and they try to flee from God and the Lamb.
The wicked will not argue that God is unfair to judge them. They will not argue that they do not deserve the consequences of their rebelliousness against Him. They will not try to justify their hatred and actions against Christians. Not at all. Instead, they will cry out in utter fear. They will want to hide from the face of God and the wrath of the Lamb of God. Justice has come upon the ungodly. “Who can stand before a Just and Holy God?”
Though the just wrath of God will come to mankind, as He promised, it will not come upon those whose refuge is Christ Jesus. Those who belong to Christ, they are clothed in a White Robe, dipped in the blood of Jesus (vvs.9,14). The Lord is my refuge! I shall not fear!
I love what James Boice writes about this: “What this sealing accomplishes is their perseverance in faith, God’s work in them to assure that they will stand firm to the end.” Paul wrote: “God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’ ” Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
Let’s examine the symbolic picture the Apostle John is giving us. The image uses apocalyptic language.
• Four angels are sent from heaven to the four corners of the earth. The whole earth.
• These four angels are sent to bring great torment and harm on mankind, from one end of the earth to the other. Why? Because of their rebellion against God.
• Then another angel comes into the scene from the east. It says, “Stop. Wait. First the Lord will put His Seal of ownership on the forehead of His own.” These are the redeemed of the Lord, reference Rev. 9:4. “ ‘The Lord knows those who are his’ ” (2 Tim. 2:19).
• Then John hears a number, 144,000. This is the number of those who were sealed by God and spared this great torment on mankind.
• Revelation 7:3–4 — saying, “Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” 4 And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:
• Then we have the 144,000 divided by 12 times 12,000.
That is the picture we are looking at. The question many people wrestle with in this chapter is, who are the 144,000? This same mysterious group is mentioned later in Revelation. Revelation 14:1–3
“Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.”
A reminder of a few weeks ago, we read from different passages in the Old Testament and in Revelation what the Father’s name on their forehead meant. It was referring to all Christians, because believers are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God.
Revelation 14:3, “and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.”
Previously in Revelation, we learned that all of the redeemed—from every nation, tribe, people, and language will sing a new song. It will be the song of redemption. Only the redeemed of the Lord can and want to sing this song about Christ’s redemptive work of salvation.
I want to address three of the most widely accepted interpretations of the 144,000. But first, we have to settle the question: “Is this a literal number or a symbolic number? Is this a specific number of individuals or does it represent something else?” The answer to that question helps in the correct interpretation.
Remember that much of Revelation, including Chapter 7, is in apocalyptic language—in symbolic language. We cannot stop and pull something out of the picture and say, “that one thing is a literal number, exactly 144,000 individuals, but everything else in this picture is symbolic.” No, that is cherry picking what you want the text to say to agree with your own interpretation, rather than letting the scripture speak to you.
Also, the number itself is an even number, and all the tribes have an equal number. Are the number of the Sealed of God going to stop at a perfectly round number? Of Course not.
Also, the number is a multiple of twelve and ten. Twelve is the biblical number of organization and the people of God, and Ten is the biblical number of completion.
If those reasons were not enough, here is what most people miss when reading over this list. The list of the 12 tribes of Israel here in Revelation 7, is not the list of the Tribes of Israel as listed in the Old Testament. A Jew in the days of the Apostle John, as well as orthodox Jews today, would have looked at this list and known this is not the list of the 12 tribes of the nation of Israel. They would know that it was not meant to be taken literally. They would have notice the list of tribes in Revelation 7 does not agree with any of the twenty-plus lists found in the OT. It especially does not agree with Ezek. 48:2–7, which lists the eschatological people of God.
For example, in this list (Revelation 7), the Tribe of Dan is omitted. The tribe of Ephraim is also left out. We have a “tribe of Joseph,” but there is no “Tribe of Joseph” in the Old Testament. There are other smaller discrepancies that confirm that this is not the literal list of the physical 12 Tribes of Israel. One more note that is worth mentioning. At the time the Apostle John was writing of this book, the twelve tribes of Israel no longer even existed in a literal sense. God had eradicated them in the various exiles of Israel. Tribal ancestry records were lost, and the portions of land for each tribe were gone. God would not bring back something that initial was a type and shadow and then eradicated it. My point is, this is not a list of the literal tribes of Israel from the Old Testament. Therefore, this list is symbolic of something else, like the rest of this picture.
“So Pastor, if you are saying that this is not the list of the Old Testament 12 tribes of Israel, then who or what?” Let’s hear three common views of who or what the 144,000 symbolize, and where I stand on these interpretations.
