Remnants That Aren't For Sale - Revelation 7:1-8
Revelation 7:1-8 · Kurt Katzorke · May 24, 2009
Revelation (2009), No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926134594735

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This morning we're looking at Revelation 7, verses 1-8. We haven't talked about interpretation for the book of Revelation for a couple of weeks, but this is a really good time to look at it because these verses are ones that get taken out of context to make, well, not taken out of context, but that are interpreted in a lot of different ways. So it's important for us to remember how we're looking at the book of Revelation and what difference that makes when it comes to interpreting the book. But the chart you have here in front of us, it says, allowing the scripture to interpret the scripture.

And you have multiple instances there where, you know, like Revelation 1.16, the first one there, the seven stars, Revelation 1.20 explains that they are the seven angels.

The seven lampstands in 1.13, Revelation 1.20 explains that they are the seven churches. So there's multiple places where Scripture interprets Scripture.

We're not going outside of it. We're not making an allegory. We're not coming up with something outside of Scripture to explain what Scripture says. So that's what this chart is about. And at the bottom there, you can see it says, it's one of the stars at the bottom, it says, if the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense, or the result will be nonsense. And it's kind of a funny little thing to say, but it's the truth. If the plain sense makes sense, don't try and seek anything out of it. We'll see this morning that some of the Some of the allegorical interpretations of this chapter take parts of it and turn it into just something totally different.

It'll talk about wind and they'll turn wind into bad doctrine. It'll talk about The other one there says Israel equals Israel and the church equals the church. Theologians will take Israel and they'll turn it into the denominations of the church. The 12 tribes are different denominations. The Jehovah's Witnesses turn it into the 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses that are saved by works. Look at it literally.

Did everybody get at least the first page here of this handout? Does everybody have the first page? Because we'll move on into that. And I've got two columns there. One says literal interpretation and the other one says allegorical interpretation. This is kind of like a history of the two types of interpretation.

Now something that we need to realize about the Old Testament authors, when they wrote the books that they wrote, they wrote it with a literal meaning. They did not write it with an allegorical meaning. And people like to turn it into something that it's not. But they wrote it to be read literally.

And in the Old Testament, a figure of speech was known to be a figure of speech. So a literal interpretation. And if they use a figure of speech like we would use a figure of speech, then you apply the meaning that the figure of speech had or has. So the literal interpretation. The Jews following the completion of the Old Testament, they read the Bible with a literal meaning.

In Matthew 2.5, when The Magi come to Herod and they ask him, where has the king of the Jews been born? Where has he been born? And so Herod goes and grabs all of his scribes and scholars and he asks them, where is he going to be born? They went back to the Old Testament and they went to Micah 5 too and they said it says Bethlehem. He's going to be born in Bethlehem. Literal meaning. Bethlehem means Bethlehem. It doesn't mean something else. So literal interpretation is how they read that.

Christ spoke of a real Moses and a real Abraham. They were real people who really lived. They're not tall tales. The Apostles wrote in the exact same way as Christ spoke. Moses was a real person. Abraham was a real person. Actual events that took place.

Literal interpretation. After the Apostles, the Orthodox Jews, and I should add here, quite a few Christian groups also interpreted the Bible with a literal interpretation. So that's kind of the history of a literal interpretation. An allegorical interpretation, we look at, it really started with the Greeks. But let's see, the allegorical interpretation really started with the Greeks and dealing with the Greek myths. Because a long time, the Greek people, they looked at their myths as stuff that actually happened. Zeus was a real god and he really did the things he was doing.

Plato came along and he said, these tales are just too outlandish. We need to look at this in an allegorical manner. It may say this, but it means something else. They're not real people. They have meanings, but they're not real. That's really where the allegorical interpretation started.

Philo, a Jewish scholar, started interpreting the Old Testament as an allegory. Philo was from Alexandria. He had Greek training. He was a Jewish scholar, but had a lot of Greek training in Alexandria. And he really brought the non-literal interpretation to the Old Testament. He was one of the first guys that did it.

