Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 287 · October 14
No Man Could Number
“After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;”
Think of a photograph of a huge crowd taken from high above. Near the front you can still count the faces, but further back they blur together, and in the end you have to guess.
John has just been given an exact number: "an hundred and forty and four thousand." He hears the tribes counted off one at a time, twelve thousand from Juda, twelve thousand from Reuben, twelve thousand from Gad, and on through the list. Then he looks, and what he sees is too big for any count: "After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number."
What stops him is who is in that crowd. They are "of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues." Two chapters earlier John heard a new song sung to the Lamb, and it used those same words: "thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." A crowd too large to count also keeps one of the oldest promises in the Bible. God took Abram outside at night and told him, "Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them," and then said, "So shall thy seed be." John is looking at that promise kept.
One of the elders asks who these people are, and when John answers, "Sir, thou knowest," the elder tells him: "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." None of them arrived there by an easy road.
This crowd is a comfort, and it is also a warning about who you will be standing beside. Every language is there, so yours is one among thousands, and your church's way of worship is one of many. If you find other kinds of Christians hard to sit near now, remember that you will spend forever beside them, with no separate rooms. And all of them, in every language, cry out the same thing with a loud voice: "Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." The One who gathered that crowd has made room in it for you, and for them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 287 is Mercy Holds You Up (Psalm 94:18).