Salvation Belongs to Our God

Chapter 6 ended with people asking, Who is able to stand? Chapter 7 pauses before the seventh seal to answer. Four angels stand at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds. Another angel rises from the east with the seal of the living God and says, Don’t harm the earth, the sea, or the trees, until we have sealed the bondservants of our God on their foreheads! The seal marks God’s people as his own and protected.

John hears the number of those sealed: 144,000 from every tribe of the children of Israel. Then he turns and sees a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages. Readers have long noticed a pattern here, like chapter 5. John hears one thing and then sees it in a new way. They stand before the throne and the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches, crying, Salvation be to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!

One of the elders asks John, These who are arrayed in the white robes, who are they? John says, My lord, you know. The elder explains that they came out of the great suffering, and they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, serving him day and night in his temple. He who sits on the throne will spread his tabernacle over them. They will never be hungry or thirsty again, and the sun will not beat on them. The Lamb will be their shepherd and lead them to springs of life-giving waters, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.