The Book of Revelation: Revelation 7 Pt. 2

Speaker: Greg Sanders

Passage: Revelation 7

REVELATION CHAPTER 7 SHAPES THEOLOGY

Okay, let’s go to Revelation. I want to spend one more week focusing on chapter 7, and there’s a reason. When we talk about eschatology, we’re talking about the study of the end times. Revelation 7 is incredibly central to the majority of end-time viewpoints.

If you trace back all the different eschatological points of view, you will find there is something in 7 that has been interpreted as evidence. So, discerning it correctly begins to set a direction for us as students of the Scripture. Discerning it correctly may even start to inform how we study the Bible. In other words, how you view chapter 7 in Revelation shapes your theology.

I want to remind us that our goal in this series is to study the text by allowing it to lead us, not a prior teaching we’ve heard or a prior perspective. Maybe you’re like me. I came into this study of Revelation with a lot of ideas, and as we got into this study, I realized most of those ideas I’ve heard from somebody else. They haven’t actually been my own discovery. They haven’t actually been what I found and discovered.

Here’s why I think that’s a concern. I believe we have a Guide and a Teacher who loves to reveal things to us in the text. That’s the Holy Spirit. I think it is our job as a people to study the Scriptures so that He can bring illumination.

You might say, Well, I don’t see as much as other people. You see what you’re supposed to see. There are revelations that the Lord brings to other people, and it’s great. I love listening to other people’s perspectives and teachings. But you are responsible for what He shows you.

If, at any level, you’ve decided not to study the Scriptures because you don’t think you see enough, you have erred tragically. You’re robbing yourself of your own faith being built by the Lord giving you insight.

I believe the Scriptures are also to be discerned in community and not just in isolation. That’s why the pastoral staff studies together as a team. We have sixteen of us who get together to study the Scriptures. In that room, there’s no hierarchy. It’s just an open forum of what we think it says and whether we can prove it. We argue back and forth. It’s pretty fun.

Then, it goes out to the next layer, which is the distillation layer. Five of us get together, and we submit our teachings to one another to look at and say, I think maybe we should say it this way. Why? Because I think being in community allows the Holy Spirit to whisper through lots of us.

Scripture says, “In the abundance of counsel is wisdom”. In other words, all of our decision making and activities are better when it’s informed by people. We have more opinions. If you’re like me and you naturally hate opinions, it’s a discipline that you learn to step into.

The ideal way to get towards this community idea is impossible to do on a Sunday morning because it would take us two to three hours to study this. We would have to pass a microphone around the room and get everyone’s input. I just don’t think that’s feasible with our North American time pockets.

What is feasible, though, is for you to hop on the old Google and send an email. I would love to invite you to send all of your emails to Pastor Dustin about this. Our emails are really simple. It’s our first and last name, with a period in between. So, it’s greg.sanders@vintagecitychurch.com. It’s dustin.scott, or gary.peters. We would love to help discern this together and grab onto that intel because I think we’re supposed to study Scripture as a family.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m not really that concerned about being Instagrammable and all the likes. I don’t care. What I care about is what God is doing in this house. And I care that we’re faithful to be who He’s called us to be in our day and in our time. I think that requires all of us to study the Scriptures together.

THE SYNTAX OF REVELATION 7

We’re going to be looking today at the syntax of the passage, which will get a little heady for a few minutes, but I think it’s important. We’re going to specifically look at the address of the elder to John. I think if we’re willing to just do a little bit of syntax work, and that’s language work or linguistics work, I think we’re going to gain an understanding of the total picture that’s being presented.

So, there are some linguistic keys for us to consider, and this is where it gets a little bit technical. In order to discern Greek properly, we must, at a minimum level, have a grasp of tense and mood because the way it affects Greek language is pretty significant.

My thought is that an average Greek reader or audience back then would have already known the nuances of tense and mood. They would have felt them as they were reading it and hearing it, so they would have gathered meaning out of it that we don’t see.

Any married guy understands that when you ask the question, Hey, what’s up? If the answer is, I’m fine, but it’s said with a certain tone, then it doesn’t mean she’s fine. How does a yes become a no? Through tone of voice. We understand nuances in English that you would never be able to read in Scripture or in written form.

