Father, we come to Revelation 7.
This is the revelation of Jesus Christ and
we ask, Holy Spirit, that that's what we
would experience here this day.
Open our eyes, Lord, that we might see
the glory of God here in Jesus Christ
and in your great plan of redemption you
have for any that will believe upon you.
Quicken us, Lord, in terms of where we
stand with all of this in time on
planet Earth now in these last days.
Quicken us to what you would have us
to do, how you would have us to
live, and what you would have us to
share with others.
We ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.
In front of us in Revelation, we have
what I have called the ultimate triumph of
saving grace.
Revelation chapter 7, verses 9 down to verse
17.
You read in verse 9, After these things
I looked.
After these things is the way John writes
when he's about to share with us another
revelation that was given him.
The chapter opens up with after these things
and we learned all about the 144,000
and it was a great vision of what's
going to be happening on the Earth in
the last days, last seven year period of
man on Earth.
Really, the last three and a half years
is where we are by the time we
get to Revelation 7.
Revelation 7 is basically a parenthesis in between
the unfolding of the seal judgments.
We pick up chapter 8.
We will open the seventh seal.
But this is a refreshing time for John
as he's on Patmos and he's writing these
things down.
It has been rather gloomy.
You could say all through chapter 6 as
the first seal is loose, the second, the
third, the fourth.
You have false peace busted up by war.
Then you have famine, pestilence, worldwide death.
And you have the vengeance of God beginning
to be outpoured.
Then the Earth begins to quake.
The sun turns dark, the moon like blood
and the men are crying under the rocks
to hide them and so on.
So it's very gloomy.
It's more, you could say, of more gloom
and almost disappointment to John.
John is almost a hundred years old here.
He was a very young man when he
laid his head on Jesus' chest at the
Last Supper.
He has seen a lot in his Christian
life.
And this becomes a very powerful way of
encouraging John that he has done the right
thing with his life.
And so it is for us as well.
Charles Spurgeon, in one of his daily readings
entitled The Night Also is Thine, from Psalm
74, verse 16.
Spurgeon reminds believers this.
He says, gloomy seasons of religious indifference and
social sin are not exempted from the divine
purpose.
When the altars of truth are defiled and
the ways of God forsaken, the Lord's servants
weep with bitter sorrow, but they need not
despair for the darkest eras are governed by
the Lord and shall come to their end
at his bidding.
What may seem defeat to us may be
victory to him.
And that is very much the point in
the section before us.
As things get so dark, so bleak, it
is an hour of great victory for God
in saving so many souls as we're going
to see here.
When the grace you can put it this
way, when the grace is the least expected,
God pours out the most.
Let's read over the passage.
Revelation seven nine.
After these things, I looked and behold, a
great multitude, which no one could number of
all the nations, tribes, people and tongues standing
before the throne and before the lamb clothed
with white robes with palm branches in their
hands and crying out with a loud voice
saying salvation belongs to our God who sits
on the throne and to the Lamb.
And all the angels stood around the throne
and the elders and the four living creatures
fell on their faces before the throne and
worship God saying, I'm in blessing and glory
and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power
and might be to our God forever and
ever.
Amen.
Then one of the elders answered saying to
me, who are these arrayed in white robes
and where did they come from?
And I said to him, Sir, you know.
So he said to me, these are the
ones who come out of the Great Tribulation
and wash their wash their robes and made
them white in the blood of the lamb.
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
dwell among them.
They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore.
The sun shall not strike them nor any
heat for the lamb who is in the
midst of the throne will shepherd them and
lead them to living fountains of water.
And God will wipe away every tear from
their eyes.
Notice the interest to entrance to heaven often
has many tears.
But God is going to wipe them away
forever once you get there.
I was reading this week and one of
the commentators pointed out.
He said, study this passage very carefully because
there is much here revealed about heaven and
precious little.
We have of that thing about precious little
we have revealed to us about heaven.
I don't know about you, but I wish
there was another volume entirely to go with
the Bible that just dealt with heaven, because
the thought of dying and then going to
heaven, you know, that whole thing I wish
I'm placing my whole eternity in God's hands.
Precious little we have concerning heaven.
So what we do have, we should study
very, very, very carefully until it sinks down
well deep into our souls.