And so Moses is no longer Moses. It's just a story that you're supposed to gather meaning from. Abraham's no longer Abraham. The Red Sea didn't actually get parted. It's a nice story to get meaning from. And so that's what started to happen. And then you have Origen, a Christian scholar, around the same time as Philo, viewed the Old and New Testament as an allegory. So not only are the stories of the Old Testament not true, they're just things to get meaning from, but so is a lot of the stuff in the New Testament.

It didn't really happen, but it's nice to know and get some meaning from it. The Catholic Church really carried this view on. I had a couple of friends who were Catholic growing up and my dad always taught me that this is real stuff. Moses did part the Red Sea. Abraham did live. This is real stuff.

And for me to hang out with them, I actually went to church with them a couple of times and the pastor was really, you know, kind of tearing apart Scripture and just turning it into a story and getting meaning from it. And we talked afterwards and I went, I don't understand what's going on here. Why wouldn't you believe that it's real? And their viewpoint was, well, why would you believe that it's real?

It's just another tall tale like the myths. It's just something else like the Greek myths that they came up with. It's really a lack of respect for the Scriptures. And even today, many Reformed churches view the Scripture, and particularly prophecy. So they might view certain portions of Scripture literally, but then they get into prophecy and they really want it to... because maybe it's hard to interpret it. So they really want to view that as an allegory. Now that's not the case for all Reformed churches, but it is something that we'll run into. Down below here I have an example of that.

Matthew Henry talking about the winds in Revelation, this chapter that we're going to look at, says, So you see, winds are no longer winds, and the passage suddenly has a very different meaning. Well, what's keeping me from saying that, well, I don't think it means corruptions and mischief in the church. Wins probably means, I don't know, fill in the blank. There's really no control over what I could make wins to be in this situation.

So that's the issue with the allegorical interpretation, is you could make the passage say just about anything. Okay, let's see. Does everybody have page 2? It's the first verse of chapter 7. He says, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on the earth and no on sea or on any tree. So he takes winds and turns it into mischief and bad doctrine. So you could really turn it into anything, but that's right out of the verses we're going to look at this morning. But a couple more examples of of an allegorical interpretation.

Jehovah's Witnesses say that Jesus is the Archangel and he is the other angel seen in this passage. In verse 2 there's another angel that's mentioned and they believe that that's Jesus. Also they believe that the 144,000 of those faithful Jehovah's Witnesses who are saved by works and destined for heaven up to the year 1935. Now why the year 1935? Because in the year 1935, they had 144,000 followers, 144,000 Jehovah's Witnesses.

So at that point in time, according to Scripture, there's just not any more room in heaven, right? That's what these verses say. No, it's not what they say. But that's what the Jehovah's Witnesses have turned it into. There's not any more room in heaven, so the rest of the Jehovah's Witnesses would have to fill the earth. The new earth. So there's 144 really special Jehovah's Witnesses. And then the rest of them are just kind of maybe okay. Yeah.

How did they pick the year 1935? So at that point in time, in 1935, they said we have 144,000 faithful Jehovah's Witnesses. So there's nothing in Scripture to back it. It's just their viewpoint. And what's really crazy is they've changed their viewpoint on that now. Because if that was the case in 1935, how are you going to get more people to join?

What's their motivation to become a Jehovah's Witness if heaven's already full? Second class. Right. I have a guy who I work with who is a Jehovah's Witness and we talked about this. He said, well, you know, it's not We've changed our mind on that 1935 thing because we don't know if they were faithful or not. They could have been, they might not have been. So he said, I could be one of the 144,000 faithful witnesses. I could be one of them, but I might not be as well. My works and what I do will determine whether or not I'm one of those.

