GOD, in His great goodness, anticipates for His children. He presents before them the trials through which they must pass. He does not in any wise minimize these; He does not belittle them. By every means of reaching human understanding, He reveals the secret and cruel designs of the enemy and the sufferings of His people. But He assures them of the grace sufficient to meet the trials, and anticipates for them the glorious outcome and the blessed inheritance beyond.
In Revelation 13 He has revealed to us the great world powers which the enemy has used against His children, with a special reference to their development in the last days. In the fourteenth chapter, verses 6 to 14, He has given us a message against these powers. But before the message is given, He wishes to assure us of the glorious triumph of those who are faithful to Him.
In the thirteenth chapter we have presented a class that have the mark of the beast and his image, that are his worshipers. In the fourteenth chapter we have another class, that bear the mark of God, and are HIS worshipers. These are they with whom our lesson to-day deals.
Questioning the Text
[The answers to the questions are from the American Revised Version. Omitting questions, and disregarding sometimes the capital at the beginning and the period at the close of an answer, the text may be read continuously. In notes and comments both versions are used without designation.]
1. After the vision of the beasts, what was shown John?
And I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing on the Mount Zion.
2. Who were with the Lamb on Mount Zion?
And with Him a hundred and forty and four thousand.
3. What special characteristic was noted of this company?
Having His name, and the name of His Father, written on their foreheads.
4. What did he hear?
And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder.
5. From whom did this voice come?
And the voice which I heard was as the voice of harpers harping with their harps.
6. What did they sing?
And they sing as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four living creatures and the elders.
7. What particular characteristic is given of this song?
And no man could learn the song save the hundred and forty and four thousand, even they that had been purchased out of the earth.
8. What is further said of this one hundred and forty and four thousand?
These are they that were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they that follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.
9. From what and for what purpose were they gathered?
These were purchased from among men, to be the first-fruits unto God and unto the Lamb.
10. What is said of their character?
And in their mouth was found no lie; they are without blemish.
Note and Comment
1. THE LAMB.—The term "the Lamb" evidently refers to Rev. 5: 6. John first saw the Lamb standing as tho it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God. Christ was there shown in His sacrificial work, His saving work for the sons of men. He is here shown in His triumph. The Lamb of sacrifice is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered through the sacrifice of the Lamb. He stands not on earthly Mount Zion, which has been ravaged by the enemy for centuries, but on the Mount Zion of the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12: 22), where rests the city of the living God.
One would gather from the united evidence of the various scriptures treating upon the theme, that the garden of God planted in Eden in the beginning, guarded from sin by the flaming cherubim, was afterward removed from the earth. In this garden arose the city of God, not made with hands. That city is the new Jerusalem, the city of promise, even as God's children are the children of promise. That city will be the capital of the restored earth, and there Christ our King begins His eternal reign over the glorified children of men.
2. THE HUNDRED AND FORTY AND FOUR THOUSAND.—Twelve times twelve thousand—twelve thousand for every tribe. (See the article in this series on Revelation 7.)
The twelve thousand are sealed from each one of the twelve tribes. This is not the whole company of the redeemed. These are referred to in Revelation 7 as "a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues." But this company with the Lamb is a special company, as we will learn later.
The hundred and forty and four thousand may be representative simply, may be only the males. The Bible method of numbering is to number the males from a certain age to a certain age. Women and children and youth are always included; and so this representative number of a hundred and forty and four thousand may be so many representative characters of others. It need not be a matter of discussion or difference in any way. God has not expressly revealed it, and it is safe to leave it with Him. The one lesson that we can gather from it is that God cares so much for His children that every step in their redemption is remembered and recorded by Him with the exact number gathered out of every generation.
3. THE NAME.—The hundred and forty and four thousand bear the characteristic of having the name of the Father and the name of the Son shining from their foreheads. Name in the Bible signifies character. The name of the Father represents that character for which the Father stands; the name of the Son, that character for which the Son stands. The character of the Father and the meaning of His name are clearly set forth in Ex. 34: 5-7: "And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth; keeping loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty." This is the character of God, and this is the name, the character, the righteousness, which through faith in Christ is placed upon every repentant believer. It is imputed to him for the one which he formerly possessed. Therefore Jesus declares in His wonderful prayer, "I manifested THY NAME unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world." John 17: 6. "Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me." Verse 11. Jesus Christ manifested to the world the character of the Father, and this character is the "righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there is no distinction."
The name of the Lamb, or of the Son of God, stands for absolute humiliation, for self-emptying in order that God may come in and fill the soul. "Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as7a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him." Phil. 2: 5-9. Even so the hundred and forty and four thousand are those who have emptied themselves in order that God might fill them with the spirit of service. And therefore God has highly exalted them, placed upon them His own visible character and the character of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is written on their foreheads. The stamp of Godlike nobility is placed upon them. They are visible representatives of Him.
4. A VOICE.—How many times we read in the Scriptures of a voice, not a sound; there may be a sound without voice. That sound may be indeterminate, may not represent any kind of thing or character; but a voice represents something. This voice which John heard was from heaven. Sometimes we are told that God's children never go to heaven, that heaven is an utterly indefinite place; but John heard this voice from heaven. It came from somewhere. It sounded like the voice of many waters. Those who have stood by the great Niagara, and listened to the overpouring of its teeming, never-ending flow of waters, know something of the deep-toned fulness of music which the roar of the waters resembles. It was like the voice of a great thunder. There was power and fulness in the voice from heaven. The whole description indicates the fulness of God's power in the voice. Those from whom the voice came were willing to be God's voice here in this world. When the priests and Levites came to John the Baptist and asked him who he was, he did not tell his long priestly lineage, as did another of his generation—Josephus; he did not tell them of the great ancestry through which he had come; he did not tell them that his father, Zacharias, had been an honorable priest in the temple; he was content to say, "I am the VOICE of one crying in the wilderness," simply a voice, but a voice of God. So it is with these of whom John was the type. He preceded our Lord at His first advent; these have preceded our Lord at His second advent. They have been content, amid the multitude of this world's voices, to echo the truth of the wonderful prophecies of God's Word. What wonder is it that, in their triumph, there should come a voice from heaven filled with the fulness of the power of God, as well as the fulness of the music of heaven!