There's much here for us.
We have in front of us here the
largest revival in history.
We have here the greatest theme of worship
in heaven.
We have here the holiest associations.
When we get there, we have here the
clearest identification of who these people are.
This great multitude, no one can number.
And we have in verse 17, the brightest
future imaginable.
Your future is bright, regardless of what is
going on in your life today.
Your future.
If you know Jesus Christ today is absolutely
bright.
Let's look at this.
To begin with, we have here the largest
revival in history.
After these things, I let them behold a
great multitude, which no one could number.
Imagine yourself in a great baseball stadium.
It's packed 60,000 people.
They're cheering at full volume.
They're happy.
A play has been run that they like.
That's a lot of people, isn't it?
Are you there?
Can you imagine?
OK, go well beyond the 60,000.
Into a number that you cannot number a
multitude, you cannot number.
It's as far as I can see.
These are the people that are in heaven.
We know of great revivals in the history
of the church.
It's one of the most fascinating things to
study as a Christian.
I don't know if you ever have, but
it really is fascinating to study.
There's the Great Reformation and the tendency of
the Great Reformation.
There are names like Martin Luther, John Haas
of Anarola, others.
There was a great awakening in the 1700s
in England with incredible revival poured out with
George Whitfield, the mighty man of God.
He encouraged John Wesley and his brother to
preach in the open air.
The revival became bigger.
Up in Wales, over in Wales, there was
Roland Hill and the great revival going on
there.
We know of such revivals.
And there was in the in America, there
was the great awakening with Jonathan Edwards, who's
known not only to the Christian world, but
to the secular as well for being one
of the greatest intellects this nation ever produced.
So we know great revivals.
It was the Welsh revival in 1904 that
was incredible.
But we know nothing of a revival on
this scale.
This is worldwide and it takes place during
this tiny period of three and a half
years, the last three and a half years
of man on earth.
This multitude is so great it can't be
counted.
Think of that.
To give you a perspective in the Bible,
almost everything can be counted.
In the Old Testament, you have Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus and Numbers, Deuteronomy, first five books of
the Bible.
Numbers counts everything and has a number for
everything, how much they gave, when they died
and so on.
When you have Jonah called of God to
go preach and evangelize the Ninevites.
He has to walk three days journey across
this huge city.
It is estimated there were over a million
people in Nineveh.
He preaches this brief message to repent before
God and the entire city turns to the
Lord.
It's a huge revival of around a million
people.
Things are numbered in the Bible.
Pentecost, we know three thousand came to the
Lord on the day of Pentecost.
When Jesus fed the five thousand, there were
probably with women and children, thirty thousand in
the crowd.
We know the Bible numbers things, but here
the multitude is so great, no one can
number it.
It's huge, huge.
It's the greatest revival in the history of
the world.
And it doesn't just come out of England
or America or Wales or somewhere else.
It comes, we're told here.
In verse nine, out of all the nations,
tribes, peoples and languages or tongues.
It is huge.
A multitude that cannot be counted.
This multitude, if you look at them and
contemplate them, is God's greatest act of saving
grace, because in the greatest hour of wrath,
God shows his greatest mercy.
You have, as I mentioned, the false peace
of the Antichrist with the world's peace and
safety and sudden destruction comes their way.
Then you have people dying of starvation from
famine and pestilence and asteroids bombarding the earth.
In chapter six, you have unrestrained evil.
The time is coming.
Second Thessalonians, two, seven says the mystery of
lawlessness is already at work.
Only he who now restrains that the Holy
Spirit will do so until he is taken
out of the way.
The time is coming when the restraint on
men's hearts.
To sin will be taken away and men
will be living in unrestrained evil on planet
Earth that will equate to unrestrained brutality.
So asteroids, earthquakes, volcanoes, lava, hot lava flowing
on the earth, unrestrained brutality, Antichrist, get this,
the Antichrist operating at full throttle.
Add to that a time when Satan is
in a rage because he's running out of
time.
You realize Satan knows the Bible.
Satan knows the Bible.
The Bible says in Revelation, he's going to
be thrown into the lake of fire.
So in this last three and a half
years on the earth, Satan knows he's going
to be thrown into the lake of fire.
