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 never sees the 144,000. He hears their number (Revelation 7:4), then turns and sees a great crowd out of all nations. Revelation 5 works the same way: John hears of a lion and sees a lamb. It's one reality, announced one way and seen another. The number is the sealed group as Jehovah counts it, and the crowd is that same group once it's complete, gathered out of every nation, more than any man could count.

Where they stand

The crowd stands "before the throne" and renders sacred service "day and night in his temple" (Revelation 7:15). The word there is the inner sanctuary, the place only priests may enter, and those who share in the first resurrection are priests of God and of the Christ (Revelation 20:6). These people come out of the great tribulation with their robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14). That's 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 wrote 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). Nowhere do the scriptures split 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

If you read the great crowd as a second class with a smaller hope, you're telling millions of sincere people that the promises made to the holy ones aren't for them. But the text doesn't 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.