Read with Me
Revelation 14:1-5 (HCSB)
Then I looked, and there on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with Him were 144,000 who had His name and His Father’s name written on their foreheads. I heard a sound from heaven like the sound of cascading waters and like the rumbling of loud thunder. The sound I heard was also like harpists playing on their harps. They sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders, but no one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. These are the ones not defiled with women, for they have kept their virginity. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They were redeemed from the human race as the firstfruits for God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.
Listen with Me
In the midst of the terrifying scenario of the beast gaining the upper hand over the people of the kingdom, John is shown a more encouraging picture: a crowd of 144,000 people who had been sealed on their foreheads with the name of the Lamb and of the Father.
This stands in stark contrast to those who are marked on the right hand or the forehead with the mark of the beast (Revelation 13:16-18). The mark being placed on their foreheads signifies a complete focus on the Father, on the Lamb, and on their agenda.
This massive group of people’s devotion to God was so complete that, like Paul, they did not marry so that they would be 100% available for God’s agenda. They were seen by John as a kind of first fruits taken up into God’s presence for all eternity after they had suffered and died.
These committed Saints were joined together into a heavenly choir, with their combined voices rising like the sound of a great waterfall. They were singing a song of praise that, because it was born of their own experience with the Lamb, only they could know and learn. John heard the song, but he did not even write down the words for his readers, because few, if any of them, would be able to relate to the true purpose of the song, and thus would misunderstand or misuse it.
Pray with Me
Father, this really is an encouraging vision after having been shown so many awesome and fear-inducing realities. But it also points out that even though we may all pass through an event together, even persecution, we all experience it from our unique standpoint, and no one else can fully understand our experience as we lived it. That’s not a bad thing. We simply need to remember not to hear someone else’s experience and simply say, “I know!”, believing that we understand what they have gone through. Help me, Lord, to really listen to others when they share with me, to really hear, and to leave room for honoring and respecting their unique experience of things, just as I would expect them to honor and respect my similar but personally unique experiences. Amen.