NOTES for Rev 7:13-14
These words are usually interpreted as an indication of the martyr's death of the people mentioned in the book. But the apostle's words can also be understood more broadly: all Christians in general can be called those washed in the blood of Christ, if only they have walked their path to the end and finally been freed from the power of evil and sin weighing over the fallen world. The white robes of these people clearly recall the white robes of the Savior Himself, in which He appears both to John in the vision and earlier to the apostles on the Mount of Transfiguration. People in white robes are people who have become like Christ, who have become as He is, living the same fullness of the life of the Kingdom that He bears, each in his own measure, of course.
Now at last they will see what they desired all their lives: the triumph of the Kingdom in all its fullness, the final transfiguration of the world and its deliverance from every power of evil. Strictly speaking, the opening of the seventh seal marks the beginning of this final transfiguration of creation. For the world, transfiguration is inseparable from shocks and cataclysms on a universal scale, not because God wants seriously and finally to punish His creation, but because the evil in which the fallen world lies will not simply let it go.
The connection between the transfiguration of the world and the coming cataclysms is shown to the apostle with complete clarity. He sees that the prayers of the saints, rising before the Throne of glory as fragrant incense, turn for the world into sacrificial fire that brings catastrophes and disasters. What is sanctification for God and for God's people is death and destruction for the world lying in evil. Of course, there is no fault of God here: the issue is only the incompatibility of evil and God's presence, of sin and sanctification, which was well known even before the coming of Christ. Already in those times believing Yahwists knew: such a combination can lead only to defilement, and defilement to destruction and death.
Something similar now happens on a universal scale: the Kingdom at last opens to the world in all fullness, sanctifying it, while the world, not fully cleansed from the sin in which it remains, defiles the holy thing that is the Kingdom and is destroyed, perishing in its former quality. Of course, God did not plan or desire this destruction; He wants the world to be transfigured without any catastrophes or cataclysms. But for the world such calm and organic transfiguration proves impossible because by the moment history ends it has not been completely cleansed.
And judging by the fact that God puts the final point before its complete cleansing, one has to think that, sadly, complete cleansing is impossible for the fallen world at all; otherwise God would have done everything for that possibility to be realized. He does not want the sinful world to perish; He wants the world to be saved and become His Kingdom. But the freedom given by God to the human being, and therefore in part to the world, has another side, which leads to the tragedy of the end of history so vividly described by John.