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

It’s important that we look at the original language and its grammatical side, so I’m going to give you three words: aorist, present, and future.

Aorist is a one-time and completed action. It’s a historical event. There’s a phrase that shows up in verse 14. It says, “…they have washed their robes…”. This is in an aorist tense, which means something happened. It’s also in an indicative mood, which means it for sure happened. It’s not hypothetical. That would be a subjunctive mood, which means it was theoretical. This is actual, and it means it was a one-time event.

Now, if you’re like me and grew up Pentecostal a little bit, you may have been “saved” numerous times. I got saved like seven hundred and thirty-two times because every week, we were required to go back to the altar and give our lives to the Lord. Again, I didn’t realize that it was a one-time event. I washed my life in the blood of Jesus. It was done at that moment. The rest of my journey was going to be working it out with Him.

If you’re here and wondering if you’re saved, you are. You wouldn’t ask the question if you weren’t. What you are doing is working out sanctification. You’re working out control. You’re working out how much of you He’s in control of, but you’re not working out whether or not you’re saved. That happened one time and will always remain true.

The next word is present, and this indicates a continuous process. It’s an uncompleted action, something that has a beginning, and it has not yet found its conclusion. We see that in verse 15 of this passage, which says, “…And they served Him day and night…”. This phrase is in the indicative mood, which means it’s a present and uncompleted process. They are a people serving Him, and this speaks to their present vocation as believers.

And then there’s the future. It’s a future action. Verse 17 says he will lead them to living waters. Future tense, indicative mood, means the leadership the Lord follows or is in the future, almost as if it’s a response to something that happened prior.

REVELATION 7 REVEALS A PROCESS

It’s important to know that Greek verbs speak more about how an action is performed rather than when it occurs. Why is that important? Because so much of this passage in chapter 7 is interpreted in the context of time for people. However, I want to highlight a different interpretation. I think it’s about process, not about time.

Within these verses, we find a grammatical movement that goes from aorist, or historical, to present to future—all within three verses. There’s a process that’s being released. I hope to show that it’s not a linear timeline but steps in a process moving from historical or completed to present to future. If that’s accurate, I think what John is seeing is a truth that contains aspects that have happened, are happening, and will happen. In other words, process not chronology. 

Chronology is just a history of time. Process is something that has a beginning and works through a systematic journey, right? I think that’s an important lens through which to understand 7 because chronology shapes most of end-time theology. If this passage actually reveals a process instead of chronology, it may reframe our understanding of what to expect in the end times.

I grew up working for Pastor Gary, and there was a man he used to bring in named Bob Cornwall. I remember a statement Bob made to us on a Sunday night that changed my life. He said, Your theology controls your worldview. In other words, with or without knowing it, how you view God in the Scriptures shapes how you live.

I want to add this clarification so everybody’s clear. We’re not talking about salvation-contingent issues. Your salvation is sure because of Jesus and what Jesus did, end of story. We are talking about viewpoints of things that we can know some of and we cannot know some of. Therefore, whenever we encounter something in the Scriptures that is in the future or in the realm of what we can know and maybe not know, we should be really humble about it and not dogmatic. 

There have been entire schisms in the church, divisions and wounds, over this stuff. It’s absolutely crazy because there are some things we can know, and there are some things we for sure cannot. Okay, let’s go to Revelation 7.

REVELATION 7

“After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a mighty shout, ‘Salvation comes from our God on the throne and from the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living beings. And they fell face down before the throne and worshipped God.

They said, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength belong to our God forever and forever. Amen!’

Then one of the twenty-four elders asked me, ‘Who are these who are clothed in white? Where do they come from?’ And I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one who knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation…’

They washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white. That is why they are standing in front of the throne of God, serving him day and night in his Temple. And he who sits on the throne will live among them and shelter them. They will never again be hungry or thirsty, and they will be fully protected from the scorching noontime heat. For the Lamb who stands in front of the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to the springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe away their tears”.

ASSERTION 1: THE ELDER IS TEACHING JOHN

I want to dive in and show three things about this idea of process versus chronology. The first aspect I want to highlight is, I would submit that the elder asks John a question for the purpose of teaching. We talked about this last week. It’s not like the elder needed John’s perspective. 