So there's no guarantee of heaven for them. There's no guarantee of heaven. There's really no guarantee of, you know, really anything for that matter. But that's how they've interpreted this passage. Absolutely. Yeah, it's sad. Yeah. Especially when Scripture teaches something very differently. It requires a real leap of faith. Right. Well, a leap of faith, but also a, man, I better try really hard.

And I don't know about you guys, but the phrase, the harder you try, the sooner you die. The harder you try, the sooner you die. The harder you try, the farther you get from God, it seems like. If you're trying to do it in your own works, your own power, the more you fail, and the worse you end up feeling about stuff.

I'm sorry. Yeah, no kidding. You're going to go do your door knock and you're going to devote that time to it. The guy that I work with, he's about 30 years old, married, and he works part time. He and his wife live with his brother and sister. All four of them are Jehovah's Witnesses and they all work part-time. They work part-time so that they can devote the rest of their time to going out in the ministry, knocking door to door.

In a sense, it's kind of like Luther because Luther's concept of sin was so great that you couldn't get rid of it and finally came to the realization that it was salvation through faith. And that's what happens with works. Yeah, you can only imagine how happy he was when he finally got to read the scriptures. How enlightening that would be. So as we can see with these couple of things, the problem with allegorical interpretation is there's no control over what the passage could mean. It could mean anything. It could mean whatever I want it to mean.

And since I want to be in control, I'll make it out to be something that pleases me, or gives me power, or pleases the masses, or pleases political correctness, or fill in the blank. We see a lot of churches doing that now. The Lutheran Church, this is almost two years ago now, and I don't even know where they're at now, but they've come to a point where they're working on accepting homosexuality as okay for their pastors. Now, you can be a homosexual and be saved, but if you're living a lifestyle of sin, how could you be someone leading people?

It doesn't make sense. That's like, you know, if our pastor, if the pastor of your church was a drunk and he was addicted to alcohol, you know, should we say that's okay too because someday it might be politically correct for all of us to be alcoholics? It doesn't make sense. So anyway, we're not going to do the allegorical interpretation.

We're going to take a literal method, the literal method that Jesus and the apostles used, and we're going to know what we're reading. So anyway, let's jump into the verses. Verse 1, he says, After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind could blow on the earth or on the sea or in any tree. Now, this verse has been also used to people who are critical of Scripture. Take this and go, look at this. It says four corners.

The Bible teaches that the earth is flat. A bunch of nonsense. A bunch of nonsense in this book. Well, and, you know, we know that the Bible's not nonsense, but here's some places in Scripture in the Old Testament that talk about the earth being round. Long before, written long before common human understanding was that we had a round earth.

Job 26.7 talks about it.

Job 26.10 and Proverbs 8.27 all talk about a spherical earth, a round earth. And they also talk about it being suspensed in the heavens. The Bible understood it long before science did.

So that's just an example of apologetics. But jumping into the verse, we've just gone through all of the six seals being opened up. war and famine and pestilence and cosmic disturbances and earthquakes and all kinds of stuff going on. The Antichrist is on the earth and he is just wreaking havoc. And there's all sorts of things going on as well.

So you can imagine what these people are thinking and now everything stops. The literal wind stops blowing and it's calm. And they're thinking, does this mean that everything's over? You know, or is it just the next calm before the storm? And the idea here is for those of us who have kids, when it gets real quiet, you've got a kid and it's real quiet, you're going, what are they into?

What's going on right now? Am I going to find a gallon of milk on the kitchen floor, spilled all over the place? So you just know that there's some serious trouble brewing. I'm planning to find the next page with you guys here. So we're going to jump to page three. Does everybody have it? Four and five is where we're going to have some trouble, I think. So verse 2 it says, And I saw another angel ascending from the rising sun, having the seal of the living God. And he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and sea.

So notice that it says not simply God, but he is called the living God. He is living, as opposed to the Antichrist who reigns on the earth during the Tribulation period. The Antichrist is not only no God at all, but he's as good as dead. His time will soon come to an end. Even Satan, who puts up a fight now, knows that he's lost. He knows he's as good as dead.

