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Revelation 7
Newest Version 1 | updated Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 19:0:28 | X bytes - by .
This article is for information and educational purposes only and is not
intended to give medical, legal or professional advice..
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Introduction
This chapter represents an interlude between the sixth and seventh seal and deals with two distinct groups of people. These two groups represent the two groups of people addressed by the Bible. The Old Testament was addressed to the children of Israel and the New Testament was addressed to the church, the believers in Jesus as the Christ. It appears that the 144,000 which are sealed among the descendants of Israel are on Earth when they are sealed, or at least in some place in the known universe. The other group, the multitude clothed with white robes appears in heaven. They come out of the great tribulation. This has the appearance of a handoff. Believers in Jesus are taken to heaven while descendants of Israel are sealed to continue a work on Earth.
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Calm on Earth
After the peoples of the Earth hide in the dens and rocks of the mountains in fear of the events which they see are about to unfold, there is then a short calm before the storm. The passage states that there is no wind on the Earth. This is akin to the eye of the hurricane. The earth has gone through war, death, economic collapse and a period of intense persecution. There is now a break in disasters for a short period before the judgement of God is poured out on the Earth. This is reminiscent of the prayer of Habakkuk. “2 O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.” (Habakkuk 3:2) This prayer is followed by a description of the judgments of the second coming. This may be the answer to Habakkuk’s prayer.
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The 144,000
There are many theories about the nature and task of the hundred and forty four thousand sealed in this chapter. Some believe that the designation as members of different tribes is symbolic and that the group simply represents a special category of faithful believers who will have a special status in eternity. Others believe that these represent converted Jews who will preach the gospel after the church has been raptured from the Earth. This second interpretation requires this sealing to occur at some point at the beginning of the last seven years before the second coming of Jesus Christ. However, if one holds to the view that the seals parallel the events of the olivet discourse in Matthew 24, then the chronology seems to put this event at the end of those seven years, after the great tribulation.
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Nature of the 144,000
The apostle John went to great lengths to emphasize that those who are sealed are literal physical, biological descendants of the twelve sons of Israel. He mentions every tribe by name and affirms that there are 12,000 sealed from each individual tribe. The text gives no reason to interpret this group in any other way than physical descendants of the sons and grandsons of Israel. Any other interpretation must be based on reasons foreign to the text.
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If one looks at the genealogy of Jesus Christ, His descent from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob and David is through the father’s. The only exception is the likelyhood that the genealogy of Luke is Mary’s paternal genealogy. The same is true of all the genealogies in the Old Testament. This shows that descent, according to the Bible, is through the father. This means that these need to be descendants of Israel through the father’s. After the time of the Old Testament Jews began to consider descent through the mother. A person was considered a Jew if the mother was Jewish. We even see this reflected in the New Testament in the case of Timothy whose mother and grandmother was Jewish but his father was Greek. The Apostle Paul circumcised him as a sign of his Jewishness. This means that many people who are Jewish are not descendants of Israel by paternal descent.
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The Y chromosome is inherited by paternal descent and we now have the technology to determine paternal descent. There are Jews who claim to belong to priestly line. Unlike Jewishness, which is passed through the mother, membership to the priestly line is passed down from father to son. There is a Y chromosomal sequence, called a marker, which is much more common in those Jews who claim to be part of the priestly line. This marker is called the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) and is a subset of the J1 haplotype. This means that true descendants of Abraham through paternal descent will have a Y chromosome with a J1 P58 haplotype. Even though around 50% of Cohens have this haplotype, only about 15% of Jews have it. This means that only 15% of Jews are actually true members of one of the twelve tribes. It is interesting that Jordanians, Beduins and Yemenis have even higher proportion of CMH, which confirms their descent from Abraham. It is possible that these 144,000 are true descendants of the sons of Jacob from which a new Israel will be created.
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It is interesting that one of the tribes is not mentioned in the list, the tribe of Dan. Instead Joseph and his son Manaseh are each given a tribe. Some speculate that the antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan.
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The Multitude in Heaven
This passage is clear that this multitude are those who came out of great tribulation. The passage does not say that these came out of the great tribulation by being killed. This is in contrast to those souls who were under the altar when the fifth seal was opened in chapter six. It is possible that these could be raptured saints. If that is the case, it seems that the chronology would fit that of Matthew 24 where Jesus says that after the tribulation in those days cosmic signs will occur and then Jesus will send His angels to gather the elect (verses 29-31)
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However, it is also possible that this multitude represents the completion of those who would be killed. It could be the fulfilment of the command by the angel to wait until the number of those who would be killed would be completed. The gathering of the elect mentioned in Matthew 24 occurs after the stars fall from heaven, and that does not occur until the trumpet judgments. Furthermore, Jesus says that the sign of the trumpet will be associated with the gathering of the elect and this does not occur until the opening of the seventh seal.
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Keywords
revelation_7
144000
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See Also
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References
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Bibliography
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