The Great Crowd

(Re 7:9) After these things I saw, and, look! a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes; and there were palm branches in their hands.

Heard, then seen

John does not see the 144,000. He hears their number (Revelation 7:4). Then he turns and sees a great crowd out of all nations. The pattern is the same one used in Revelation 5, where John hears of a lion and sees a lamb: one reality, announced one way and seen another. The number is the sealed group as Jehovah counts it; the crowd is the same group as it appears when completed, gathered out of every nation, more than any man could count.

Where they stand

The crowd is "before the throne" and renders sacred service "day and night in his temple" (Revelation 7:15). The word is the inner sanctuary, the place only priests may enter, and Revelation 20:6 says the ones who share in the first resurrection are priests of God and of the Christ. They come out of the great tribulation with their robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14), which is the language Revelation uses for the ones bought from among mankind as firstfruits (Revelation 14:4).

One flock

Jesus said he had other sheep not of the Jewish fold, and that they would become "one flock, one shepherd" (John 10:16). Paul said that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, and that all who belong to Christ are Abraham's seed and heirs (Galatians 3:28, 29). The scriptures do not divide Christ's followers into a heavenly class and an earthly class with different hopes. The Sacred Secret, formed before creation, foreordained the holy ones to be patterned after the image of the Son and to become trees of life for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2). The great crowd is that body, complete.

Why it matters

Reading the great crowd as a second class with a lesser hope tells millions of sincere people that the promises made to the holy ones are not for them. The text does not say that. It says the door is open to everyone Jehovah draws, from every nation, and that those who come through the great tribulation stand before the throne.