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…” (Rev. 7:9). The question as to whether this is a vision of the Church of Jesus Christ or other groups of believers is a separate issue which we do not need to consider here. I believe that in this passage God is showing us a vision of the saints of all ages—past, present and future—as it is seen by God Himself and as it will be forever in heaven.
What John saw was something which had never been seen before and has certainly never been seen since—by human eyes at any rate. At that particular point of time it was shown to the apostle John for him to pass on to the churches of his day, and indeed to all succeeding generations of the Church. It is meant to benefit us all. It comes to us so that we can learn from it, having our minds stretched and our hearts set on fire by the vision. We note that it embraces all nations.
This sight of a numberless multitude from all nations, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, seems to suggest three things.
How Encouraging is the Sight!
To us now the reality may seem very different. What we think about our particular local church may be quite different. Now it is quite natural for us to be dissatisfied with the Church as we know it, but we must not lose sight of this vision. As often as not we feel dissatisfied because there seems to be so much failure, and we are impressed by all the things which we are not doing and the targets which somehow never get achieved. But sometimes I think that even when the Church is on the up and up we should be dissatisfied, saying, “Yes, we have been blessed in this and that and the other thing, but how little we have deserved it, and how much more remains to be done.” So whether we are experiencing failure or distress in the Church as a whole or the local church to which we belong, we always have plenty of grounds for dissatisfaction.
The Christians who are truly concerned for the Church of Jesus Christ and for the honor of God, looking around at the churches as we know them, often find it a discouraging sight. They see Christian people, genuinely Christian people, struggling among themselves, squabbling among themselves, presenting a very second-rate kind of set-up, perhaps a very unimportant little group which seems to make little impact at all in the world around. They therefore feel discouraged and recognize the truth of the words of the hymn that “With a scornful wonder men see her sore distressed…”
This is especially so in our days for we are aware of so many things around us which seem to be the fuel for discouragement, discontent and dismay. There are the prophets of doom and gloom who say that the world is in a terrible state. We think that it was never like this before, though it probably was as a matter of fact, but it seems so obvious to us now. We look at the awful tide of secularism and unbelief with the world so strong and so evil, and the Church seems to be just an island in this great tide of evil.
We cannot shut our eyes to the world around with all its evils, but we must not let Satan use these facts and enlarge them to bring us into despair. Although he is the father of lies, he does see the spiritual reality of the true Church, and perhaps more clearly than some of us do, but he tries to overwhelm us with a sense of despair and deceive us. There is a famous quotation in C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters in which Satan speaks of the Church as “spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity” and he confesses that this is a spectacle which makes the demons uneasy. Satan sees the truth about the Church and it is good for us to see it as well. He attempts to stop us from seeing this but this is what the Spirit of God through the mouth of the apostle John shows us when he speaks of “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.”
We must not miss this. Are you discouraged? “A multitude which no man could number.” Do you sometimes fear that the missionary enterprise has failed? “Of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb.” Have a look at that sight!
A sight of the greatness of the Church. This is the reason why it is so encouraging. It is drawn from every nation worldwide. It is drawn from China, where for a long time it was thought that the gospel had to die out. It is drawn from Albania, where the gospel was proscribed for decades. It is drawn from the decadent West and from third-world countries. It is drawn from all tongues. Not simply from Africa, for example, but from every tribe within that continent, and there are many, many of them. It is drawn from every tongue.
Let us not think simply of counting up how many nations are represented at New York in the U. N. for it is far beyond that. It is far greater than we ever could have thought, for it is also drawn from nations which now we have forgotten. There are people who have disappeared, the great empires of antiquity—Assyria, Babylon and Egypt. The number is multiplied and then multiplied again. No wonder John reported that the multitude could not be numbered by men. So the greatness of the Church is the first encouraging lesson which we learn from this vision. When we are tempted to think of ourselves as a tiny minority, we need to remember God’s view of His Church.
See also the greatness of the gospel. We find great encouragement from this proof of the greatness of the gospel. What is it that has brought all these myriads of people into the new life and the miraculous new love which is the hallmark of the Christian Church? Here are people who are totally different among themselves and sometimes don’t even necessarily like one another and yet are all found in enjoyment of the knowledge of the holy God? What is great enough to do such an extraordinary thing, to bring together such a countless multitude to be united around the throne and the Lamb? The answer is that it has been done through the greatness of the gospel. It is the “foolishness of preaching” (1 Cor. 1:21) which has brought about this wonderful sight. It is the gospel story of how God has come down to men in the person of Christ, who died on the cross, rose again and returned to heaven. This is the message which may seem foolish but proves to be the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.
