NOTES for Rev 7:1-12
The picture of Judgment is revealed to the apostle from different points of view. Until now he has seen Judgment as the world will have to see and experience it; now God shows him His Church and how Judgment is revealed to her. The four angels at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds (v. 1), apparently personify the power of God by which the world, despite its damage from sin, does not turn into chaos. In this way God fulfills the promise given long ago to Noah, and in him to all the righteous of all times and peoples, that the flood which destroyed the world and wiped out humanity would never again be repeated (Gen. 9:8-11). But now, at the end of time, everything changes: the world awaits transformation, and the old order of things comes to an end. Those who remain in the world see only the sky rolling up like a scroll and the earth slipping away from under their feet (Rev. 6:12-14); but those to whom spiritual reality is open, the reality of the Kingdom, see, like John, the Church prepared to meet the Savior returning in glory.
Her members receive a special sign, God's seal, which binds them to the One they await (vv. 2-3). The twelve tribes of which the people of God consist symbolically indicate here the fullness of the Church, as does the number 144,000, which implies 12,000 people from each of the twelve tribes (vv. 4-8). Here, of course, we are dealing with numerical symbolism: a thousand people was considered a full representation; if a tribe could field a thousand fighting men for war, it was regarded as independent and, in a certain sense, self-sufficient. By the time world history is completed, the Church, as the new people of God, represents exactly such fullness. There is nothing surprising in this: her history began on the day of Pentecost, and every century of Christianity added new members to the heavenly Church; and now, on the day of Judgment, the return of the Savior and the triumph of the Kingdom, she is ready to stand before her Head in all fullness.
But there are also others, those who came on the very day of Judgment, according to the word of one of the elders standing at the Throne, "out of the great tribulation" (v. 14). Before this, they may not have thought at all about God or the Kingdom; but when the decisive day came, the day of the final choice, their choice proved right, and now they sing the song of renewal together with the whole Church and await the One whom perhaps they had not known before, but now will surely know (vv. 9-12).