His time is short.
He's going to do everything he can to
make sure that he escapes the lake of
fire.
And because he lives in falsehood and deceit.
And Jesus said there's no truth in him.
He actually, I think, believes he can beat
what the Bible says about his fate.
And that is what explains his ferocious, insatiable
fortitude to press on and try to conquer
Jesus Christ, all the saints, all his glory
and all the work of God.
He knows his time is short and he
believes he can still beat it.
That's why he's so vicious.
So in the midst of all this on
planet Earth, what a place it's going to
be.
God sweeps in so swift, so comprehensive, saves
so many so fast that they cannot even
be numbered.
I say it is the greatest hour of
his wrath and he shows his greatest mercy.
That to me tells me a lot about
my God, because you know who these people
are.
These people are the individuals who missed the
rapture.
They are individuals who lived through the preaching
of their friends.
They heard their co-worker witness to them
about Christ.
They were given a track.
They watched a movie.
They read the Left Behind series and got
left behind anyway.
Can you imagine that?
There will be those people.
Imagine that.
They'll read, hey, are you reading Left Behind?
Man, I applaud to them all.
There'll be people like that and then they'll
be left behind.
Oh, my.
So to read that there's a multitude that
no man can number, so many of this
multitude, if not all of them, heard the
gospel, rejected Christ, missed the rapture and somehow
God finds a way to save them anyhow.
His greatest act of grace, saving grace.
This multitude here should be a solid inspiration
to us of evangelism.
It should be a solid inspiration to us
of evangelism, because here we see this.
Redemption will triumph in the end.
Don't you love that thought?
Redemption will triumph in the end.
If ever it was going to be obliterated
and men would plunge into darkness with no
one saved, it would be this time.
But instead, on the contrary, it's the largest
revival in the history of the world.
People being saved everywhere.
So when I see that redemption is going
to triumph in the end, we are on
the winning side.
And I realized that in leading just one
person to Christ, I changed their forever.
That makes me want to sow the seed
of the word of God anyway that I
can.
I would encourage you to look at it
this way.
If these people, so many of them are
saved, the multitude that cannot be counted.
And they missed the rapture.
You know that so many of them heard
the gospel after the rapture and the wrath
of God is poured out on the earth
and it becomes so awful.
People are going to be driven to Christ
left and right.
And it will be because of what so
many of their friends told them before.
They were raptured.
That tells me that I should be about
sowing seeds.
Listen to this.
That will bear fruit later.
Sowing seeds that will bear fruit later.
If the rapture comes next week, then I
want to make sure I've done anything I
can to sow seeds and plant seeds before
that, so that individuals after I'm gone will
come to know Christ because of what I
shared with them.
Even if they reject him now, just because
you share the Lord with someone and they
reject him doesn't mean they will always reject
him.
I thank God that's true.
Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.
So many people share Jesus Christ with me
and I rejected him.
I rejected some of them to physically and
some almost became martyrs.
But thank God that even when I was
in my greatest rage and rejection to Christ,
he was still loving me and still intending
on saving me.
And here I am today because of the
grace of God and Jesus Christ.
Just because somebody is rejecting you or your
witness now doesn't mean they always will.
We should sow seeds that will bear fruit
after even after we're gone.
And the joy of sowing the gospel seeds
is so great in Isaiah fifty five eleven.
God says, so shall my word be that
goes from my mouth.
It shall not return to me void, but
it shall accomplish what I please and it
shall prosper in the thing for which I
sent it.
For you will go out with joy and
be let out with peace.
The mountains and the hills shall break forth
into singing before you and all the trees
of the field will clap their hands.
It is a joy to sow the word
of God.
Do you know that?
Look at how this works.
Jeremiah was faithful to sow the word of
God.
He even tried to quit a few times
because nobody responded to his message.
Jeremiah was faithful to sow the word of
God, even faithful than to write down what
God showed him later on.
Years later, a man by the name of
Daniel, a young man by the name of
Daniel, was taken captive to Babylon.
While they're seeking the Lord, Daniel found the
writings of Jeremiah, which became the mainstay of
his life in Babylon, which was a long
life to about a hundred.