One view says this list represents the number of “newly-converted believers” after a secret rapture of the Church where Jesus takes believers back to heaven for seven years, then returns again in His second coming. This is the view “Dispensationalist Theology” which I do not agree with. I do not accept this interpretation of the 144,000. One reason I disregard this view is, I do not read in the context of this Chapter or anywhere in Revelation about a secret rapture where the Church is removed from the earth before Jesus returns as judge and deliverer. I see clearly in Scriptures, and from Jesus own words, that Christians will suffer persecution and tribulation up until His return to earth.
Another view says these are 144,000 converted Jews who will be saved right before Jesus returns. I do not accept this view. I go back to the point that this list does not represent the 12 tribes of Israel. Nor, our context of Revelation, Chapter Seven, point out a sub-group of Christians being sealed by God. The sealing (in the context of this chapter) is not limited to one group of believers (like a remnant of Jews, or newly-converted believers after an invisible rapture) but all of those who are the redeemed of God by faith in the blood of Christ Jesus.
A third interpretation is the one I hold. This number is a symbolic title for the people of God—The Church living, worshiping, and enduring on this earth under persecution, and living through the great tribulation coming to the earth. They are symbolized by 144,000—the number of completion. This number is clearly symbolic representing those who are marked by God and will not be tormented in pain by what the four angels are sent to do to mankind. They are identified, separated, and spared. We’ll see more about this later in Revelation.
Why the number 144,000? The number is achieved by multiplying twelve times twelve. I believe twelve for the Old Testament believers, time twelve, for the twelve apostles. The Old Testament believers are represented by Israel, and the New Testament believers are represented by the 12 Apostles. This matches the heavenly city of Revelation chapter 21, with twelve gates for Israel’s tribes and twelve foundations for the apostles (Rev. 21:12–14), signifying the entirety of the redeemed church—of both Gentiles and Jews. This picture is not about a sub-group of the Church of God, but all believers. All believers represented from the Old Testament times and the New Testament time, such as us. Remember, the hint is in the number of completion.
George Ladd writes in his commentary, “As usual in the Revelation, the number is symbolic and affirms that the full number of the people of God will be brought safely through the time of tribulation; not one of the people of God will be lost.” God has sealed all of his people. The Apostle Paul wrote: “God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’ ” (2 Tim. 2:19). Everyone who calls on Jesus in true faith is immediately marked by God to be saved and kept. Jesus assured us: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
Is there an application for us today? Of course. The Church—Christians, will always experience persecution at the hands of God’s enemies (v.14). It happened to the Apostles, to the early Church, our Church Fathers, and down through history. It is happening now throughout the world. And it is “great tribulation.” Before Jesus returns as Judge, the persecution will grow violently throughout the world in every nation. The hatred of the world towards Christianity will increase and increase until the whole world will be in full agreement that Christianity must be stamped out. Christians must be put to death. They will justify this hatred and violence against God’s Church and love to do it. You and I, living in America, may not experience the persecution that our brothers and sisters are experiencing in places like Sudan, Korea, China, parts of Africa, and the Middle East. Yet, maybe our children or grandchildren will. We need to prepare their faith and devotion to Christ. We need to accept this truth, and sow the seeds of faith into our children, our children’s children, and if possible, their children.
Although Christians are imprisoned, tortured, and murdered for their faith, we are the Sealed of God, by God, for God, for all of eternity. Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28).”
Here is the encouragement from the Apostle Paul, speaking to authentic Christians:
1 Thessalonians 5:9–11 — For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake (alive at His coming) or asleep (have died) we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
Encourage one another. Encourage each other when going through suffering. “Jesus died for you. This suffering is temporary. We will one day live with Jesus forever and ever, without suffering and pain and sorrow. Stay the course, keep the faith. Lift a voice of thanksgiving to Jesus for saving and securing you.”
A second application: Look at Revelation 7:15, “Therefore, they are before the throne of God, …” There is a Latin phrase every one of us should tattoo on our brains--Coram Deo. It means, “Before the face of God.” You and I are always before the face of God.
Look further, Revelation 7:15-17 shows us a marvelous picture of Christian. The Christian, who is wearing Christ’s righteousness and not their own. Clothed with Christ, you are always before the throne of God. You are always Sheltered by Him who sits on the Throne. You will always have Jesus as your Shepherd, and He will guide you to springs of living water. And one day, you will have all your sorrows and sufferings and fears wiped away by your Savior’s love. As the Sealed of God, He will Shelter you, Shepherd you, Guide you, and one day literally Embrace you.
This is our faith. And our faith is stamped with the Seal of God. Guaranteed by the blood of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Promise of the Father. This means that you and I will join the innumerable company in heaven described in verses 9-10. We will stand before the throne of God clothed in a white robe and cry out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
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