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;”

God is not talking about Jews here, ‘all nations’ is referring to Gentiles. In verses 4-8, John says ‘I was looking at Jews’ then verse 9 he says ‘After this I beheld…’,. After the Jews, he’s moving his direction away from the Jews and looked at a different group of people, they were Gentiles.

The importance of that is that the Bible says in the Christian church, there is neither Jew nor Greek. God doesn’t look at physical ethnicity or bloodline when you’re a Christian, we’re all the same.

However in Revelation 7 He’s going back at a national point of view again, He’s not looking at a spiritual individual point of view anymore.

Why?

Because he made a promise at the Old Testament to a physical nation that He’s not going to forget them. Notice that He’s concentrating on the Jews again and they’re separated from Gentiles but you can’t do that for Christian churches: there’s no Jews or Gentiles, they’re combined together.

So what does that mean? It means that there is no church here. Also, if you start off from the rapture at chapter 4 and begin the tribulation at chapter 6, there is no mention of church. Isn’t that evidence enough that the church cannot go through the tribulation, and Jews are going to be separated from Gentiles again.

“stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;”

These people are going before the throne of God in their white garments (tribulation saints are promised white garments) and with palm leaves in their hands.

Revelation 7:10 “And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.“

Amen. Salvation belongs to God, He is worthy.

“and unto the Lamb.”

Amen. The Lamb is worthy too, salvation belongs to Him. He’s the one who bled and died.

Revelation 7:11 “And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God,”

Recall from Revelation 4 and 5, the picture around the throne. The Trinity is on the throne, then surrounded by 4 cherubims, then we have 24 elders and then angels that they couldn’t number.

The tribulation saints are standing at the outermost circle around the throne. Revelation 5 says that the elders represents Christians washed by the blood of the Lamb that no man can number; these are all Christians. Even up in heaven there’s a distinction separating tribulation saints from Christians.

Revelation 7:12 “Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.”

God deserves pretty much everything,  not even this verse can put all the things that He deserves. Amen.

Revelation 7:13 “And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?”

Elders refer to representatives, so 24 elders are representing the whole Christian but they have their elders, their representatives. In the Bible, the word elder is referring to a representative of their group and we saw that with Old Testament Jews and the Christian church. The possible explanation is in Revelation 21 where it talks about the city of New Jerusalem where it was inscribed the 12 names of the apostles and 12 tribes of Israel and the elders mentioned that they will be reigning in this location.

If we’re saying that John is included in these 12 apostles, is there a duplication of John here? This is only a possible explanation by the best bet from scripture but it’s not 100% certain. In Revelation 1, John was taken from church age to tribulation and Millenium. If unsaved people can make shows about time machine where you can see an alternate future form of yourself at the future, I think the Bible’s way ahead of that.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if this was referring to John speaking to John?

So supposedly future John is asking the other John who are these which are arrayed in white robes and whence came they. We know that they are the tribulation saints.

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.”

They are tribulation saints. That’s proof they’re distinguished from the Christians. These tribulation saints had to wash their own robes, make them white in the blood of the Lamb. This is their own action, their own works, they had to do the washing. We Christians didn’t do that, Christ did the washing for us.

These are the Christian verses:

Revelation 5:9 “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;”

Revelation 1:5 “And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,”

These are for tribulation saints:

Revelation 12:11 “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”

Revelation 6:11 “And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.”

All these tribulation saints who washed their robes, they all had to die and win Christ through persecution.