One day, Daniel was pouring over the scriptures
in Jeremiah and Jeremiah's writings, and as he
began to pour over them and began to
pray, Daniel nine, the Lord began to open
his heart and God began to reveal to
him the events of the last days, the
things that Daniel had revealed to him while
he was studying Jeremiah are the very things
we read in Daniel and bring over to
Revelation to help us to understand Revelation.
God gave Daniel Revelation while reading Jeremiah that
helps us to understand the book of Revelation.
Are you with me?
Aren't you glad that Jeremiah was faithful to
sow the seeds of the word of God
that would bring forth fruit after it was
huge in Daniel's life and we partake of
that benefit now?
It's always that way.
So this multitude should be a solid inspiration
to us in evangelism.
This multitude was a great inspiration to John
on Patmos.
To me, I love to see how practical
our God is, how intimate our God is.
John had served the Lord throughout his life.
He's in exile now on Patmos.
As far as he knows, he'll die there.
He's an old man.
He has recently written out seven letters to
seven churches, five of which were bad.
We know they didn't respond.
Those churches, as far as John knows, the
way they are eroding, they won't respond either.
He has also seen this sad what you
could call Judas effect.
So many people betraying the Lord, so many
people as fakes along the way in his
life, turning from Christ.
Don't forget, Jesus had spoke in the days
John spent with spent with him of it
always being a little flock.
And now it seems to be getting littler
and littler to John.
But John lives on Patmos long enough to
see Jesus revealed to him that that little
flock would one day grow to be a
number so huge no man could count it.
What does that mean to John?
Everything.
He's at his lowest point in life.
He served God his whole life to end
up living in a cave.
How would you feel?
How would you feel now that you have
your stuff?
So if you didn't have any stuff, wouldn't
be so bad.
Now that you have your stuff and you
have your routine and you have your life,
you get the same aisle at the market,
same way, reach for the same thing, put
in your cart, you know, you go out
to your car, beep it, get in, do
your routine.
OK, suppose all that was taken away and
you had to live on a cave, live
in a cave on an island, a little
tiny rock island, a barren island.
You can even grow garden and you're in
there now you're old and yet you didn't
blow it.
You did not blow it.
Well, here he is.
He didn't blow it.
He lives in a cave and he's old.
He's going to die there.
And all the other apostles were martyred.
How do you think he feels?
This is terrific.
Ship me out as an old man, take
my stuff, make me live in a cave,
possibly on a chain gang.
Research indicates.
Then you give me all these depressing letters
to write to these horrible churches.
Then you show me all this wrath.
Lord, I'm delighted to have the encounter, but
doesn't change the fact I'm going to bed
in that cave.
And I wonder if I really did the
right thing with my life.
I can see Ephesus from here on this
rock on a clear day.
I see the houses up on the hill.
I live in the cave.
Doesn't change the fact I lost it all.
I live in a cave.
Maybe just maybe I didn't do the right
thing.
And that is so huge, isn't it?
Because it's so real to us.
It's our life.
So John goes from the lowest point on
this island to this revelation would lift him
to his highest point in his whole life.
Because now he sees a great multitude.
The little flock has become a great multitude.
No man could number before he dies.
He lives to know with absolute certainty.
He certainly he did the right thing in
following Jesus Christ.
Let me say this to you.
If you walk with Christ and you continue
faithful, then one day at a time, no
matter what happens in your life, you won't
have to live with the what ifs.
You won't have to live with the what
ifs, even if you end up in a
cave.
As long as you have a clean heart
and a clean conscience, God has his purposes.
And when John was in that boat, slowly
going out to the island to get out
and go live in his get his cave
the same time you're in one on one
cave, one on one communal showers, not here.
You don't get a shower one on one.
You get a blanket.
When he got that, you understand how depressing
it was.
But you know what?
By the time he was all done, he
had insight and detail of where he was
going in heaven that he didn't have when
he went there.
So John is taken from his lowest point
to his highest point by this vision that
should encourage us as well.
We have the largest revival in history, which
takes us up into heaven here to the
greatest theme of worship in heaven.
It is the salvation of God.
Revelation seven nine.
