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, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. (Revelation 7:9-11)
In the increasingly tribal and divided world in which we live, one can often struggle to find an experience or idea which we all universally accept. The great technological leaps forward through which optimists hoped we would be drawn closer and closer together have, in fact, quite often operated as the runaway vehicles of our fracturing society. It is, after all, very in keeping with fallen human nature to take the good and pervert it to our own destruction. However, there is one state of existence we all share and respect: fear. Despite all the power and knowledge available at modern man’s fingertips, despite conquering smallpox and polio, despite alleviating world poverty at truly astonishing rates, modern man is so incredibly afraid. Just a casual conversation with the average person will reveal dozens of real and imagined dangers against which they have absolutely no defense, and so, they turn to anger or substance abuse or whatever weaponry is at hand to fight against the dread which haunts them. Modern people are tremendously afraid. They should be.
In this choking cloud of fear, what is the witness of the Christian? Blessedly, it is the same witness St. John provided for the real people who suffered through the life and death struggles of the 1st century. We are privileged to join with the saints who came before us and read from his book of comfort today. A great tragedy of the modern mishandlings and novel interpretations of Revelation, which unfortunately flourish in the Baptist and non-denominational churches which surround us, is that these strange ideas rip John’s glorious witness of comfort and hope from the hands of those who need it the most. The dream of being beamed into heaven when the real tribulation starts on Earth simultaneously lulls us into imagining that we are not surrounded by spiritual death at every turn, while also robbing us of the great truth the Holy Spirit is revealing to every generation of Christians. The most important reality we carry with us as we dive into the fulfilled Old Testament symbolism of Revelation is this: today’s reading is not about some small group of special Old Covenant people or some small group of special Christians who actually live and die for Christ; no, the great and abiding comfort of today’s reading from Revelation, the comfort we must hold onto as the fears of this world rip at our souls, is that this passage is about all the people the Father has called out from this world and sealed with His Holy Spirit. God, through the apostle whom Jesus loved, is giving us a precious glimpse into the heavenly throne room to see the army of God’s holy saints preparing for war. This is the army which will stamp out fear and pain and death forever, and we are either preparing to enter its ranks or preparing to die at its hands. We are either living in the revelation of God’s love and justice, or we are living in the invincible fear of tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. We are either saints, or we are the damned.
A reasonable question to ask then is what marks a human being as a saint or as the damned? This question probably makes us uncomfortable because we live in a society of mostly secret sins, or at least socially accepted sins we have decided God doesn’t care about. Or, perhaps we have accepted the prevailing spirituality of our age which says we don’t need to daily seek God’s will in prayer and study of His Word because the truth somehow already lives inside our fearful hearts. I was browsing the Wal-Mart reading department, and I couldn’t find a book on “spirituality” that didn’t have this message at its core—this miserable false gospel. The great, temporary comforts of the Western world allow us to fester in this spiritual tarpit. Our fellow Christians around the world have a much different experience. I am reminded of Alice Mukarurinda’s story, a Christian woman who was caught in the horror of the Rwandan genocide. As she was running for her life during the worst of the slaughter, she and her baby daughter hid near a creek, only to be discovered by a young man who, following the orders of his leaders, cut off her right hand and murdered her daughter. The attacker left her there to die, but miraculously, she survived. What would those smiling jackals trying to sell you books say to her: “Think happy thoughts” or “Live you best life now” — how evil, how useless. Thankfully, she had something greater to give her true comfort. Years later, she found her attacker, forgave him for his act of evil, and offered him the unmerited love and salvation of Christ; she became a living instrument used by God to save this young man’s soul. If we have ever wondered what it means for one to bear the “seal of the living God,” we have our answer in the lived out Christ following lives of saints like Alice.
And how else could it be since the rich imagery of being sealed used by St. John calls back to the high priests of Israel who bore the name of God on their forehead, so that their very identities were eliminated, and all men saw was the holy name of God. St. John wants us to see that all of God’s elect, sealed by the Holy Spirit, bear the mark of the Living God on their heart, soul, mind, and body so that men behold not just a fearful, dying human, but rather, they see a man or woman so closely united to Christ that there can be no doubt whom they serve. All God’s people, sealed and protected from the spiritual death which surrounds us, are enabled to offer themselves up to the God who has saved us with His own body. Most in our city would look at Alice’s life of loss and love and forgiveness and say, “What a waste,” or “What a shame,” or “I would have killed that bastard,” but they all are missing out on the most important part of being fully human. In their hearts and minds, they are incomplete. After all, to be the damned is to bear the mark of the beast, the famous “666.” We are used to the idea that the number 7 stands for completeness in the Bible, well 666 then is the ultimate expression of incompleteness—a representation of the tragic inhumanity of a person who fails to live in the sacrificial love for which he was created. The Christian and the damned will always be separated by diametrically opposed ideas of what is the ultimate meaning of life—what it actually means to be human. The Christian must do the will of the Living God because he knows it is the only path to salvation and the truer human life which awaits him in the new heaven and new earth. The damned will proudly bear the mark of the beast, the mark of an incomplete humanity, as he chases the temporary and incomplete pleasures of this world. The Christian lives to be saved; the damned lives to be a temporary caretaker of his own fleshy tomb.
And so, if we truly believe that our purpose in life is to be saved, then we can look at Alice’s life and know that losing her child or giving away her revenge was not a waste. We can know that God’s seal enabled her to respond to the trials through which she passed so that those terrible trials became the very instruments by which she was strengthened in her faith. This truth is the same for all the saints who are empowered to persevere through adversity in which the genuineness of their profession is authenticated. There is no other way to show ourselves and the world that we truly belong to God. And, if we do belong to God, if we are his servants, then we are numbered among the 144,000—another symbolic number for completeness—which is gathering in heaven for the final reunion between heaven and earth. St. John lists this army out the same way Moses does in the Book of Numbers because this force is coming to complete the work we see foreshadowed in the ethical cleansing of the holy land. It’s coming to avenge every dead child and broken home, every raped mother and every slaughtered father. It’s coming to avenge the poor, the meek, the mourners, the hungry, the persecuted and the reviled. Christ and His army of saints is coming to install forever the righteousness for which men hunger and thirst.
And just as one’s place in the Old Covenant army was determined by circumcision and obedience to the law, our place in the heavenly army, an army whose multitude no man can number, is determined by our baptism and faith in Christ’s perfect obedience to the law. Jesus in His baptism, temptation in the wilderness, and Passover death put the full weight of the Mosaic covenant upon Himself and broke down the barrier between human weakness and God’s righteousness. And so, when we follow in His footsteps through our life in this broken, evil world, when we live every day proclaiming His salvation to the world through our sacrificial love and complete devotion to His life-giving name, we are preparing to receive our place in heaven to join with all those the world hated but God loved, calling out together, “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb…Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen” (Revelation 7:10, 12).
All of human existence has been leading up to this future completion of the world. It is the end of the world because it is the world’s purpose, and so we Christians must banish fear, we must bear the name of the Living God on our lives, and we must be the saints the world so desperately need us to be. So, on this All Saints’ Day, let us lead our fellow men to the Lamb; let us all be saints.