This passage is about salvation. It is also about worship, reverence, awe toward God and toward the Christ who is traditionally known as the “Lamb of God,” the sacrifice he made and all that sacrifice means for us, even today, 2,000 years later (and counting).

            What we have here is one answer to the question “Who then shall be saved?” Will only a handful of “true believers” be saved in the end? The passage immediately preceding this one might give that impression. In that passage, 12,000 people are marked out from each of the 12 tribes of Israel — 144,000 in all. Will only 144,000 be saved, as some traditions assert?

            No — we find that that number comprises only a fraction of those who will be a part of the coming kingdom. In the end, today’s passage tells us, there will be “standing before the throne [of God] and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands,” a “multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”

            Who is this great multitude that stands before the throne and before the Lamb? “These are they,” the angel tells John, “who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

            So ... who are they who have “washed their robes ... in the blood of the Lamb”? Or to put it another way, how does one get to be counted among that great multitude that will stand before the throne and before the Lamb when the great day comes?

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