The question is about those around the Throne, and I believe it’s an essential part of something that began back in chapter 4. Do you remember the beginning of chapter 4? John hears a voice that says, Come up here, and I will show you what must happen after these things.

What are these things? They are the stuff that John had just heard about: his churches on the earth. These things were the situations being indicted by the Lord and being spoken to. And then the voice says, Come here. Let me show you what has to happen after these things. All of this is for John’s education, to go back to the earth and deal with it.

Think about it this way. The invitation was to show John what was happening in Heaven and what was to happen on the earth. John is supposed to take this information back. The syntax in this dialog reveals a linguistic process. We see a movement from historically completed events to present-time events to future events. The question is, what does that reveal?

ASSERTION 2: THE GREAT TRIBULATION IS NOW

The second aspect I want to talk about is the syntax of the Greek and how studying it will help us potentially understand what the great tribulation is.

In Matthew 24, Jesus will speak of a season of tribulation. He’s talking to His disciples, and He’s talking about a season of tribulation. That’s the word He uses extensively in His conversation with His disciples. Remember, John would have been in that conversation. Revelation 7 would have been the second time John heard Jesus talk about this. Jesus explains to them that they, His disciples, will go through difficulty and should expect to. That has to become something that helps us discern what this means. 

Revelation 7, in conjunction with the end of Daniel on all the prophetic declarations, has been used as a proof text to shape our understanding in the church at large into believing that there is a specific and finite season of tribulation coming. Some people it will be much worse than what we’ve experienced, but we probably won’t be part of it.

I’m not here to debunk or argue with what the great tribulation is. I just simply want to invite us into the possibility that there might be another perspective that is just as provable in the Scripture. And this possibility might bring us to a better long-range conclusion.

The phrase “the great tribulation” here in Revelation 7 does contain the word the. It carries what’s called a definite article. It’s speaking to something specific. That syntax has been why everyone will say, Oh, there’s a specific season called the great tribulation that’s coming. There’s a problem with that analysis, though I understand it and kind of agree and disagree.

Perhaps the reason why I agree and disagree is that while that’s the right application of that linguistics perspective, John doesn’t do that in his writings all the time. John kind of butchers Greek, and he uses it very interestingly. He will throw in definite articles once in a while, but then other times, he won’t use them when they belong there.

Most scholars believe John does this mainly to make the text feel more Hebraic, or Hebrew, in the way it reads. Why would he do that? Well, because Hebrew is John’s first language.

Has anyone ever tried to read somebody writing in English who speaks Spanish as a first language? Often, there are pieces and nuances that are missing, and they’re not missing because said person’s not smart. They’re missing because their brain thinks in their original language. We disconnect that from the writers of the Scripture like we never thought about how it makes sense.

Unfortunately, we don’t have time to delve into all of that. But based on this, I believe the great tribulation might not be an event in the past, present, or future, but rather the difficulty and suffering that Jesus promised us as followers within His world. John 16 says, “I have said this to you so that in Me you may have peace in the world. You’re going to face tribulation, but take courage. I’ve conquered the world”.

ASSERTION 3: JOHN IS USING TABERNACLE LANGUAGE PURPOSEFULLY

The third aspect I want to bring out is the importance of the tabernacle language in this text. It says, “And He who sits on His Throne will live among them”. The word in the Greek is the word for tabernacle. It means He will tabernacle. How many have ever gone camping? When you pitch your tent in the wild, you’re tabernacling. That’s the idea.

John is drawing a connection for his audience. Tabernacle is always the dwelling of God with His people in the wilderness. That’s how the term is used in the Scripture. It’s where God would live with His people. It’s always an earthly thing. It’s always where God would rest with His people on the earth, and that’s important.

We see that in John 1, John uses this same verb to indicate that the incarnation of Jesus began His tabernacling with humanity. So, in this passage, the promise of Jesus being with His people is given, and the tabernacle is an earthly dwelling. Remember, Jesus makes this statement at the end of Matthew: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

TYING IT ALL BACK TOGETHER

So, let’s wrap it up and put it all together.

Look back at the text, where the elder is speaking to John. “Then he said to me, ‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb and made them white’”. 

Those are in aorist; those are historical events. They’re completed: coming out of the tribulation, washed their robes, made them white, etc. 

