Primary Texts for Biblical Reconciliation #1 Revelation 7:9-10

One of the goals of our blog is to present the Anglican communion Bible passages which provide a foundation for Racial Reconciliation Ministry.  It has been my personal experience that the evangelical world in general has overlooked the emphasis in scripture on race and reconciliation. This is the first post  in a series which we have entitled Primary Texts for Biblical Reconciliation.  We begin this series with the end. The heavenly vision of eternity that awaits the church triumphant.  Revelation 7:9-10 pulls back the vail on the future and all what eternity will one day be like. 

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.  And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,

who sits on the throne,

and to the Lamb.”

Note John’s description of the scene. One is first struck by the numbers gathered before the “throne.  Here is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy regarding Abraham’s decedents.  “Therefore, the multitudes in Rev. 7:9 are the consummate fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise and appear to be another of the manifold ways in which John refers to Christians as Israel.”^⁠1 Here is a gathering of people to vast to count. Here is a Church in its pristine, holy state, doing what it was called out of the world to do—worship the lamb.  
First, John then brings attention to the this group’s diversity.   It is not merely a matter of skin tone, which is in view in the word “tribe.”  Tribe, meaning those who share a common ancestry and heritage. Instead, those present are gathered from and across every conceivable boundary in which humanity can be divided.  The most basic of these is human language. “This word would refer also to the inhabitants of the earth with respect to the fact, that they speak different languages not as divided into nations; not with reference to their lineage or clanship; and not as a mere mass without reference to any distinction, but as divided by speech.”^⁠2 Language is the foremost carrier of culture. John McWhorter in his book Doing Our own Thing shows just how much cultural identity is transmitted in and through language. Before the throne of God, languages and the people they represent are brought together to give human expression to God’s greatness.  What was done on the tower of Babel, the division of human thought through language is redeemed. The word for “nations” in the Bible meant those not of the Jewish nation, those originally excluded from the promise of the messiah are now brought together with Abraham’s decedents. It is not simply a nation but every nation, every it fulfills the Old Testament prophecies concern the nations gathering to worship YAHWEH.  
Second, John makes it clear those gathered together from such diversity are in fact gathered together for a single purpose.  Diversity for the sake of diversity is not Biblical diversity. Rather, diversity as an expression of God’s greatness, diversity that celebrates a love that stretches out across all barriers is the reason for diversity and reconciliation.   A Biblical diversity lives in the tension of the one and many of  God’s children.  We are all made to worship the same God.  Our hearts are all made with the same God shaped void at its center.  But we are also people whose diverse expression of the God shaped vacuum enables to see each other more clearly as God’s grace reigns in our relationships.

¹ G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: a Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, Cumbria: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 1999), 427.

² John Peter Lange et al., A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Revelation (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), 190.