| Feast of All Saints, 2001
Revelation 7 The 144,000
Heating and air conditioning tend to dull our awareness of year-round climate. Driving our vehicles in pleasant Southern California temperatures is a blessing as well. Hence, the days we spend in artificial environments make it hard to imagine what life is like when constantly exposed to the elements. That is why camping can be a good idea, or at least reading stories about people who weather bad weather.
Laura Ingalls Wilder describes a Minnesota blizzard in her book, On the Banks of Plum Creek . Her family lives in a little house on the prairie located a couple miles from town. One day Pa decides to walk to the market so that he can buy tobacco for his pipe. Ma is worried that he'll get stuck in a snowstorm, but he takes the risk anyway.
Pa arrives at the shops, purchases some Christmas presents, a little tobacco and then departs. Sure enough, a blizzard hits. If he runs fast enough, he thinks, he can make it home before dinner. However, the hard blowing snow turns every thing into whirling whiteness. Pa can't see his way, and the temperature plummets. He rambles for miles completely lost. The darkness of night descends. He staggers along, straining his eyes to see anything, when all of a sudden the ground gives way below him and he falls straight down ten feet. After recovering from the surprise and groping around, he realizes that he has walked off the bank of a gully. Miraculously, he has landed in a small cavern where he can sit protected from the shrieking wind overhead. He remains trapped there for three days, surviving on candy and crackers that he had bought in town as Christmas presents for his daughters.
When finally the storm subsides, he crawls out of his den and looks around. The first thing he spies is his little house sitting about two hundred yards across the field. What an irony! Owing to the blizzard, Pa was forced to spend three days in an icy hole while his wife and daughters waited anxiously close by, warm and cozy inside the cabin.
Similarly, I once met a gentleman who had lived a couple years in Morocco. He worked with a nomadic people in a remote desert region. He told me that his most harrowing experience was getting trapped in a sandstorm. He and a few other men were compelled to lay on the ground for three days underneath camel skins, while the desert sands scraped and howled around them. It was miserable.
The operation of the winds is what opens our epistle lesson on this feast of All Saints. Let us read Revelation 7:1-4. [Read them.]
The scene unfolds with angels holding back the four winds of the planet. Is there not something mysterious and wonderful about the blowing of the four winds? Humanity is not able to control them. Jesus told Nicodemus, "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes" (John 3:8). God controls it. Of course, science tells us that natural forces are behind wind. But who operates these? The Bible says that God and His angels are back of it. The Lord does not simply create the universe and sit back. He sustains it as well. He is actively involved in His creation at every moment. It is ultimately He who sends the gentle breezes of blessing, and even the cyclones of wrath.
Why is it needful for the angelic beings to detain the gusts? Because storm clouds have gathered darkly. In biblical language, a storm figures the spiritual and political commotions unleashed over the earth. The day of wrath is imminent. These wicked winds must be calmed so that John can view the serene majesty of Christ and His Bride. If we back up a couple verses we'll be able to grasp this. Revelation chapter six depicts a storm of cosmic proportions. St. John says in Revelation 6:12: "I looked when [the Lamb] opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. ... And the kings of the earth, the great men...and every ...man hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?" (Rev. 6:12-17)
When does this great panic and destruction take place? Good Christians have disagreed. Some see it as part of the frightening events leading up to Christ's Second Coming. Others think it describes the cataclysmic struggle that took place when the Roman armies laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the city, thus ending the world of the Old Covenant sacrificial system. Others see the horrible sights of Revelation six as representative of all the difficult eras of history -- the barbarian invasions of the Middle Ages, the bubonic plagues, the fall of Constantinople to Mohammed II, the Thirty Years War, the French Revolution, World War I and II, and so forth. Any of these interpretations could be correct. The last two seem the most plausible.
Due to sin, evil can get the upper hand; fear and panic periodically grip the world. There are epochs in which it seems like Satan is in control and all is lost. There are times when surviving crowds flee in pandemonium to the mountains in order to hide themselves from the day of wrath. These are great tribulations. Evidently, the Christians John was writing to were terrified by the ominous approach of some menace. They yearned for a glimmer of hope.
St. John says: "Then I saw another angel ascending from the east." Who is this "other angel?" He surely represents Christ. The Angel of the Lord was Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, who often appeared to Old Testament saints and sinners. King Jesus would be a comforting presence for John's beleaguered believers. His ascending from the east moreover dovetails with Matthew 24:27. Jesus declares there: "For as the lightening comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man."
The early Church took these verses literally. When the believers worshipped and prayed, or recited the Creed, they faced east. Though they understood perfectly well that Christ in His divinity is omnipresent and everywhere, they nevertheless expected Christ in His humanity to return from the east. They therefore bowed eastward, they constructed their churches with entry doors to the west, and altars to the east. Symbolically, liturgically, and architecturally, the eastward orientation reverences the Lord. It is a tradition that the historic church maintains to the present.
