Revelation 7:9-17

Too often we read Revelation as if its visions relate only to future, end-time events. Reading it that way, we can easily miss how Revelation shapes the church’s identity and mission now. That applies specifically to Revelation 7:9-17. I’m convinced that this passage pictures one of the most important images of the church, not only in Revelation but the entire New Testament.

Like a two-paneled medieval altarpiece in which the scenes are hinged together, Revelation 7 gives us a “double vision” of the church. The verses leading up to this passage (Rev 7:1-8) show a vision of the suffering church on earth, which is sealed and protected by God in the midst of trials. The second vision (Rev 7:9-17) portrays the victorious church in heaven, a multinational community of God’s people, who already experience some of the blessings of the new creation to come (Rev 7:15-17). These are not two different groups; rather, both scenes picture the one redeemed people of God, but from different perspectives.

Revelation 7:9-17 envisions a countless multitude from every tribe, language, and nation, dressed in white robes, worshiping God day and night. Is this simply a picture of what it will be like in the future, “when we all get to heaven?” Not at all! Although this vision unveils a portrait of the church’s future, it also reveals what we are to be here and now. The church is called to embody God’s future in the present world, to live as a “sneak preview” of what is to come. How, then, does this passage shape the church’s identity and mission in the present?[i]

First, it pictures a multinational church. This international choir of worshipers fulfills God’s covenant promise that through Abraham and his descendants “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). The gospel doesn’t erase cultural or ethnic differences. Rather, God takes the gifts from each culture and transforms them into an instrument of praise to God. In a world filled with racial, ethnic, and religious divisions, this vision calls us toan intentionally multicultural, multiracial, multinational identityas God’s people. This isn’t some otherworldly dream about how all God’s children will get along someday when we sit around God’s throne singing “Kum ba yah.” Rather, it shows us what God is doing in the world and how we as the people of God are called to live into that.

Surely Revelation’s vision of the church as a multinational community means that no form of racism, nationalism, tribalism, or ethnocentrism (our way is better!) has any place in the people of God. It may be normal for “birds of a feather to flock together” or to fear those who feathers look different than our own. But that is not Revelation’s vision of the people of God. Michael Gorman hits the nail on the head: “If Christians around the globe truly understood themselves as part of this international community, and fully embraced that membership as their primary source of identity, mission, and allegiance, it is doubtful that so many Christians could maintain their deep-seated national allegiances or their suspicions of foreigners.”[ii] Such attitudes not only resist the New Testament vision of the church; they also hinder our witness to a watching world.

Second, Rev 7:9-17 envisions a worshiping church. This cheering multicultural choir engages in unceasing worship of God and the Lamb, declaring, “Salvation belongs to our God!” (Rev 7:10). Revelation’s worship is anything but “otherworldly.” Joseph Mangina points out that to the extent that congregations today worship the God who sits on the throne and sing praises to the slain Lamb, we participate in that heavenly worship.[iii] Revelation’s worship invites us not only to buy into its transformed vision of the world but to embody that vision—in our own worship gatherings and our everyday connections, in a “day and night” worship that touches all of life (Rev 7:15).

As we do, we bear witness to others of what God’s desires for all people. We publicly announce that God alone sits on the throne and the idols of our culture do not. Our worship becomes a foretaste of the new creation, where people of all nations and the entire creation will fall prostrate in worship of the God who alone can save. Worship is glued to witness. It’s as if our worship songs carry the subtitle, “Come and worship! Join the choir!” As Christopher Wright puts it, “such declarative praise is not a private affair between God and the worshippers, but it spills out into the public arena as one of the means by which God draws the nations to himself.”[iv] Singing the worship God desires leads to serving the world that God redeemed.

Third, Revelation 7 imagines a holy church. The Lamb’s international worship team stands before the throne dressed in white (Rev 7:9). In Revelation, white robes symbolize both victory and purity (see Rev 3:18; 6:11). Later, an elder tells John that the redeemed “have washed their robes and made them white” (Rev 7:14). When God’s people “do their laundry,” only one cleansing agent is able to make their clothes white: paradoxically, “the blood of the Lamb.” Here the blessings that result from Christ’s self-giving death on the cross include pure hearts and lives. What God’s people wear on the outside symbolizes their holy character and lifestyle. Once again, Revelation’s vision of the future shapes who we are now. A church shaped by the new creation will both embody and invite others into a life of wholeness, in which the Spirit transforms us, as persons and communities, into the holy character of the God we serve.

Fourth, John pictures a suffering church. John’s brief dialogue reveals something else about the church’s identity. The elder informs John that God’s people from all nations have come through “the great ordeal” (Rev 7:14). From Revelation’s perspective, the church doesn’t escape tribulation and suffering, for example, by being “raptured” to the safe shores of heaven. Rather, hardship is the normal experience of God’s people. For John’s first readers in first-century Roman Asia, resisting the idolatry and false stories of Rome came with a steep price tag. It could cost them jobs, friends, social status, or even their lives. Our circumstances may be different, but the church today, whatever its global setting, cannot expect to be exempt from trouble and pushback. As I wrote elsewhere, “Popular preaching and theology too often promise power without weakness, success without suffering, prosperity without sacrifice, salvation without discipleships, religion without righteousness.”[v] Revelation calls us to “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (Rev 14:4), even to the cross. After all, he is the slaughtered Lamb (Rev 5:12).

Fifth, Revelation 7:9-17 portrays a hope-full church. Here that hope takes two forms. In the first place, John’s vision of the countless multitude in heaven offers hope to churches engaged in God’s mission. Certainly, it would have encouraged the marginalized and persecuted churches in Asia minor. Not just the sheer size of the company of worshipers, but also its make-up of people from every tribe and tongue, would stretch their imaginations almost to the breaking point. John’s vision of the vast worshiping community still has power to energize and encourage churches facing pushback from hostile critics or indifference from apathetic cultures. It says, “Despite present setbacks, your faithful witness will bring a rich harvest in the end.” At the same time, Revelation gives us a vocation—to engage in the task of global evangelization and to serve as agents of reconciliation among the world’s peoples, wherever we encounter human need. Second, John shows us our hope-filled future. Echoing the prophet Isaiah, he envisions the new creation, when God’s people will neither hunger nor thirst, and when, like a loving parent, God will wipe all tears from their eyes (Rev 7:15-17; cf. Is 25:8; 49:10). These magnificent promises assure us that everything God has promised his people will be realized through the slain and risen Lamb. But they also remind us of our mission now—to become the healing, life-giving ministry of the Lamb for a broken world. We are called to embody God’s future, to serve as a signpost and presence of new creation now. That’s Revelation’s vision of w[vi]ho we are and what we’re about in the world.

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[i] The following adapts some material from Dean Flemming, “Making Everything New: Revelation and the Mission of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, forthcoming).

[ii] Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb Into the New Creation (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011), 134.

[iii] Joseph L. Mangina, “God, Israel, and Ecclesia in the Apocalypse,” in Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation, ed. Richard B. Hays and Stefan Alkier (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), 94.

[iv] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 250.

[v] Dean Flemming, Philippians: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 2009), 180.