Question: Who are the great multitudes that no man can number? S. R.
Answer: Revelation 7 teaches us that God holds control of everything, and that His purposes of mercy towards His own cannot fail. This chapter is anticipatory, looking on to the Millennial reign, and shows us Israel as a nation saved. Then of all peoples and languages this great multitude comes, saved out of the great tribulation, as it should read. And for their faithfulness to the Lord at that time, they are given a special priestly place before the throne of God, and to serve Him day and night in His temple. That is on earth, an earthly scene.
These are not the church, nor the heavenly saints. The twenty-four elders represent them. Nor are they the nations themselves that are afterward brought into subjection to Christ as King over all the earth. (See Psalm 72:11.)
They are like Ittai, the Gittite, who with hid company of converted Philistines and Cretans, shared David’s rejection, and get a near place to David, (2 Sam. 15:18, 19), and fight for him (18:2). They are led into perfect blessing on earth. (Ver. 16, 17.)
Question: What did the Serpent mean by saying, “Ye shall not surely die?” Genesis 3:4. P. B. E.
Answer: God had said to Adam, when He put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it, before the woman was made, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
But in Genesis 3:1 the Serpent tries to make the woman think that God had withheld something from them that was for their good. The instruction she received was plain; she should not have given her ear to the Serpent, but she hearkened to his lie, and became deceived. When she saw that it was good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also to her husband, and he did eat, thus they became sinners against God, and hearkened to the enemy, and death entered their veins that day, as God had said. It is the death of the body here that is meant, but the New Testament (Heb. 9) says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment,” but God gave witness in Enoch to His power to turn aside this sentence for the believer.
The woman was deceived, so brought in the transgression. Adam willfully transgressed.
“Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” 1 Timothy 2:14.
Ever since we find it easier in this fallen human nature to hearken to the enemy than to obey God. Man, left to himself, follows the lie of the enemy. Truly man became as gods knowing good and evil, but unlike the blessed God, he became a slave to the evil, that he knew. The believer now is by the power of the Holy Spirit that dwells in him, to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God. 2 Corinthians 10:5.