Returning to our text, as we have already said, things were spinning out of control for John's fellow believers. Cruel evildoers were on the loose. And so the Holy Spirit grants John the Apostle, and us, a peaceful and majestic vision of Christ and His Church. It is a picture of great comfort: it is a glimpse of Christ and the 144,000. Let us consider now the significance and purpose of this multitude.
What about the 144,000? Who are they? The Bible tells us that they come from the twelve tribes of Israel: Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, and so on. From each tribe stand twelve thousand. The sum of the tribes, twelve, is squared, 12 x 12 = 144, 144 times 1,000 equals 144,000. Is this to be taken as an exact, literal, statistical number? Clearly not. The two twelves are probably a figure of the twelve tribes of Israel times the twelve apostles of Christ. The Church is comprised of both groups. Twelve symbolizes perfection and so does 1,000. Hence, the 144,000 are a twofold way of emphasizing completeness and totality. What does the number symbolically complete? It completes the gathering together of all Christ's redeemed. It looks forward to the Last Day when all will worship around the heavenly throne. It is the completion of the Church's missionary task. It is the totality of the saints from all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues... clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands" (Rev. 7:9).
How can a list of the twelve tribes of Israel speak of the Church? The notion of the Church as the New Israel is found throughout the New Testament. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 2:29 that the Christian believer is the "true Jew." In Galatians 6:16 St. Paul refers to the Church as the "Israel of God." St. James addresses his letter to the "twelve tribes which are scattered abroad" (James 1:1). Who was he referring to? The tribes of ethnic Israel? No, not at all. He was writing to the Christians scattered in the Roman world. From the outset, the Church has always seen herself as a continuation of, and rightful replacement for Israel.
Besides that, we have already mentioned the great multitude robed in white. Who are they? This is the 144,000. It is the same group. The next verses of Revelation 7 tell us about it. Let us read Revelation 7:9-12. [Read it.]
Here is the fulfillment of that promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12:3. God told his servant: "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." It can also be translated, "in you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." Here is matter to ponder: Does this ancient promise find fulfillment in a Jewish world, a Moslem world, or a Christianized world? There shouldn't be any question. The promise to Abraham remains unfulfilled until it finds fulfillment in a Christianized world. That is the reason that Christ took up this concept in the Great Commission. He told His Apostles: "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations , baptizing them ... teaching them, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:18-20).
Implicit in these passages is the idea that the Christian church is an army on the march, with Christ at its head. Its goal is a world subdued for Christ the King. This task of gathering together all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, is a militant assignment given to us, the Church militant. The vision of St. John is that of the Church Triumphant, those who have already gone to their eternal rest of peace. Our aim is nothing less than a New Heavens and New Earth conquered for Christ. That is why we pray: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
On this All Saints Sunday let us recommit to the task on earth, remembering as well the promise of heaven. The white robes symbolize the righteousness of Christ. The palms are signs of victory. The 144,000 engage in a magnificent Christ-centered liturgy before the throne of God Almighty saying: "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" The other heavenly beings respond in worship. Words are inadequate to express these things. George Frederick Handel's, "Worthy is the Lamb" followed by the choral work, "Amen" may come closest to capturing the sublimity of the scene. These are the two numbers that end his masterpiece oratorio, The Messiah . If we want to understand the majestic beauty of Heaven words fail us, we must listen to music.
On All Saints' Day we honor the 144,000; we observe all those who have died in the faith and now join in their heavenly liturgy. We commemorate each and every Christian who has taken up the Cross of Christ and died, beginning with Stephen. We honor the inestimable mass of Christians martyrs. Those exterminated during the ten persecutions of the early Church, the countless Christians put to death by the Islamic and heathen hordes during the Age of Faith; those who died in the Reformation. The millions killed by Marxism and Islam during the twentieth century. Their anguish could fill an ocean, their blood cries out from the earth. They died. But they died in Christ. The psalmist said: "Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of His saints." We can be sure that the Heavenly Father dries their tears. He loves His children, and their presence in Heaven makes precious the Communion of Saints.
The feast of All Saints lifts our hearts to Heaven, and the fact of Heaven calms our fears. If Heaven is our destiny, we are indestructible. They may kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul. It belongs to God. And at the Last Day, a glorified body will rise to merge with the soul in Heaven, thus forever will we be with the Lord. Therefore, of all people, Christians are the most courageous, the most serene, and the most grateful.
Lastly, let us not forget the contemporary martyrs. Christians who are being killed and persecuted in Southern Sudan, Nigeria, on the Mulukan Islands of Indonesia, in Communist China, North Korea. As many of you know, Islamic radicals massacred sixteen worshipping Christians in a Pakistani Church last week. In Afghanistan and other Moslem nations, Christians face overwhelming oppression. They need our prayers, solidarity, and support. May the Church Triumphant encourage the Church Militant during the difficult days ahead. Return to Sermons |
