Okay, I should have been able to get this on one sheet like this so you could look at it like that and there wouldn't be any big black spaces, but the copier, I don't understand why it does what it does, but it's using that copier as a black art. Anyway, so we're in Revelation 7. And we're going to have occasion to go back to 6 and talk about this a little bit. Let me go ahead and read chapter 7. I'll read the whole thing because we need to have all of this before us. I'll read it again to remind everybody what's here. After this, I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun with the seal of the living God. And he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel. I won't go through all of that, but 12,000 and you've got a number of tribes listed there. And we'll talk about those tribes in just a minute. So pick it up in verse nine. After this, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb. And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. And they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God saying, amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever, amen. Then one of the elders addressed me saying, who are these clothed in white robes and from where have they come? I said to him, sir, you know. And he said to me, these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. He who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Okay, so some things that we saw last week, just really quickly, just to repeat some things. The four angels. Standing at the four corners are to be associated with the four horsemen of the apocalypse out of Zechariah. The four winds of the earth are associated with those four angels. The wind is associated with God's bringing blessing or cursing. respectively God's activity in creation. The earth or the sea or tree, earth or sea are references symbolically to the land. Earth is not a good translation. Most of the time in Revelation it should be translated land. And it is usually referring to the land of Israel or is a representative symbol of Israel. Likewise, the sea is usually a symbol of the Gentile nations. And in Revelation, for instance, it's often a reference to Rome or refers to Rome or the Gentile nations. And Rome was the head of the Gentile nation. Rome was the kingdom, worldwide kingdom representing the Gentiles. And trees here are, Psalm 1, other places, often Ezekiel 48, Revelation 22, symbols for righteous people. And so this is saying that the judgment is being held back until something happens, and that is until the servants of God are sealed on their foreheads. So judgment is being held back until the righteous are sealed or guarded in terms of that judgment. Now, we're going to see that that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't experience any tribulation. But what it means is that God will preserve them from ultimate harm, ultimate harm. And so we'll talk more about that in just a minute. But earth and sea are in a different case in the Greek. And so trees are set apart from earth and sea in terms of why they're sealed and why judgment is being, or why they're not allowed to bring judgment against earth or sea or any tree. They're preserved for different reasons. So another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, the rising of the sun speaks of the one who rises with healing in his wings. Old Testament references, this is Christ, as many of the angels are referred to as Christ, are Christ in Revelation several times. Christ is referred to in terms of an angel. Angel just means messenger, Jesus is the word, so he's the ultimate messenger. But he, ascends from the rising of the sun, that's from the east, okay, which is traditionally east and north. If you think about Israel and where its place is, judgment from Israel's traditional enemies comes from the east and the north. They come east and then they come north down into the promised land. Assyria, Babylon, even Syria, comes in that direction. So he's ascending from the rising of the sun, ascending from the east. So this implies judgment is on the horizon. And he has the seal of the living God. Now, we talked about this last time. What is the seal of the living God? With what are we sealed? Again, it's the servants of God who are sealed. We are sealed with what? With the Holy Spirit. Jesus is given the Spirit without measure in John. Jesus receives the Spirit from the Father so that he pours it out on us in association with the establishment of the new covenant. And we're gonna see what else is involved in that in just a minute. He has the seal. He's sealing so that he might seal the servants of the living God. in verse 3, and the angels have been given power to harm the earth and the sea. They haven't been given power to harm the trees. So again, trees are symbols of the righteous. But they can get caught up in the judgment. The command is not to harm any, the earth or the sea or the trees until we seal the servants of God on their foreheads. Again, sealing on the forehead is a symbol of ownership and of salvation, restored righteousness. An example would be, You remember that the high priest, he represented Israel, had the words holy to the Lord inscribed on his forehead. And again, he represented the people. And so when God seals his people with the Holy Spirit, marks them with the Holy Spirit, this is, among other things, a mark of restoration and renewal We also remember that, and this becomes relevant later in Revelation, the forehead is a symbol, along with the hand, of ownership and dominion. And so in Deuteronomy 6, of course, God's people are to bind the law of God on their foreheads and on their hands, symbolizing