But we serve a living God, a resurrected Jesus Christ. The phrase, living God, is used 28 times in scripture, and every time it's used, it is bursting with significance. This is the last time it's used in scripture, but Colossians 3-4 tells us, when Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then we will also be revealed with Him in glory.

So the world's gods, the made-up Zeus's and the made-up, fill-in-the-blank made-up gods, they're as good as dead. There's no life in them at all. They're lifeless idols. Romans talks about serving lifeless or worshipping lifeless idols. But our God, our Jesus Christ, is resurrected from the dead. And not only is he resurrected from the dead, but we are placed into that resurrection. Our life is His life and it is eternal. We serve a living God, not a dead one, right here, right now. So some of the other stuff in that verse, we see it says, having the seal of the living God. Now for those of you who have gone through some of the other classes, we've talked about seals previously.

But the cultural context of a seal, especially in New Testament times, and even back into Old Testament times, there were three characteristics. It identified who it was from, so the seal was unique. It identified not only who it was from, but if you place your seal on a person, it identifies who they are, who they belong to. Another characteristic of a seal is it signified authority. So usually people in an authority position, they put their seal on something. It identified it as this is coming from someone in authority and the seal was unique to them. And it also characterized protection.

And we're going to see a really neat example of that in the next verse when we jump into that. One of the other things, because of the seriousness of falsifying an official seal in the Roman Empire, it was capital punishment. So if you're in a position where you're running letters back and forth or something and you want to trick somebody, so you falsify an official seal and you get caught, you're dead. There's no forgiveness, you don't go to jail, you don't collect $200, it's just game over.

So something that was sealed was considered to be unquestionably true. Does anybody have any comments or questions about what we've talked about so far this morning? Well, it probably could be. You're swearing that it's true. Now, put yourself in a position where maybe you seal a document that isn't true. You can come up with any number of circumstances, but maybe your military and your general places a seal on something and he's doing something treasonous in his letter. He's telling the Emperor that I'm going to go do this and he goes and does something else and lies to the Emperor. You can imagine what would happen when the Emperor finds out that he got lied to. If you lie, it probably could end up in your death. But in the same manner, you could trick somebody.

I have a question on the wind. You said it's literal, but what's the point of having a wind? Okay, so it wasn't windy today. Well, and it gives that idea of, because I mean, think about everything that these people just went through. Just loads and loads of disturbances. People are dying all over the place. You've got meteors hitting the earth. The sun is dark. The moon is red.

I mean, you've just got all this stuff going on, and all of a sudden it's calm. Yeah, you know John is saying I just witnessed all this crazy stuff and now it's calm and so if you're if you're one of the people on the earth at that point in time and you've made it through meteors and earthquakes and you know famine and pestilence and all this other stuff that's happened and you've probably seen lots and lots of people die and all of a sudden it's calm you're thinking oh It's finally over, but the tribulation is not over yet.

Okay, so the next verse here, verse 3, says, So on the handout here, we've got characteristics of a bondservant. And when you look at the characteristics of a bondservant in context of the culture, so cultural context of a bondservant, you were owned by someone else, they had been bought, and scripture tells us that we have been bought. We're not our own, but we have been bought. 1 Corinthians, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? whom you have from God, and that you are not your own, but you have been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body."

And in 1 Corinthians 7.23, it says, you were bought with a price. Do not become slaves of men.

So that's us as bond servants to Christ. We're His because He's paid the price for us to be free, but also to be His. And it says here, their wills were entirely subject to another's will. So those are the characteristics of a bond servant. And that's what we're going to see with these 144,000 in the coming weeks. Back to this seal in Revelation verses 3 and 4 here. Why a seal? Talked about it a little bit already, but identification.