After this, I looked beyond the great multitude,
which no one could number of all the
nations, tribes, people and tongues standing before the
throne and before the lamb clothed with white
robes, which is the statement about the righteousness
of God and Jesus Christ given to them
as a free gift with palm branches, symbol
of triumph and victory.
God's rescuing hand in their hands, crying out
with a loud voice, a loud voice.
Salvation belongs to our God who sits on
the throne and to the lamb.
And they're waving palm branches in the Feast
of Tabernacles.
They would build these little booths out of
palm branches and then they would wave them
around.
And it was to commemorate the fact that
in the wilderness, when they were going through
the wilderness and they came up to the
Jordan River and they didn't want to go
into the promised land.
Remember that the giants will kill us.
We're as small as grasshoppers in the site.
And they had unbelief.
And God said, then you'll die in the
wilderness.
Everybody 20 years old and above.
The rest that are under 20 will live
through the wilderness and they will go in
to take the land.
So as they were being judged, everybody 20
years old and older and dying in the
wilderness, God was at the same time.
That was his judgment.
At the same time, he was preserving those
who would live to go on into the
promised land.
So years later, they celebrated that with palm
branches, waving that commemorated the fact that God
had greatly delivered them in grace.
Well, he was judging others.
So here they are in heaven.
Those that were greatly delivered while God was
judging others, he was gracious to them and
they cry with a loud voice saying salvation
belongs to our God.
You know why it's loud?
God likes it loud.
No, it's not written there, but they cry
with a loud voice and it's loud because
their hearts are expressing a gratitude that is
so deep.
And.
It gets deeper, the longer they're there.
Just imagine the gratitude of somebody saved.
Out of the tribulation, who missed the rapture,
the gratitude.
Oh, my.
And so here they are, Christ rejecters, they
were given the ultimate second chance.
This is real.
What John saw is real.
It is exactly what's going to happen.
They are snatched out of the wrath, either
by a disaster of a cliff falling on
them or an asteroid hitting them.
Listen, you missed the rapture.
It gets kind of sketchy.
You know how it might go for you,
either hit by an asteroid or dying of
natural causes or dying because you're martyred under
the persecution of the.
Either way, they come out of it up
into heaven and they get there.
You're in heaven with the angels and the
Lord, he's on his throne, I'm here, it
just gets louder and louder, the deeper the
realization goes to their hearts, into the safety
and the glorious bliss of heaven forever.
And the gratitude of those in heaven only
grows.
We see that they sweep in to their
worship, everybody else who's there, everyone else who's
there.
I like that.
You sweep in the innumerable multitude of all
of heaven.
Revelation 7-11.
And all the angels stood around the throne
and the elders, the 24 elders we already
studied, represents the church.
The church.
What happens is in this section of the
book of Revelation, the focus is really on
God dealing with Israel to bring them back
to salvation.
144,000 evangelize their nation and much of
the world.
So the focus is on God in the
last seven years on earth.
The time of Jacob's trouble foretold in the
Old Testament is God dealing with Israel and
at the same time dealing with the rest
of Christ, rejecting humanity.
But the focus is Israel.
In the book of Revelation, this will help
you understand it.
From the time you get to chapter 4,
when the church is raptured, until chapter 19,
the focus is Israel.
There are other things happening, but the focus
is Israel.
Right now, these are people in heaven, and
you know how they got there?
Well, there's a reason that the 144,000
is in chapter 7, and when we're finished
dealing with them after these things, this multitude
in heaven.
144,000 evangelists, a multitude in heaven.
144,000, a multitude in heaven.
You get the connection?
It's saying to us that a big part
of the way that they got to heaven
was through the evangelism of the 144,000
Israelites who come to know Christ and are
sealed to evangelize and live on into the
thousand-year reign of Christ on earth.
So here they are.
Their gratitude only grows.
They got there, many of them, through the
witness of 144,000, and they affect everybody
else.
Angels around the throne, the elders, the four
living creatures, they all fall on their faces
and worship God, just shouting out these phrases.
You see, they're worshiping, and then they fall
on their faces and look.
Verse 12, saying, notice this, Amen, and then
all these praises, and then Amen.
Do you see that?
Amen and Amen.
It is a solemn opening.
It's the most serious thing possible.
Amen.
It is true.
It is done.
Our salvation, blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving.
Do you see that?