that God's law governs all their thinking and all their actions. This later becomes a symbol of the beast who is, it requires that his symbol be, that they be marked on the forehead and the hand symbolizing he's claiming an ungodly dominion. And we'll talk more about what that means when we get there. But, Again, the seal of the servants, in the original, in the Greek here, this is actually the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is a tav, which is like a T, but ancient rendering of it was actually a cross, like a plus sign. And the early church saw this as a prophetic symbol of the application of baptism and the sign of the cross that the early church used in baptizing people. So... You know, Mike, you could do that. You could get a little heartbeat. Yeah. Or a water gun. Okay, so... He hears, let's remember what we're talking about here, he hears something and then he sees. The pattern that you see in Revelation is when John hears something and then he looks and he sees, what he sees is to be identified with what he hears. And so what he hears is the number of those who are sealed. This is obviously a symbolic number. It's not meant to be taken as a literal number. We can see that because what he sees is an innumerable throng that no man can number. Well, that points to a lot, alludes to a lot of biblical theology and actually the whole program of God from the beginning of the establishment the covenant. Each one of these symbols, they're to be identified. They refer to the same group. But they highlight different aspects of who's being talked about. And so, of course, here, the first one, what he hears is 12,000 from each tribe of Israel sealed. and 12,000 is, 12 is the number of the church, 1,000 is the number of multiplied meaniness, so 10 cubed, 10 is the number of numerical fullness or meaniness, and so this is Israel, and we think of numbering, He hears them numbered. What's the book of Numbers about? Numbers is about the marshalling of the holy army of God as the army of God before they march into Canaan to take the land. And it's the fighting men who are numbered. So this is why you know it's an army. They're being numbered as an army. That's typically what numbering means. So this is the army of God, and the typical division of the Israelite army was the thousand. So Israel was numbered, the hosts of Israel were numbered among their thousands, by their thousands. And this is typically the way that term is used in the Old Testament. So you have 12 full divisions of the people of God, the holy army of God, And the point is that not one is missing, just like Jesus said, I have not lost one of all that you've given to me. So this is the people of God in its completeness. Now, I wanna say this before we, I wanna focus on this, because we talked about this, I said we were gonna get to it, that's what your handout's about. How are they arranged here, the tribes, and why the naming in this way? Because different namings of the tribes, for instance, in Ezekiel, it's different. And actually, if you look back at who the sons of Jacob were and who the wives were who produced them, this doesn't match that completely. And so, One of the things here, one of the features is Dan is missing. Another feature is one of the tribes listed is Jacob. But Jacob is, I'm sorry, not Jacob, Joseph. Joseph is divided into two tribes in the story, in the history of Israel, Ephraim and Manasseh. So, but Manasseh is named as well, so it's like Manasseh's named twice, because he's named in Joseph, he's part of Joseph. So, it's like, what's going on here? And there is significance to this. We're gonna talk about it in a second. Before we talk about the significance, let me make two points. One is, let me remind you that this is true Israel. It's not, ethnic national Israel, one of the ways you know that is that it doesn't match up, the list here doesn't match up to the tribes of Israel, historically. And that's an indication that it's not meant to portray literal ethnic Israel. Why leave out Dan? Why mention Manasseh twice? You know, that's not the purpose of this. It is symbolic for true Israel, perfect Israel. The other way we know that is that it is identified with the mighty throng that no man can number from every tongue, language, people, and nation. So, theologically, Revelation is establishing here what we already know from the New Testament, and that is that true Israel is all those who are united to Christ. Christ is the seed of Abraham. Read Galatians 3, we can turn to it and read it. Y'all can read it. You've probably read it before. The promise was to Abraham and his seed, singular, and he says, who was Christ. Christ is the inheritor of the promises of the covenant. Why? Because Christ, remember, go back to Revelation 5, There's only one who is found who can open the scroll and its seals. And when the seals are open, what does that do? The scroll is the scroll of the covenant, and particularly the new covenant. And the new covenant is the covenant of fulfillment. And when the new covenant scroll is open and its seals are broken, it releases the blessings and the curses of the covenant. The problem is that John was weeping because no one who was found who could open the scroll and open its seals. Why? Because throughout redemptive history, no one was found, no prophet, priest, or king was adequate. No one was found as a mediator of the covenant who could assure, including all the kings, which is what we're gonna see in the Book of Kings as we go through it, who could establish righteousness and faithfulness to the covenant so as to bring in the blessings of the covenant for Israel. And so at the end of