Soldiers and craft guild members, and they had guilds back then where you'd be a member of it, and it would, they basically, the way that the Roman government was set up, it allowed these groups to meet. You had to go to the government and say, we're gonna set up a guild of members of a specific trade, and the government would say, okay, you can do that and go ahead and meet. And if you didn't do that, and you had a meeting, you could get in trouble. But soldiers and craft guild members were often marked on their foreheads to show that they belonged to or were devoted to a pagan deity. The other thing that the guilds were used for were religious guilds. So there were multiple types. There were ones that were set up for economic reasons, there were ones that were set up for trade reasons, and the loophole in the law was that they could set it up for religious reasons.

The churches actually did this with the Roman government, only they wouldn't tell them that they were meeting for religious reasons. They would tell them, oh, we're a group of whatever, fill in the blank. We're a group of clothing makers, fishery, whatever. That's what we do. And then they would meet, but then they would do their, that's how they would get away with the Roman government of meeting for their Christian services. And the pagan religions would do the same thing.

They would say, yeah, we're, only they didn't have to be so tricky about it. They would just tell them, yeah, this is a guild of you know, members who are devoted to Ardynus, and they'd meet. But that's what the seal marked on their foreheads to show that they belonged or were devoted to a pagan deity.

The seal authority, they would speak with authority of the living God proclaiming the true gospel, and this is speaking towards the people who are these 144,000. These are going to be people who are, we don't really understand how These Jewish people come to know Christ as their Messiah.

Revelation doesn't really reveal that. It doesn't tell us that they found the scriptures and read them and believe that Christ is the Messiah. Or they ran into some Holly Hill binders and read about it and said, oh, this must be true, or whatever. It doesn't tell us. It doesn't tell us how they come to believe.

One possibility is that they were converted in a similar manner to how Paul was converted. Christ appears to them and they believe. That's another possibility. Now you can imagine 144,000 people the caliber of Paul walking around the earth talking about the authority of the living God and proclaiming the gospel. Can you imagine 144,000 people like that roaming around the earth? I mean, that's all they care about. They didn't care about anything other than that. That's a possibility for these 144,000. That's a possibility for how they were converted.

The Bible doesn't really tell us. There's other believers though, right? There's believers that come out of tribulation and they aren't Jews. Absolutely, but the 144,000 here are specifically Jews. So the other guys that aren't believers, they get stung by these scorpions or whatever they are. They're not protected. It says only the ones that have this seal are protected. So they're believers, yet they're not protected.

Right. And I mean, in the previous verses that we looked at last week, it talked about the martyrs crying out for God to make this stop. And what does God tell them? He says, calm down. I want you to rest. But there's a lot more of this to happen. So God pretty much lays it out. There's going to be more death for those who come to believe in that manner.

Yet they don't have, it doesn't sound like they're showing the mercy that these other, that the Jews are showing. They're in a position where they're going to be, well, when we look at, let's read that protection, Revelation 9, 3, and 4. Then out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth, and power was given, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And they were told not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, but only the men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. That I'm not sure of. Right.

The 144,000 we're talking about this morning are definitely specifically Jews from specific tribes of Israel. As to whether or not The seal is placed on those who are not Jews, who are believers. I don't know the answer to that. And that would be something that would be worth looking at and getting back to next week. It's an interesting mathematical thing. It's a good question. I don't know the answer to it. Those who part were sealed. So maybe there is a subset like you're saying.

And I don't know the book of Revelation well enough to tell you the answer to that. But keep that in mind. Let's research it. We'll ask Vern about it when he gets back and answer it. Because I'm not sure of the answer to that. That's a good question. But it does point out the beauty of grace. God does not have to give us grace. It's a gift. Right. I think it would be merciful to die during this time. Yeah.

And like I said, I'm not sure the answer to that. I don't know if the seal was given to people who come to believe who are not of the Twelve Tribes during this time period. It's a good question, and I think we should answer it, but I don't know the answer this morning. We may have to hold off until I can figure it out.

It's also interesting that the Scorpions seem to be still under the power of God, because somebody's telling them not to do something. Even though we've worked our way into the book of Revelations a little ways, it seems like they're still under some authority, divine authority, right? Because if that was Antichrist or Satan, he would be telling them to...

