Day 136

“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all the tribes, peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands” – REV 7:9 (NASB)

The people of God incorporate a wide variety of ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds. This amazing melting pot will work because of the marvellous gospel of God’s grace to all, without exception.

God’s people will model their treatment of others by God’s treatment of them. They will learn to appreciate the differences in others rather than feel threatened by them. In eternity, these differences will produce joy and excitement rather than conflict and irritation. It is people who differ from me that bring unique and enriching things into my life.

That’s what heaven will be like. And heaven will begin for us here to the extent that we appreciate the difference God’s variety makes in our lives. After all, if God had made us all the same, how boring would that be?

John sees a “great multitude, which no one could number”, who came “out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev7:14). That is, they are a special group of people who, despite whatever tribulation they went through, have stayed faithful to Jesus, a faithfulness symbolized by their being covered in the robes of His perfect righteousness. The word “tribulation” is used very frequently in the Bible to refer to the things that believers suffer for their faith (e.g, Exod4:31 Ps9:9, Matt 24:9, John16:33, Rom5:3). Therefore, we could understand the “great multitude” as a reference to all the redeemed who have suffered for their faith down through the ages.

Here, too, in John’s description of the “great multitude, which no one could number”, we see, as we do in all the Bible, the great theme of salvation by grace. The only claim of the redeemed to salvation, to eternal life, to the new heavens and the new earth is the righteousness of Christ, which is gifted to them by grace.