the Old Testament, what do you got? Israel in exile. Because the message is, we're not able to experience the blessings of the covenant. Well, how? How are they able to receive the blessings of the covenant? Because there is one who is true Israel, who is the one to whom the promises of Abraham were given. who does fulfill the conditions of the covenant, who does obey God perfectly and establish a righteousness for his people. And as we're united to him, last part of Galatians, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. What promise? The promise is to Abraham. And so the last part of this chapter When we hear a mighty throng that no man can number from every tongue, language, people, and nation, what do we hear? We should hear echoes of the Abrahamic promises. All the nations of the earth will be blessed through you, and I'll make your descendants as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. This is the fulfillment of that. And that's who, and that's Israel. That's true Israel. But true Israel is going to be defined by identification with the one who is Israel, which is Christ. And that's how all the nations are blessed. And that's biblical theology. That's the theology of the New Testament. So, now we'll talk about What I want to do is I want to apply this, a lot of the message of this chapter to the original audience and then say, okay, how is that relevant to us? Because it is. We say, okay, you know, preterism is really important in the interpretation of Revelation and that it was talking about things that were near to the original audience. But that doesn't mean that it's not God's Word to us. It's just that we apply revelation in the same way we apply the book of Nahum, and it wasn't written to us, and it wasn't predicting events that occur in our lifetimes. We're predicting the judgment on Nineveh and Assyria. So what does that have to do with us? Well, it has a lot to do with us, because it articulates principles that apply to us. That's the way we apply all of scripture. So that's true for revelation as well. So we'll talk about that. But first, just because I promised this, and I don't know if we have, well, we might get past this. You've got your handout. And we were gonna talk about, all right, why is this arranged the way it is? Now, I don't know what I think of this, because I'm gonna, I could tell you from my recollection of what Chilton does with this, and he's leaning on a man named Austin, And you need these pictures in front of you, you're not going to be able to make any sense of it. So I'm just going to read this, and then I want y'all to tell me what you think of it. But I will say that regardless of what you think about the details of how he's talking about the significance of the different lists, the difference between this and Ezekiel, which is what those diagrams are, The main significance is that you understand that the listing of the tribes means that this is not literal ethnic national Israel that's being talked about because it doesn't represent ethnic national Israel accurately in terms of the description of the tribes. So if you're gonna get anything out of this, you should at least get that, okay? All right, so I'm just going to read this, and you've got the diagrams in front of you. And I'm going to read the whole thing because he gives a kind of a disclaimer here at the first, but I think it's good to read this because I think it's helpful to understand some of how we deal with things like this and their complexity. This is David Chilton. I've set this out as a separate section because it will undoubtedly be the most wearying part of the book to read. This comment's here. The reader who tires easily should give it a brief glance and move on. But I know that y'all don't tire easily and you're interested, so we're gonna read this. While I have tried to simplify the discussion as much as possible, I fear it still looks exceedingly complex. All this would be much easier if we knew our Bibles as well as the children in the first century synagogues. If we knew by heart the names of Jacob's sons and their mothers, and the 20 or so different orders in which they're listed in the Old Testament, and the reasons for each variation, we would almost immediately understand what St. John has done with his list and why. Some remarks by Austin Ferrer are especially pertinent here. Quote, the purpose of symbols is that they should be immediately understood. The purpose of expounding them is to restore and build up such an understanding. This is a task of some delicacy. The author had not, with his conscious mind, thought out every sense, every interconnection of his imagery. They had worked in his thinking, they had not themselves been thought. That's often true of symbols, isn't it? We don't think about it consciously, all the aspects of what it's symbolizing, but we use them, and we get it intuitively. So, if we endeavor to expose them, we shall appear to over-intellectualize the process of his mind, to represent an imaginative birth as a speculative construction. Such a representation not merely misrepresents, it also destroys belief, for no one can believe in the process when it is thus represented. No mind, we realize, could emphasis think with such complexity without destroying the life of the product of thought. Yet if we do not thus intellectualize, we cannot expound at all. It is a necessary distortion of method and must be patiently endured by the reader. Let it be said once for all that the convention of intellectualization is not to be taken literally. We make no pretense of distinguishing between what was discursively thought and what intuitively conceived