10. (a) What important information is supplied in Re chapter 7? (b) How did Christ speak of those who receive the Kingdom?

¹⁰ Re Chapter 7 contains glad tidings indeed.

These, John was told, were people who would come out of the great tribulation. (Revelation 7:1-17)

The Israel of God consists of 144,000 persons whom the Bible describes as being in heaven with Jesus Christ, a glorious prospect!​—Rev. 7:1-8; 14:1-5.

9. (a) So, does the “great crowd” need to be in heaven in order to serve God in his na·osʹ? (b) According to Revelation 3:12, may na·osʹ have a limited meaning?

⁹ Thus the “great crowd” may be said to be in the “temple,” or na·osʹ, of God and yet not be in heaven as spirit creatures with the 144,000 spiritual Israelites who make up the “little flock” of God. (Rev. 7:1-9, 15; Luke 12:32)

Chapter seven reveals four angels holding back the wrath of God until the 144,000 spiritual Israelites have been sealed.

7:1-4, 9-17 369

17, 18. What light does Revelation shed on how the great tribulation will develop?

¹⁷ Chapters 17 to 19 of Revelation fit and verify this adjusted understanding of Matthew 24:29-31, Mark 13:24-27, and Luke 21:25-28.

¹⁸ The account in Revelation shows that the future great tribulation will begin when the militarized “horns” of the international “wild beast” turn on “the great harlot,” Babylon the Great.* (Revelation 17:1, 10-16)

Upon surviving the great tribulation, such “saved” flesh will enter the new system of things under the reign of the one who will become their Eternal Father.​—Matthew 24:31; Mark 13:20, 22, 27; Revelation 17:14; Isaiah 9:6, 7.

7. (a) What is the scarlet-colored wild beast of Revelation chapter 17 called in Revelation chapter 13? (b) In what way is “the image of the wild beast” a model of the original wild beast, and what do its seven heads represent?

⁷ This symbolic “wild beast” of Revelation chapter 17, which is described as scarlet colored, is really a copy of the original “wild beast” spoken about in Revelation chapter 13.

After this no more would be anointed by holy spirit as witness that they had the heavenly hope, unless, in a rare occurrence, the unfaithfulness of one of the remaining ‘chosen ones’ made a replacement necessary.​—Romans 8:16; 11:19; Revelation 7:1-8; 14:1-5.

So Revelation 7:1-8 tells us that the “four angels” stationed at the four corners of the earth are instructed to hold back the four winds from blowing and producing a most destructive storm or “tribulation” until the fixed number of God’s chosen ones have been given a seal in their foreheads.

19. In the light of what precedes in Revelation, chapter 7, who make up the “great crowd” described in Revelation 7:9-17?

¹⁹ Quite in line with this is the fact that, after the apostle John saw the sealing of the 12 tribes of spiritual Israel, as described in Revelation 7:1-8, he saw the vision of the numberless “great crowd” of those who are not spiritual Israelites and who are therefore “other sheep.”

Revelation chapter 7 tells us.

Revelation, chapter seventeen, pictures it as a scarlet-colored “wild beast” with seven heads and ten horns, and which is ridden by the international religious harlot, Babylon the Great.

And the ten horns that you saw, and the wild beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her devastated and naked, and will eat up her fleshy parts and will completely burn her with fire.”​—Rev. 17:12-16.

Since they constitute the symbolic ‘man clothed with linen,’ they are appointed and sent forth on Jehovah’s authority by Christ.​—Rev. 7:3, 4; Eph. 1:13, 14; Rom. 8:16, 17.

Here it was revealed that after the last of the 144,000 anointed body members of Christ had been gathered and sealed, and after the enthroned King, Christ Jesus, had begun the tribulation against Satan and his organization by casting Satan down from heaven, a great crowd of men and women of every nation and tongue would be gathered out and brought to serve in God’s temple through an extensive preaching work. (Rev. 7:1-4, 9-17; 14:1-6)

11. Who will be instrumental in destroying Christendom? Why?

¹¹ As foretold at Revelation 17:12-17, the time will come when Jehovah starts his strange act by putting it into the hearts of “the ten horns”​—militarized members of the United Nations—​“to carry out his thought” of devastating the world empire of false religion.

There are numerous ways that “the ten horns” of Revelation chapter 17 may, in the words of Re 17 verse 16, come to “hate the harlot and . . . completely burn her with fire.”

And they keep on crying with a loud voice, saying: ‘Salvation we owe to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.’” (Revelation 7:1-10)