It is amazing the way in which the gospel lays hold of people all over the world and from every nation. It opens the hearts of hardened sinners. How great must this gospel be! It draws numberless multitudes into the Church of Jesus Christ as nothing else could do. There never was a seed with such power of growth. We all have our own ways of preaching it, publicly or by private contacts, and it is a great privilege to be entrusted with a gospel as great as this. Above all, this verse in Revelation 7:9 shows us how great is our God.
The greatness of our God. John gives a sight of the greatness of the God who has done all this. All the time while men think that He is asleep, wondering even if He exists, He is doing this marvellous work of redemption and reconciliation. On Mount Carmel, Elijah was able to taunt the worshippers of Baal with the possibility of their god being off on a journey or fast asleep, but our God is not like that. He is here! He is active! He is bringing men and women into the Church, and He is doing this throughout the world. He cares for every part of His creation, He cares about each and all.
This is a foretaste of the future, but it does not mean only that when we look into Revelation 7:9 we are seeing something that one day will happen. It has present meaning; we already sense the reality of it. It is marvellous to mix with Christians so different from us with such different backgrounds, and to know ourselves one in Christ. You may find yourself in a prayer meeting in another language; you do not understand, and yet you do, for it is the language of Zion.
The whole Church of all ages has been brought into being by this great God of ours. We read stories of the past and find inspiration from biographies of those who are now with the Lord. And we are struck with the fact that these people who may have been dead and buried for 200 years are our own brothers and sisters. In fact they are still alive; they are part of that great cloud of witnesses. We worship the God who is great enough to do this, and who opens it up to us and gives us a foretaste of what that great Day will be like. We look forward eagerly to meeting and enjoying fellowship with God’s beloved people. Even now we have a foretaste of those joys but we are promised that one day we will actually be there. We will need all eternity to enter into what lies before us. Meanwhile how encouraging are these three greatnesses. We are given a sight of the greatness of the Church, of the gospel and of our God. Are you a downhearted Christian? Is your group a small one, humble and few in number? Do you feel that your own personal witness is not very strong? And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, Steals on the ear the distant triumph-song, And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong. Hallelujah!
How Fitting is the Sight!
This vision of John’s fits in with everything that the Scriptures say about God. All the redemptive work of God is summed up in this verse. Some people feel that the Revelation is terribly hard to understand, and so it is, but I am quite sure that one of the ways in which God intends us to understand it is that it provides a summing up of the whole of the rest of Scripture. It is an amazing fact that anything you can find anywhere else in the Bible is drawn to a point in this book.
Scripture tells us about the God who rules all the nations (Acts 17:26). It is most fitting that the work of the God who rules all nations should come to its climax like this. John’s vision gives us a sight of how He draws a Church from all the nations. God set before them a choice, a choice which confronts all nations (Gal. 3:8). It began with Abraham who is given as the prime example of the challenge to faith. “Abraham, will you leave all that is of yourself, and cast yourself entirely on Me?” This is the choice of faith which confronts all the nations. No one can come to the greatest of all blessings—justification before God—without making this choice. It is the challenge to repent and believe.
So God chose an international means which any nation can understand and either accept or reject, and it is fitting that this international method should produce such an international result. As with the choice presented, so the resulting Church concerns all nations.
Next we see the way in which God set about this task; His method was to use a magnet which would attract all the nations (Ps. 67:1-2). We found that God’s primary means of drawing people to be confronted with the choice of faith was by saying, “Look at My people, Israel. How attractive they are!” The attraction was to be international, so it is absolutely fitting that the Israelite magnet should have drawn to itself a numberless multitude drawn from all nations.
God’s methods are not hindered—much less frustrated—by the sin of men. If God says, “I will bless you in such measure that all the other nations will be blessed,” it will happen. And it still does happen. This was not just an Old Testament truth, for God blesses His people in all ages and makes them so attractive that they are irresistible. This is His first method of drawing in all the nations.
He has also a second method of accomplishing His purpose and confronting the nations with the choice of faith. It is not simply that His people may be a magnet, drawing others to Himself, but that they should form a mission which reaches out to all the nations: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-20).