in a mind which penetrated its images with intelligence and rooted its intellective acts in imagination. The reader who perseveres through the analyses which follow may naturally ask, how much of all this did the congregations of the seven churches comprehend when the apocalyptic pastoral of their archbishop was read out to them? The answer is, no doubt, that of the scheming analysis to which, schematic analysis to which we resort, they understood nothing. because they were listening to the apocalypse of St. John and not to the lucubrations, I have never heard that word in any other place, lucubrations of the present writer. They were men of his own generation. They constantly heard the Old Testament in their assemblies and were trained by the preacher, he might be John himself, to interpret it by certain conventions. And so, without intellectual analysis, they would receive the symbols simply for what they were. They would understand what they would understand, and that would be as much as they had time to digest. Okay, back to Chilton. Scholars have long puzzled over the order of the tribes in St. John's List. Obviously, Judah is named first, because that is the tribe of Jesus Christ. Other than that, many have supposed that the list is either haphazard, given the biblical writers, especially St. John's, extreme attention to detail, this is highly unlikely, or else permanently locked in mystery. This is just sheer arrogance. We should always remember that. If we can't answer a question, somebody probably will come along in the next hundred years or so who will. As usual, however, Austin Ferrer's explanation has the most to offer, pointing out that the names of the 12 tribes are written on the gates of the four-cornered New Jerusalem, 2112 in Revelation. He proposes that the order of the tribes corresponds to the order in which the gates are listed, east, north, south, west. As we can see in the first diagram, which like the maps of the ancient world is oriented toward the east, and that means the east is on top, so you can look at that one on your handout. It's the bigger one. East is on top, where north usually is. in our maps. As we can see in the first diagram, which like maps of the ancient world is oriented toward the east. By the way, the word orient means east. And to an ancient person, if you're properly oriented, you're facing east. So when we talk about orientation or being oriented, that comes from that terminology. Okay, Saint John begins at the eastern corner with Judah, because the sealing angel comes from the east, verse two. Goes through Reuben and Gad to Asher at the north corner, then down the northwest side with Naphtali and Manasseh. Starting over again, we'll see why in a moment, he lists Simeon and Levi on the southeast corner, on the southeast side, to Issachar at the south, then turns around the corner and goes through Zebulun and Joseph, ending up with Benjamin at the western corner. Okay, so you see what he said? He goes down around the left-hand side of your figure until he gets to Benjamin, then he starts back up with Simeon again and goes down the right-hand side, okay? That's his description. Okay, ending with Benjamin at the western corner. Why did St. John arrange the list of tribes in this manner? The most likely answer, for errors, is found in Genesis and Ezekiel. Twelve tribes descended from the twelve tribes of Jacob, whom he sired through his wives Leah and Rachel, and their respective handmaids, Zilpah and Bilhah. So Zilpah was Leah's handmaid, Bilhah was Rachel's handmaid. Legally, the handmaid's children belong to Leah and Rachel. You can look at Genesis 29 and 35 to get that. The list of Jacob's sons is as follows. If you remember in the narrative, the way this goes is Leah had, Rachel was barren at first. Leah had four sons by Jacob. So that was Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Then Rachel gets upset because she can't have any children, so she asks Jacob to sire some children through her concubine, Bilhah. And so Dan and Naphtali are born. Then after that, Leah gets jealous of that, and so she says, well, if you can do it with your handmaid, I can do it with my handmaid. So she gives him Zilpah, and from Zilpah come Gad and Asher. And then later on, Leah's thinking, hey, I'd like to have some more children, so she goes to Rachel and says, lend me Jacob. So she has two more sons by Jacob, and that's Issachar and Zebulun. And then late in her life, Rachel is finally granted being pregnant, and so she has Joseph. And then on the way back to Canaan, she gets pregnant and has Benjamin and dies in childbirth. And so Joseph and Benjamin are the last, Benjamin being the youngest. of the sons, okay? That's the story. That's where these came from, okay? Now you've got that listed there on your handout. So it says, when the prophet Ezekiel set forth his vision of the ideal Jerusalem, he too showed 12 gates, one for each tribe. Okay? Now keep those two diagrams in front of you. At first glance, it does not seem to have much in common with John's. Yet, once we view them together, they appear very close indeed. Ezekiel's list is arranged very symmetrically. Ezekiel has divided Leah's sons into two major groups of three, senior and junior, balancing each other on north and south. Rachel's two sons on the east are set across from Zilpah's two sons on the west, and below each pair is one of Bilhah's sons. Ezekiel has also brought Judah, the royal tribe, into the top row of three by having him change places with Simeon. Ferrer explains John's revision of Ezekiel. He makes a genuine three for Rachel by substituting Manasseh's name for Dan's. In fact, the tribe of