5. A VOICE OF HARPERS.—It was a voice of triumph. It was not a voice of those who were wailing or weeping, not a voice of trumpets of men preparing for battle, not a voice of jollity or glee or madness; it was the voice of triumphal melody which the prophet heard, the voices of harpers singing praise to Him through whom the victory had been won.
6. A NEW SONG.—There is an accompaniment to the harping, there is a song of joy with the playing. The voice of the harp indicates the joy, and the new song indicates a new and glorious triumph. It was not only a new song to them; it was a new song before the throne, and all those glorious beings represented by the four living creatures and the elders. It was a song that had never been heard before. Angels had sung there, but angels had never been bound and cursed and degraded and slain by sin. This song came from those who had been all this; they had been slaves of sin, they had been born in sin, they had had all the infirmities which sin could bring, but over all these they had triumphed gloriously, and stood before the throne.
We can imagine how the very endless archways of heaven would ring with the echoes of the new song, heard for the first time in the glorious temple of God above, and how from seraphim and cherubim would come back the echo of praise to God for the new note of triumph which they had heard for the first time, and how greater honor itself would be paid to the Lamb who had brought it all about by His sacrifice and death.
7. NO MAN COULD LEARN.—Why? It is not difficult to conjecture. The conclusion is almost absolutely necessary that the only reason why none could learn that song was because none others had gone through that experience. The Lamentations represent Jerusalem of old as saying, "Behold, and see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow." That is true of every individual on the face of the earth who has any sorrow at all. Each man has his own way of sinning, his own individual characteristics, his own special temptations, his own trials, his own weaknesses. He stands or falls by himself, alone; he is responsible alone to God. But here is a class that pass through certain temptations and trials which bring them together in a way which no other generation has ever met. They have been together in bearing these trials. They have had sorrows, overwhelming temptations, insupportable enemies without number, solicitations to sin which only divine grace enabled them to bear, and they have conquered them all. They have had an experience in the last generation upon which has culminated all the wrath of the enemy of God and His throne. They have passed through that time in which the devil worked with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness. In it all they have conquered. We shall hear of this song again, sung by those purchased out of the earth. We read in Hosea that God will redeem His people from the grave. This company seems to be those who have been redeemed while alive out of the earth. They are translated at the second coming of Christ.
8. THEY ARE VIRGINS.—In our common parlance this term would refer to unmarried females, but in its significance here it includes all who are pure before God, who have not mingled themselves with the spiritual fornicators of this world, who have stood clean and loyal before God, not compromising with the principles of the world. The believer, in Rom. 7: 4, is represented as a woman joined to Christ. So in 2 Cor. 11: 2, the apostle declares, "I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ." And the hundred and forty and four thousand are those who have been espoused to Christ, cleansed by Him, and who have remained true to Him. They follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. They followed Him here; they will follow Him in the eternal future. They walked with Him through all the paths of loyalty and self-denial in earth; they will follow Him through all the paths of glory by and by.
9. PURCHASED.—These were "purchased from the earth," we learn in verse 3; "purchased from among men," we learn in verse 4; that is, purchased out of the earth from among men. They were earthly, the same as all others. Their tendency was downward into sin, the same as all others; but they yielded themselves to the Purchaser; they admitted the purchase price. "Purchased from the earth" and "from among men" would indicate that they were taken out from among the men of the world. We read in Matt. 24: 31: "And He shall send forth His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." They will be gathered out from among the last generation of living men when Christ shall appear.
They were purchased to be the "first-fruits" to God and to the Lamb. Not that they were the first ever saved, not that they were first in point of time. The ascension of Enoch and Elijah and the multitude that was taken up when Christ ascended, all preceded them; but "first-fruits" is used not simply in the sense of priority in time, but of pre-eminence in character, in station. So God has taken this hundred and forty and four thousand and made them the first, the very first in pre-eminence even as Christ is counted the "first-born;" even as Jacob was counted the first-born, altho Esau preceded him; even as Ephraim was counted the first-born, altho Manasseh was older. They were made first in pre-eminence. They are taken from the weakest and most tempted generation of men that the world ever knew; they therefore show the greatest triumphs of the grace of God through the Lamb.
10. WITHOUT BLEMISH.—They have developed perfection of character; they are those who have stood true to God, and through the fiercest temptations; they are those who are referred to in the third chapter and tenth verse: "Because thou didst keep the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." And in it all, and through it all, by the grace of the Lamb, they have triumphed, they have met every temptation which would reveal every weakness of character, and in the place of that weakness of character there has been substituted the strength of Jesus Christ. Consequently, they stand without fault before the throne. It is a wonderful company. It is not for us—sometimes it is almost needless that we speculate as to who they will be—to say whether we shall be among them or not. We may learn, however, this one lesson: By the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we may possess their characters. Possessing the character which is there set before us, we may be sure that God will place us in that glorious, everlasting apportionment just where we belong, and will give us that which is meet for us forever, and in which we shall render to Him everlasting praise.
