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 72:1111Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him. (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, 1918And all his servants passed on beside him; and all the Cherethites, and all the Pelethites, and all the Gittites, six hundred men which came after him from Gath, passed on before the king. 19Then said the king to Ittai the Gittite, Wherefore goest thou also with us? return to thy place, and abide with the king: for thou art a stranger, and also an exile. (2 Samuel 15:18‑19)), and fight for him (18:2). They are led into perfect blessing on earth. (Ver. 16, 17.)
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 3:11Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? (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.
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 10:55Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; (2 Corinthians 10:5).