The eighth verse of ch. 7 concludes the section which treats of the sealing; and the ninth verse begins a new section of the prophecy, yet not unconnected with the former, with the words meta tauta, which in the Common Version are inaccurately rendered "after this." The correct translation is "after these things/1 It is the same phrase with which the chapter opens; and there it is properly rendered; but why it is not similarly given in v. 9, it is not easy to divine.
The reader is referred to ch. 7:9, at the beginning of our chapter. 'There he will see in ver. 9 that John says, he saw "a great multitude11 all of them assembled in a general convention before the Lamb; or, as Paul expresses it in 2 Thess. 2:1, "our gathering together unto our Lord Jesus Christ," as "the Glorious and Fearful Name, Yahweh Elohim” (Deut. 28:58). The multitude, John says, no one is competent to compute. It is the multitude of "the redeemed from among men, the first-fruits unto the Deity and to the Lamb11 (ch. 14:4) the incorruptible and deathless seed promised to Abraham, who should be countless as the stars (Gen. 15:5). This human incompetency for the calculation shows that the number 144,000 is not the real, but only the representative, number of the redeemed. Every saved individual of the unknown number redeemed will be one of the 144,000 sealed ones; he will be an element of the 144 cubits; which embrace within their limits the
- furlongs; for these are the square of the root within which the innumerable multitude is enclosed.
“After these things;” but how long after the sealing in the days of “Donatus the Great,” till A.D. 395, before what John saw in vision, shall be seen in fact? The answer to this question is not here expressed in time how long. The time when is indicated by certain characteristics of the great multitude beheld. These are signified by the words, “having been clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands. ” The word clothed is in the perfect participle passive, showing that when they shall be seen in fact, in the palm-bearing attitude, they will have been raised to the divine nature, as Christ now is. This is the pure, incorruptible, and spotless, white robe which they receive who, in a doctrinal and moral sense, have, in the present state, “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The scene is postadventual and postresurrectional; and furthermore, it belongs to the epoch when the resurrected shall celebrate their first Feast of Tabernacles. This is indicated by their having “palms in their hands; for palm-bearing belongs to the celebration of that festival in type and antitype. Let us look, then, for a little at the