By this mission, this sending, which reaches out to all the nations, our international God has an international means of drawing men into the Church using, on the one hand, an international attraction and on the other hand an international sending to gather men in. Is it not absolutely fitting that, as we see the results of that mission, what happens when God’s people take the gospel to all the nations, we are given the vision of which John speaks here in Revelation 7:9? The Bible, from start to finish, is international.
The Good News of Jesus Christ is not a thing which is peculiarly suited to the Anglo-Saxon race. Nor is it something which is peculiarly Jewish (if I may be allowed to say so), though originally it was that. It was always intended, though, to have international values. It is sad, but true, that some of the ways in which we express our faith are very peculiarly cultural. Others come in from other backgrounds and they cannot make head or tail of it. But that is not its Christianness; it is our Englishness or Americanness. We must be careful that we communicate the pure gospel as it is delivered to us in the Word of God.
Nor can we say—being disheartened as we sometimes are—that the Christian faith suits us and the kind of people we are, but somehow it doesn’t seem to fit into a Hindu background or a Muslim culture. As if there were something about the gospel which didn’t suit the minds of such people! It may be that it is the way in which we have looked at the gospel through our spectacles which makes the gospel seem to be something which does not appeal to others.
For example, we have become very individualistic in our Western approach, thinking all the time of just God and me. In looking for hymns about heaven, I have been shocked to find that although we want to sing about the joys when we are all together in heaven, almost all of these hymns have the theme of “God and me.” When we take the gospel to other cultures, where for hundreds of years they have been accustomed to think of themselves in terms of communities, they cannot appreciate this “God and me” faith. The gospel overcomes this barrier and makes it plain that it is both “God and me” and also “God and us.” The gospel has something which appeals to every nation.
If I may quote, “The New Testament picture of the Church is devoid of any nationalistic feeling.” The barriers tumble when we look at them through gospel spectacles. This is a truth which is made wonderfully clear in Psalm 87, though this does not appear very well in some modern translations. “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Among them that know me I will make mention of Egypt and Babylon, Philistia and Tyre with Ethiopia; this one was born there.” Men from these foreign nations were born there—in Zion! What did the Jews make of that? These were the historical enemies of the people of God, and yet from these nations men and women were drawn to be registered as citizens of Zion. This one, that one, and the other one, foreigners and strangers were born in her. The Lord records as He registers the people all over the world, that so and so was born there (Ps. 87:3-7).
We find the New Testament counterpart to this in the words: “They that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And indeed if they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they seek a better homeland, that is, an heavenly…” (Heb. 11:14–16). This is the glory of the gospel, that men and women from all nations turn out to be citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. John’s vision was certainly a fitting one.
How Challenging is the Sight!
This bringing in from all the nations of people who belong to Christ’s Church is a job for all of us who are already in it. How challenging is John’s vision! It will be brought into being through the agency of ordinary people like you and me. That is God’s normal method. It is possible that people should be gathered in directly from heaven without any human agency, when people are converted just by finding a page of the Bible or by a dream. Even then, though, I am sure that the prayers of the Church have been behind it. God’s normal method is to do it through the preaching of the gospel. The numberless multitude of rejoicing saints will be around the throne by reason of the simple testimony of ordinary people like us.
Each of us must face the challenge. In some cases the Lord may say that He wants us to go abroad, so we must get up and go. It may involve an entirely new way of life, adjusting to a new culture, learning a new language. All this is part of what the Lord Jesus meant in His command that all the nations are to be the harvest field for His disciples (Mt. 28:19). On the other hand, it is now possible to reach other nations on our own doorstep. The other nations have come to us. The whole subject of immigration has been in our newspapers for many years now. They present a challenge. Then there are others who come to us for a shorter term, foreign students or visitors. The challenge of the gospel is international, even if we are bound to stay here at home. There are also very practical ways in which we may share the outreach of the gospel.
In some cases there are opportunities in the job we are already doing. The gospel can be spread as we rub shoulders with our fellows. Most of all it constitutes a challenge to intercessory prayer. This vision of the international Church reminds us of how people so different from us are involved, people whom we do not understand, but God knows and cares about them. There may even be people whom we do not like, but they too are loved above. In other words, it is up to us to anticipate, as far as we possibly can, the realization of this glorious vision of “a great multitude which no man can number, out of every nation…stood before the throne and before the Lamb.” That is the glorious prospect set before us. It is also a present stimulus to broadcast the good seed this very day.