Well, and what you see during the tribulation, part of it is God's wrath. I mean, a great deal of what we saw out of the first four seals that were opened up is God's wrath on the unbelievers. And that's what I have trouble with in that situation is God's wrath is not for the believers. God's wrath is for the unbeliever. So it seems like those who come to believe, even the ones who aren't Jewish, would have this seal, but I don't know the answer. But out of common sense, knowing God's character, His wrath is not for believers.

It's for the non-believers. So we'll explore it a little bit more, but it seems like the believers who are not Jewish would be left out of this. They'd be given that same protection. But like I said, we'll get an answer on that next week. And then the contrast between the protection that God gives His believers and those who are unbelievers.

It says, the mark of the beast would soon come, Revelation 13, which would be condemning. So the mark of the beast is placed on the unbelievers, and that's where, again, it seems like those who believe that aren't Jewish would be left out of this. And it would be a condemning mark.

But it says that you have to willfully take the mark of the beast. So there does seem to be a group of people, could be some gray, Well, there seems to be a group of people that fall between the 144,000 with the mark and those who willfully take the mark of the beast. There seems to be a group of people in between there. Because once you take the mark of the beast, that's it. So those are lost forever. The ones with the 144,000 with the mark obviously are the prophets and saved forever.

Yeah. As to whether or not they have a seal or not, I don't know. Yeah. Like I said, we can definitely look at that a little bit more and find out for next week. It's a good question. One thing that comes to mind is people who are upset and say, I don't want to get modern technology, you know, the chip on my dog or whatever, because that's going to be the work of the beast. Well, you can only get that through the tribulation. Right.

So it wouldn't make sense for people to be fearful of it. For a believer at this point in time, it wouldn't make sense. There's no evidence of a rapture. You have to be in a curation period before you start worrying about the mark of the deed. Once there's evidence of a rapture and you're a believer, then watch out for that chip. We'll actually look at that here in a second.

Why 12,000 from each tribe? We're going to look at that here in a second. Verses 4 through 8 basically name the tribes and tell us how many 12,000 are coming from each. I don't know that it's necessary for me to read all the tribes and butcher the names of them. So I'm not going to read that, but you can see it there. The 12 tribes are named and we're told that 12,000 from each are coming.

One thing that's interesting in verse 4, he says, and I heard the number of those who were sealed. So he doesn't say them, he hears the number of those who were sealed. John's involved with this, and instead of, I see the number of those who were sealed, he says, I heard the number of those who were sealed. Almost like it's being proclaimed. From the tribe of Judah, 12,000, he's hearing it. And from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000, he's hearing it.

The fifth page, which only a couple of you have and we'll get to the rest of you after we're done here. There's two listings that I have here. One is Genesis 49 and one is Revelation 7 of the 12 tribes. And it's interesting, they're listed in a different order in each set of verses. And there's actually different names of tribes listed. In Genesis 49, Dan and Ephraim are listed.

Those names are dropped from the list of the seven tribes here in Revelation chapter 7. Now the obvious question is why? It says, Dan is omitted because the tribe left its inheritance and moved north and practiced idolatry. Those chose to move away and settle in the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon, thereby rejecting the word of the Lord, being the only tribe that failed to conquer its territory, and turned to idolatry as an alternative to obeying God. So the 12 tribes were told by God where to go and to conquer the people that were there and settle that land. When Dan went to the area of Tyre and when the tribe of Dan went to the area of Tyre and Sidon, they initially tried to conquer and failed miserably.

And they just said, well, we give up and we don't trust God to get us through this. It's clear that we can't we can't conquer these people. We're just going to, you know, the lack of trust in God telling them that that land would be theirs went away and they gave up. And instead of continuing on and being faithful to God, they gave in to idolatry as an alternative to obeying Him.

