A Great Multitude

Revelation 7:9  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;

Revelation 7:14  And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Amazing to imagine this! A great multitude which no man could number suddenly appearing before the throne of God! What’s even more amazing is that the church has already been raptured, taken to heaven, along with all those who died in Christ over the past 2000 plus years.

This great multitude beyond number (as the stars of the sky or sand upon the sea shore?) are comprised of every nation of the world. Though many are Gentiles, who were once outside the promises of God, they have been blessed to receive salvation and are now part of God’s family.

These are, by the way those who were not saved in time for the Pre-tribulation rapture, who “loved not the truth” before the 70th week, and were primed for a great delusion but who are now somehow miraculously saved and ready to die for Christ.  Truly, truly amazing!

What is most amazing is the time frame in which they are saved. This event occurs at the 6th seal of Revelation, which is AT LEAST 1 ½ years prior to the end of the 70th week (Rev. 9:5, Rev. 9:15), but still somewhere after midpoint. This leaves a mere 5 1/2 yrs. at most. The Church, along with the Holy Spirit has already been removed before the start of the 70th week, so this leaves an amazingly short period of time as well as no Christian witness to evangelize so many. So, in a period of 5 ½ years (at most), without the aid of the Holy Spirit and no Christians to preach the gospel, an innumerable host of people are saved!  Wow! 

Even if, as assumed by many, the 144,000 are “Evangelist/Missionaries”, it's staggering to think that they could do in 5 ½ years what the church could not do in over 2000 yrs.! (It is unlikely however that they are responsible for such evangelistic success since these 144,000 are only sealed for service during the sixth seal as well, just prior to the Great Multitude’s appearance in Heaven.) Obviously, these go into the 70th week unsaved, because if they were saved prior to the 70th week, they would have been raptured with the Church. 

It is simply beyond our greatest imaginations that such a multitude will be reached in that amount of time!-or that a multitude that cannot be numbered could even exist during that short period of time, since it seems we are able at this point to number the world’s population at any given year (even the entire world's population is not innumerable) and out of those, to at least estimate those who claim to be saved.  It might be difficult to number believers over a period of thousands of years, but it doesn’t seem that it would be that hard to do over a period of no more than 5 1/2 years.  And yet, a great multitude that cannot be numbered is produced out of the world’s population over just 5 ½ yrs. Amazing stuff!