Joseph had become two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh. Since Ephraim was Joseph's principal heir, Joseph covers Ephraim. Manasseh is added. A byproduct of this improvement is the disappearance from the land from the list of Dan, one of the 12. Perhaps it will not have displeased John. Let Dan be the Judas of the patriarchs. Dan had, in fact, a dubious reputation. He quotes some references in the Old Testament from Genesis and Leviticus and First Kings and Jeremiah. In the end, if you look at Revelation 21, 12 to 14, John puts the names of the apostles around the city, pairing them with the tribes. We cannot suppose that Iscariot's name would stand there any more than Dan's. Then, as to the artificial promotion of Judah, instead of exchanging Judah and Simeon, John simply puts Judah up two places. The result is that Levi, not Simeon, is pushed out of the first three. The alteration is presumably deliberate, for in the new dispensation, Levi is degraded, Priesthood is united with the kingship in the tribe of Judah, as the writer of the Hebrews so copiously explains. Levi has no special standing. See, especially Hebrews 7. I can't come up with a better explanation than that. It's pretty complicated. But you do see some theological things there. The exclusion of apostates, symbolized in Dan. exaltation of Judah and the denigration of Levi. The Levitical priesthood in the New Covenant is abrogated. And the priesthood is now in the priesthood of Melchizedek, which is embodied in Christ. And kings, the kingdom and the priesthood are combined in one person. Now, you see that in Zechariah. That's a big part of the vision in Zechariah. King and priest, kingdom, kingly, there's one person, a Messiah, who's gonna combine offices of priest and king and himself, which is also then the basis for the fact that we, the believers, at the first part of Revelation, are said to have been made by God kings and priests. And that was anticipated in that Israel, when they're covenanted as a covenant nation at Sinai in Exodus 19, you remember, what do they call it? Several terms are used to describe them. You will be for me a kingdom of priests. That was one of them, a holy nation. Well, that's the repetition in 1 Peter. And 1 Peter says to the church, you are, and he applies all these same terms from Exodus 19 to the church because they're true Israel. We are the continuation of Israel. The church is the continuation of Israel with Gentiles grafted in, which was always from the beginning part of the plan. And so when you have, and I'll just, say this as an aside, but an important one, the dispensational system of interpretation is extremely flawed, and it's just wrong to say that the key to understanding the Bible is understanding that Israel and the church are forever separate. That is, couldn't be more mistaken. It is not biblical. The Bible contradicts that in numerous ways, and this is only one of them. So, okay. We have just a little bit of time. We could go on to some stuff in the last part of chapter seven. I wanna say, what do y'all, y'all have any other ideas about this, you know, these arrangements of the tribes and listing of the tribes here in Ezekiel and how they relate and all that? Well, the Danite idols in Judges, that's a big, the story, you know, that's Dan. It happens in Dan, and, you know, they're hiring a Levite to be their private priest for an idol, you know. Like in Judges, it seems like Benjamin was the really bad trainer. Well, there were one, yeah. Yeah. But there are other places where, Dan's just has a kind of a, questionable, you know, status. Is Dan the one where they told him to go while the women were dancing and steal him? That was Benjamin. But Dan is a, you know, Dan and Bethel are the two major sites of worship at the high places in Israel. And Bethel, You know, Bethel didn't identify with one of the tribes, but also Bethel, there was a vision of God and it was kind of reckoned as a place of God's presence because of Jacob's dream at Bethel. There was no such occurrence in Dan. So Dan is sort of associated with apostasy and idolatry. in multiple places in the Old Testament. Other thoughts about that? I mean, I can't dive into the last part of this. Okay. Let's then look at the second half of the chapter. So, it's a great multitude that no one can number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. And they're standing before the throne. And so, what is this? This is a worship service. Okay? And it says, they're standing before the throne and before the Lamb. So, again, this is recalling images of heaven in chapters 4 and 5. And it says they're clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands. Okay, now go back to chapter six. This is something that we can easily do, because we're going from vision to vision. And so we can fail to link visions. But these, these are clothed in white robes. Look at verses nine and 10 of chapter six. the fifth seal, remember, when he opened the fifth seal, it says, he saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth? And then they were each given a white robe. and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been." Okay? So they're given white robes. These in chapter 7, who are before the throne, who are the mighty throng that no one can number, are those who have been martyred in the Great Tribulation. and they are the faithful. So we can say that they represent God's true people, but from another angle, we can say they're the remnant of true Israel, the remnant that is saved and preserved, who have faith in Christ, the nucleus of which was the twelve apostles, and to which are added Gentiles. And there were