Ephraim, the half-tribe under Joseph, is omitted also. It was idolatrous. Ephraim was the foremost in defection from the house of David and was an ally to the enemy of Judah. So those two tribes are dropped because they turned away from God and chose idolatry, and in Ephraim's case not only idolatry, but chose to be an enemy of God.

So replacing Dan and Ephraim on the list, the 12 tribes of Israel in Revelation chapter 7, are Manasseh and Joseph. The particular characteristic of the breakdown of these verses is the inclusion of Manasseh and Joseph in the same list. Manasseh was a faithful son of Joseph, and Joseph was given a double portion by Jacob, so this may explain both Joseph's name and his son Manasseh's name in the list of the Twelve Tribes. So it's interesting that that God chooses to leave these two tribes out and basically rename, not just rename, but replace them.

Another thing that's real interesting in Revelation chapter 7, because in Genesis 49 and Revelation 7, they are listed in different orders. In Revelation chapter 7, the first tribe that's listed is Judah. Any speculation as to why? Why would you list Judah first? Christ, Jesus. It's the line that Christ came from. Exactly. Another thing that's interesting to think about, in 70 AD, the Jewish temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and all the records of lineage were destroyed as well.

So for a Jewish person today to understand their lineage, There's a couple that they could look at their last name and say, oh, I'm from the priestly order. I'm from Judah because my last name is fill in the blank. But for the rest of these tribes, they don't really have any record. They know they're Jewish. They know their heritage is Jewish, but they don't have a record of what tribe they're from anymore. So it's interesting, how do they know? Who does know? Obviously, God knows their lineage. God knows their heritage. He knows what tribe they're from. And the implication that we get in these verses is that God tells them, you're from the tribe of Reuben. You're from Gad. You're from, go on down the list.

Another thing that was mentioned earlier, Norm, you asked about why 12,000. 12,000 was a common military unit. So they would often gather up 12,000 soldiers in each unit to go out and battle. So that's one implication. And culturally, why 12,000? Well, because that was what they did. They got 12,000 to go out and fight their battles. Do you think that 144,000 would be all in Vienna?

I have no idea. There is no indication here. And I don't believe that the, I'm not sure if the number is given a gender or not, but I kind of doubt it. But I don't know. Because usually when they counted in the Old Testament it was They didn't include women and children. That's true. They wouldn't count the women and children. Even when the Jews were leaving Egypt, they counted the men. That's a good question. And when you just made reference to the military, I was thinking of that too. Yeah. That's a good question. Do we think that the 144,000 will be all men?

What you were talking about in books of the Old Testament, they would count simply the men. And that's why when they're leaving Egypt, I don't know the exact number of people that they say are leaving Egypt, but the number has to be added to for the full number of people because they do simply count the men. And that was common in other places in the Old Testament where they would count population. You had to add to it to get the full population because they would just count them in.

As to whether or not that's the case here, I don't know. They did have prophecies like Deborah. Right. So they made provision for that. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. That was all I had for this morning. Does anybody else have anything else? I want to write down the two questions that we had this morning, which was, are believers who are non-Jews sealed during this time, given the seal? And then the other one is, are there women in the 144,000? Both very good questions.

I will do what I can to have them answered for you next week. All right, well, I appreciate everyone bearing with me on the handouts this morning. We'll get you the full set. We'll at least have them available next week. I'll try and have them available before you leave today. But let's go to our Lord in prayer and we'll finish up. Heavenly Father, we thank you for our time this morning.

It's just so neat to look at. It's a period we won't be involved, well, we won't be on the earth for, we'll be involved. But it's just so neat what you revealed to us. I'm thankful for the The leaders of this church, that they emphasize a literal interpretation and keep us away from bad doctrine. There are so many things that you could fall into, but I know that we have a good understanding of Scripture, and it's a real blessing to live our lives knowing what you've revealed. So I just thank you for that. I thank you for the group of people who are here with us this morning and just pray for safe travel for those who are traveling this Memorial Day weekend.