Then we see a transition into the present, when the text says, “That is why they are standing in front of the throne of God, serving Him day and night in His Temple”. These are uncompleted, currently happening events. It’s a vocational thing. This is what they’re doing now.

Then, the text makes a movement to the future. It says, “And he who sits on the throne will live among them and shelter them. They will never again be hungry or thirsty, and they will be fully protected from the scorching noontime heat. For the Lamb who stands in front of the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to the springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe away their tears.”

These statements are about the future. This indicates that they’re coming or the result of or response to something.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF REVELATION 7 IN OUR LIVES

Work through this with me. I think what we’re seeing here, and what John was being shown, is where the people of God are to live from. We’re saved by the blood, and I think we’re currently living in the great tribulation.

What if the great tribulation is a parenthetical statement that began the moment Jesus left the earth and concludes the moment Jesus comes back, and that whole season of life in between is the great tribulation? It changes and reframes my concern of, What if there’s not another really bad season coming? I don’t know. Look around. It’s bad enough.

We’ve been given the ability, through worship and intimate communion with His body, to regularly stand before His throne. Perhaps what John is being shown is an access point that he is to take back to his churches and his people. Now he can say, You guys, guess what I learned? We on Earth can go to the heavenly throne room whenever we come in pure-hearted worship!

Tell me you haven’t felt it during worship. This moment where we’re before the Throne of God, and it’s different. We just transcended out of something into something else. All of a sudden, John is being shown the potential that is in the people of God: that we are to live from another realm on the earth. In that way, perhaps this throne room picture is a tutorial, giving us instructions on where we live from, not so much about what’s to come.

This partnership through worship or standing before His throne and serving in His temple, which is living in the community of faith, results in His tabernacling presence dwelling with us on the earth. All of the language in Revelation 7 is earthly. He who sits on the Throne will live among them and shelter them. Why would you need shelter in Heaven? They will never again be hungry or thirsty. It’s not even possible. Hunger and thirst don’t exist in Heaven. They’ll be fully protected from the scorching noontime heat.

That’s not any picture we’ve ever seen of Heaven. It’s earthly stuff being talked about, and this tabernacling thing is a really important idea. What it says is that when the people of God, in the midst of tribulation, understand how to go vertical and live from the throne room, it brings a response out of Heaven. He comes and dwells with us, His presence invades, He shelters us, and He tabernacles with us. We have a control metric where we can bring in or draw in more of the Lord to where we’re at by learning how to stand before His throne and serve.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR BELIEVERS

So, what does all of this do for the understanding of the believer? First of all, it reveals to you and me that we’re going to face difficulty, and God has no agenda to pull us out of it. He plans on leaving us in it.

Second, it reveals to me that I have access to the Throne Room, and I’m actually invited to live from there. You need to learn how to step into worship and really go to the Throne Room because you can worship from the earth or the Throne. They’re different.

If you’re thinking about how the lights drive you crazy or the music drives you crazy, you’re living from earth. Instead, step into the Throne Room, where all your passion is on the King, your heart is before the King, and you’re throwing your worship like a crown before Him. When that happens, you are translated into something very different.

Third, it reveals that I am promised His divine provision, comfort, and protection in tribulation. Church, I don’t think He wants to take us out. I think He wants to show who we are in it. I think He wants us to go through the exact same thing our neighbors go through, but the way we go through it is very different. There’s blessing on it, and there’s prosperity on it. It is like He has measured us, and He has expanded us. Somehow, in the midst of chaos and turmoil and weird election seasons, we are flying high. Why? Because of the Throne Room, not because of where we live.

Finally, it reminds us and reveals to us that we’re going to come out the other side victorious. So relax. It also gives us a directive by which to live. Until I see the sky split and my King come through, I stay faithful to His nature and His character.

For the sake of time, I’ll shut it down. I took too much. Some of you may be wondering, Why are we moving faster? It’s because we have to go to three gatherings. There’s no room to grow in the second gathering, so we’re working towards a time. I’m test-piloting things to see how they work.

So, please hear the word of the Lord today. You’re intended to prosper. It’s going to be difficult. He’s not taking it away, but He’s going to go through it with you. Go live in victory.