Revelation 7:14

κύριέ μου (“Sir”) the respectful address of an inferior to his superior in age or station, the πρεσβύτεροι being conceived as angelic beings (as in Daniel 10:17; Daniel 10:19; Daniel 10:4; Ezra 4:3, etc.) “Thou knowest” (and I fain would know also). The great distress is plainly the period of persecution and martyrdom (Revelation 6:11) predicted (e.g., Matthew 24:21, from Daniel 12:1) to herald the final catastrophe. It is still expected by Hermas (Vis. ii. 2. 7, iv. 2. 5, 3. 6); but he less religiously attributes the white garments (i.e., purity of soul) to the virtues. As the crisis with its outcome ol faith and loyalty in all nations (Revelation 7:9) is to be world-wide, this passage seems to imply, altnougn in a characteristically vague and incidental fashion (cf. Revelation 5:9; Revelation 14:6, etc.), the idea of Mark 8:10. But the situation of the Apocalypse is so acute, that mission operations are at a standstill. Instead of the gospel invading and pervading the pagan world, the latter has closed in upon the churches with threatening power, and in the brief interval before the end practically nothing can be looked for except the preservation of the faithful. Those who come out of the great distress” are further described as having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; which portrays their character and conduct and at the same time explains the secret of their triumphant endurance. “Mehr gedacht als geschaut ist das Bild” (J. Weiss). The great thing is not to emerge from trial, but to emerge from it with unstained faith and conscience. And this is possible, not to man's unaided efforts, but to the sacrificial power of Christ, the experience of which forms the last line of defence in the struggle. The confessors and martyrs owed their moral purity to what they obtained through the sacrifice of Jesus. But moral purity became in this case something more intense (as the context and the emphatic language of this verse imply) than the normal Christian experience of forgiveness and holiness. By a turn of thought which is developed later by Ignatius and Tertullian (Scorp. xii. sordes quidem baptismate abluuntur, maculae uero martyrio candidantur), it is suggested that in their martyrdom (cf. Daniel 12:10) these saints were able to make the redeeming power of Jesus peculiarly their own; the nature of their cruel sufferings identified them especially with their Lord. It is noticeable that the mystic union of the individual Christian with Christ mainly comes forward ward in the Apocalypse (cf. Revelation 14:13) when the martyrs and confessors are mentioned, as if the writer held that such an experience alone could yield the deepest consciousness of communion with One who was conceived essentially as a Lamb who had been slain, a faithful witness, etc. (cf. Titius, 216, 217). On the high respect for martyrs, of which this forms an early trace, see Weinel, 142 144. At the same time it is to the blood of the Lamb, not to their own blood, that they owe their bliss and triumph; redemption, not martyrdom, is the essential basis of their deliverance. People might be redeemed without becoming martyrs; as, for example, either recreant Christians or those who happened to die a natural death. But no one could be a martyr without having the strength of redemption behind him.