Thanksgiving, the effect on the human heart of
a real salvation, of real salvation that takes
you to a real heaven.
We have a real relationship before God and
His infinite glory with infinite blessings in store.
The effect is that of ever growing gratitude,
and the whole multitude of heaven now gets
into the worship with this innumerable multitude saved
out of that three and a half year
period in heaven.
Everybody joins in with them in a panoramic
display of gratitude that grows forever.
Do you realize that?
In heaven, your gratitude is going to grow
forever.
Heaven is a, one thing we are learning
about it here, it is a place of
activity, a place of change.
The multitude that no man can number are
those that came out of the tribulation.
Earlier, we studied in Revelation that there were
those under the altar, remember, that came out
of the tribulation.
Now they're out from under the altar and
they're standing at the throne.
There's activity in heaven.
Things change in heaven.
Heaven is the most exciting, glorious place with
activity and action directed by God that will
go on that way forever.
And I say that because so many of
us come to the Bible with a preconceived
idea of what heaven is about.
Kind of like a nice house.
Jesus said in my father's house are many
mansions.
I'm going to go prepare a place for
you.
Oh, he's going to make a really nice
room for me in the father's house.
But we get this idea that the father's
house is neat and tidy and stays that
way all the time.
And like many nice houses never really changes.
Once you get your stuff and you get
your stuff arranged, you leave your stuff the
way it is, but a little plastic over
that one couch in the living room that
no one ever sits on and stay in
the family room all the time.
And we get our stuff.
We get this idea.
I think we bring it to the Bible
that heaven is this sort of glorious but
stagnant place.
We get this idea that you get your
gold belt, your robe and you get assigned
to your place.
But other than that, it's kind of like
there you are.
We get this idea that it's just this
ongoing same thing.
It's not.
We have already read of visions that take
us up into heaven and show us all
of this change, all of this activity and
all of this excitement and gratitude for the
activity.
There's precious little revealed anywhere about heaven.
What is revealed is very precious.
And I love to understand it all as
much as I can.
The largest revival in history, the greatest theme
of worship in heaven is our salvation.
We grow in our gratitude forever as we
realize what we got.
And then in verse 11, the third thing
here is the holiest associations are granted to
those that are saved.
Notice it's all the angels, all the angels.
How is that encouraging?
Well, think about this now.
What's your place in turning your Bible to
Hebrews?
This is amazing.
Hebrews one, chapter one, verse 14, the angels,
the very holy angels.
We will be with this group.
With the holy angels, you say, so what?
I'll tell you what is important about that
and glorious.
Hebrews one, 14, are not all angels ministering
spirits sent forth to serve those who will
inherit salvation.
You realize what that is saying?
That is saying that if you're a Christian
today, God assigned angels to your life before
you ever became a Christian.
Then they were part of the salvation process
in your life and they are with you
now.
If you are a Christian.
Jesus one day took some young children, he
sat them on his lap and he began
to pray for them.
And then he said, their angels do always
behold the face of the father in heaven.
We get the phrase guardian angel from that.
Listen, little children grow up and become adults.
And when you're an adult and you're a
Christian, angels are ministers to you as an
air of salvation.
It's right there in the book of Hebrews.
That is why later and follow this later
in Hebrews.
That is why the writer says, don't you
know that sometimes you have entertained angels without
knowing it?
Angels unaware.
That's true.
So I find it amazing that I get
to go to heaven as a sinner saved
by grace and I get to spend eternity
with angels and the angels I read here
are so excited that they fall down with
everybody else.
It's been saved and worship the Lord for
their salvation.
Why think about it?
Think about you being in heaven and you
get to go over and talk to one
of those angels that was assigned to your
life.
Can you imagine the discussion?
Hi, I'm Danny.
Yeah, I know I'm here.
I know.
And am I glad you saw me on
my face worshipping with everyone else?
Yeah, I did.
Am I glad you're here?
You made it.
You don't know how many times as the
father to take me off the project on
your life.
You know, I've been wanting to meet you
up here so I could ask you, why
were you like that?
I never I could never understand why you
live days on end without him.
Oh, am I glad you made it.
Let's rejoice, shall we?
You know, we get to actually this is
real.