Gentiles who probably, oh yeah, Gentiles who were martyred because they were believers in Christ. And remember, again, if we go back to, you remember the fifth seal, where he sees the souls of those who have been martyred, where are they? They're under the altar. What was under the altar? Remember, the life according to Leviticus is in what? In the blood. When sacrifices were offered, the blood flowed down the altar into a trough under the altar where it was collected. And so the implication is that, you know, we talked about this, the implication of this is that these martyrs' blood was shed by the Jewish leadership, by the priests and the scribes who led the people against, incited the people against Christ, and who were leading, you know, the leaders of the synagogue, the chief priests and scribes, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who were the original enemies of the church. And they were enemies not only of Jews, but of the Gentiles, and you read through the book of Acts, all of this is informed by the book of Acts. When Gentiles, Paul and his companions, went to the synagogue first whenever they went to a city, because they had to preach to the Jews first, because they were the covenant people. But then, remember, the Gentiles would gather, and they're curious, and they hear, and in a couple of places, Paul says, "'Cause you don't consider yourselves worthy of this," when they respond in unbelief, we're gonna go to the Gentiles, and they will listen. So the Gentiles are gonna, this is, when you read Romans 9 through 11, God has bound the Jews over to disobedience so that the Gentiles can come in. And this is God's plan. He's always intended this. This is His plan. So, where was I going with that? So, these people are, yes, they're the remnant. They are, the original audience of Revelation is to understand something about true Christians who are, actually several things, about true Christians who have been martyred. And about what it will be true of them if they happen to be martyred because this is happening during a time of great tribulation and persecution of the church. So it's a very important message to them. Number one, they need to understand that they're true Israel. And we've already seen that in the letters to the churches, right? I'm writing to you about those who say they are Jews and are not, but are really a synagogue of Satan. Remember what Jesus said to the Jewish leaders in John? When they said, we're children of Abraham. He said, what? No, you're children of Satan. You're children of the devil. And that goes all the way back to Genesis 3, right? Which prophesied a struggle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And they thought themselves as the seed of Abraham, but really they were the seed of the serpent. They were opposing God when they thought they were serving God, like Paul, who for a while thought he was serving God when he was persecuting Christians, until God snatched him out of that. So, all of this is in the background of what's being portrayed here, and the message to to the Christians who are receiving the book of Revelation is here's the real picture. They may have been martyred, but God has preserved them. God has sealed them. They are His. And there are going to be some more that are going to be martyred. But here is their destiny. They're before God in heaven. They're clothed in white robes. They've been washed in the blood of the Lamb. which means that they are innocent, their sin is forgiven and atoned for. They don't suffer ultimate judgment. They are preserved and their destiny is to be with God and Christ and worship. And there are other things here. We're at the end of our time. I could just blurt it out, but there's a lot. There's a lot in the details here. like the palm branches. We'll just close with just a mention of that. They have palm branches in their hands. That is the well-known symbol of the return to paradise by God's people. That's why they're waving palm branches. But more than that, we are meant to make a connection, because there are only two places in the New Testament that use the term for palm branches here. One is here, you know what the other one is? Palm Sunday. And the people who are waving palm branches then, what do they end up doing? Saying crucify him. Yeah, within a week, they're saying crucify him. And so we're to say in contrast, see the contrast, In contrast to those people, these are before the throne and before the Lamb, and they're in true worship. And that's their destiny. In the Old Testament, is there a connection with the Feast of Booths? That's where it's written in there. Yes, there's going to be, because, see, we didn't get to that, but, you know, tabernacling and the tabernacle is mentioned here. So, I don't want to jump into that right now, because there's a lot of biblical theology associated with that. The question that keeps popping up in my mind, is there some type of intermediate body? Well, he says he sees the souls. Here they're in white robes. You know what I'm saying, it's like, it's hard to imagine a disembodied soul. Well, except a soul, you know, you see, I mean, I don't think we want to get too detailed in our examination of this, you know, it's, he sees, he sees, he knows they're souls, but they're, representations of the person. And it's, again, this is science. It's symbols. It's not literal reality. It's not a movie where John sees literal things happening. He's just describing them the best way he can. That's how Lindsay, but that's not how revelation works. It's symbols. a vision full of symbols. So you don't want to get too picky about exactly what was going on here.