We'll actually meet those angels that were ministers
to our salvation and they will tell us
great stories and we will rejoice together forever.
And it isn't just my life or your
life.
You have other people that live before you
and they have spent the ages ministering to
human beings, even when they don't know it,
who will live forever in heaven.
And they share them in that glorious salvation
that we have.
That's why they're so grateful with us.
And so we will have the holiest associations
in heaven with the holy angels.
We who down here are so simple.
I love that.
That's my God.
When he found me, I was in the
mirey pit and he saved me.
And the Bible said he found me in
the mirey pit and he sets my feet
upon the rock.
When he saved me, I was in the
mirey pit and he has been lifting me
and lifting me and lifting me and lifting
me from the first day.
I met him.
And one day I will be lifted to
live with the holy angels forever and all
the other redeemed of the ages.
And so it is, there is this holy
association that is ours in heaven.
The fourth thing I want to take you
to is the clearest identification here of who
these people actually are.
And I want to take a minute with
it for this reason.
Interpreters and commentators come up with all different
kinds of interpretations as to who these people
are.
And we need to know who they are.
Who are they?
They are those that are saved in the
tribulation after the rapture.
Read it.
Revelation 7 13.
One of the elders answered, saying to me,
who are these arrayed in white robes and
where did they come from?
I said to him, sir, you know.
So he said to me, these are the
ones who come out of the great tribulation.
That's the last three and a half years
before Jesus Christ comes back to the earth
and wash their robes and made them white
in the blood of the lamb.
Dr. Robert Thomas comments on the significance of
this elder's question.
He says this exemplifies the dialogue format, dialogue
format used from time to time to convey
an explanation of a vision.
You find it in Jeremiah, Amos, Zechariah.
He goes on to say this is a
tool.
It shows that visions were not given for
the purpose of just spectacular displays, but to
convey revelation.
The details of which were not to be
missed.
I like that in quote.
I like that because people come to the
Bible and go, oh, wow, revelation.
I can't understand it.
I read it.
All this stuff going on now.
It isn't just for some great display to
dazzle you and confuse you.
It's revelation that you are not to miss,
that you are to understand.
So the angel, lest we would read this
and go, well, we're not really sure who
they are.
He says, John, who are they?
So I don't know.
Tell me, you know, thanks.
They are those saved out of general tribulation.
Seven years.
The great tribulation specific.
The last three and a half years.
This is a unique group, unique in all
of human history that you see in heaven
right now.
It is not the rapture.
This is not the church.
They join the church, but this is not
the church specifically.
These are those saved right out of the
great tribulation.
Now, how did they get there?
They got there, as I've stated, no doubt
to the witness of the hundred and forty
four thousand.
But we're going to read on a revelation
to study the two witnesses to their witness
as well and other believers on Earth.
What is so fantastic about this is that
God's plan for Israel from the beginning was
for them to be the light of the
world.
They would be the ones with a true
and living God, and they would draw all
men to focus on them and point them
to their God.
Then when their God came to Earth and
stepped out on planet Earth and said, I'm
the way, the truth and the life, everyone
could come to know him.
Israel completely blew.
Their stewardship of being the light of the
world and they rejected their Messiah.
God is going to give them another chance
to be the light of the world and
they're not going to blow it.
And many will be sent to heaven because
of them.
So these people died in the tribulation and
went to heaven.
They believed on Christ after they had rejected
him and missed the rapture.
They came into heaven over a period of
seven years and more specifically, the last three
and a half years.
But notice this.
In verse 14, it says these are the
ones who come out of the great tribulation.
Do you see that?
Verse 14.
These are the ones who come out of
the great tribulation.
I'm drawing your attention to that for this
reason.
There are those that teach a mid tribulation
rapture.
They'll go right here and they'll show you
an innumerable host in heaven.
These are those that come out of the
great tribulation.
Well, there's a problem with that interpretation, and
it's this.
This phrase come out, come out of the
tribulation, the great tribulation.
It is translated from the Greek from a
present durative possible participle, present durative participle of
the verb.
The present durative participle of the verb depicts
a prolonged process, a prolonged process.
This group keeps growing because people over a
period of time keep coming to heaven as
they die.
That rules out rapture completely because the rapture
of the church is a single, instantaneous, sudden
event.
First Corinthians 15 tells us it is in
the twinkling of an eye.
So to come out over a sustained period
of time rules out this being a mid
trip rapture.
And these are not the church.
These are people who die as they are
saved in the midst of the great tribulation.
Very important to understand.
So someone doesn't come along and confuse you
about everything we've studied so far.
Clare's identification.
We are told they are the tribulation believers.
Finally, number five, the brightest future is where
we end.
Verse 15.
Therefore, they are before the throne of God
and they serve him day and night.
Is there day and night in heaven?
You read all of Revelation, you find out
there isn't.
In the new heaven and the new earth,
in the new Jerusalem, there is no day
or night there for the lamb is the
light.
So why does it say day and night
is it is an idiomatic phrase that refers
to the span of eternity.
That's all they continue their perpetually in his
temple.
Therefore, they serve him day and night in
his temple.
Very interesting.
If I can stick this in a really
fast, very interesting, because John sees them in
the temple serving Lord in his temple.
When Christ comes back to the earth.
And he sets up his kingdom on earth
for a thousand years, there's a temple after
that, after the great white throne judgment.
The earth and the heavens, as we knew
it, depart away.
And it says in Revelation will study it.
God creates a new heaven and a new
earth.
And it distinctly says there's no temple there.
Why does John see them in a temple?
Because as long as earth still has sinful
men living on it, as long as Satan
is still free, God has a place, a
sanctuary where he is that is walled off
from that evil.
And it's the temple of the Lord that
you see here.
But once God is all done and he's
eliminated all sin in the new heaven and
new earth, there'll be no temple where he's
isolated off because there will be no sin.
He will dwell in the midst of his
people in unbridled glory.
It's worth pointing out.
He who sits on the throne will dwell
among them.
Verse 16.
And they shall neither hunger or thirst anymore.
The sun shall not strike them nor any
heat.
The lamb who is in the midst of
the throne will shepherd them.
He will throw his presence over them and
take care of them, lead them to living
fountains of water, and God will wipe away
every tear from their eyes.
In verse 16, neither hunger or thirst.
You remember that during this period, if you
come to know Jesus Christ, you will be
unable to buy and sell because in order
to buy and sell, you have to take
the mark of what the beast.
So these people are going to come to
heaven very hungry and very thirsty and they
will have been on the run since the
day they came to know Christ.
And the sun will have been burning down
upon them.
And yet they will come out of that
into the glory of heaven.
They will not hunger anymore.
They will not thirst anymore.
The sun will not strike them anymore, nor
any heat.
Watch where this is going for the lamb
was in the midst of the throne will
shepherd them and lead them to living fountains
of water and God will wipe away every
tear from their eyes.
Follow this.
This is great news to us.
I am so thankful that is where I'm
going.
But how about for the people that are
in the great tribulation, hiding in a cave,
on the run, hungry, unable to buy food,
unable to get water.
Listen, when they read this, it is going
to give them the courage to stand up
for Jesus, knowing that's where they're going.
The minute they die, they will die with
these verses on their minds.
And thus they will die victoriously.
Isn't God good?
Christ rejecters who miss the rapture will be
given this grace and that will be so
precious to them.
So we sow the seed now.
And if we get raptured, others will come
to Christ and miss it because we told
them about Jesus and gave them a Bible
and pointed these things out to them.
God is good, isn't he?
I'm so glad I know Jesus Christ.
And I'm so glad I know him now.
And I'm going to go on a rapture
when it comes.
I'm going straight to heaven.
Something else happens to me in the meantime.
Do you know him?
If you know him, lean your whole life
on him now.
Trust him.
Because you know where you're going.
To heaven.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for this great study in
your word.
Thank you for this great passage.
Help us, Lord, to see it in a
new light and to see our lives here
with a new sense of purpose.
To sow your seed, Lord, even if it
bears fruit after we're gone.
God, give us a passion for those that
don't know you.
Help us to remember how it was when
we didn't know you.
May we lead many to Christ, that when
we get to heaven and we're there in
that multitude, many will be there because we
showed them the way.
And we ask you to do this in
our lives for Jesus' glory, for we ask
it in his name.
Amen.