<p>7:4 <em>And I heard the number-</em> This is added to highlight the contrast with the &ldquo;great multitude which no man could number&rdquo; (7:9). This &lsquo;hearing&rsquo; contrasts with how John &quot;saw&quot; the great multitude. I suggest that the same group are in view, just seen from different perspectives. He heard something happening in Heaven- there, the 144,000 are marked off or sealed. There is not necessarily any physical mark upon the faithful, repentant Jewish remnant, apart from that they refuse to wear the mark or seal of the beast, which I have suggested is the seal of Mohammed. There will therefore be a tension between the seals- the seal of Mohammed, the mark of the beast, which is visible; and the invisible seal of God which is seen only in Heaven.</p><p><em>Of those that were sealed, a hundred and forty and four thousand</em>- The 12 x 12 is obviously intentional, as if to say that this group is the true Israel. The thousands would refer to their being &lsquo;many&rsquo;. The sealing of a group of faithful within Israel parallels the 7000 &ldquo;reserved&rdquo; by God out of Israel for Himself at the time of Elijah&rsquo;s ministry. The three and a half year ministry of the historical Elijah looks forward to the latter day Elijah ministry during the tribulation for the same period. As 7000 faithful were &lsquo;reserved&rsquo; by God for Himself at that time, so the 144,000 are in the last days. The 7000 remnant in Elijah's time were &quot;left&quot; or 'remained' to God (1 Kings 19:18). The same word is used of the latter day remnant within Israel: &quot;He that is left in Zion, and he that remains in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem&quot; (Is. 4:3). This is the same idea in essence as in Rev. 7- the 144,000 are numbered and written, carefully noted by God. The same word is used of the latter day Jewish remnant in Is. 11:11,16; 17:6; 24:6 (the few men that will remain when the earth / land is made desolate); 37:31 (the faithful remnant in Jerusalem at the time of the Assyrian invasion which typifies that of the last days); 49:21; Jer. 21:7 (the remnant who remain after the plague, sword and famine of the Babylonian invasion have devoured them, all of which are the source material for the events of the six seals which the 144,000 have come through); 50:20 (&quot;I will pardon them whom I reserve&quot;, speaking of the forgiveness of the latter day repentant remnant); Amos 5:3 (the ten percent of Israel who 'remain'); Zeph. 3:12 (the 'remnant' of the &quot;afflicted and poor people&quot; who &quot;shall trust in the name of the Lord&quot;); Zech. 9:7 (the remnant who will &quot;be for our God&quot; after the destruction of the majority of Israel); 12:14 (the 'remaining ones' who weep in repentance for crucifying Jesus).</p><p>The 144,000 are the antithesis of the followers of the beast- these follow the Lamb wherever <em>He</em> goes. It's highly significant that Muhammad is supposed to have had 144,000 followers or <em>Sahaba</em>&nbsp;Thomas Patrick Hughes, <em>A Dictionary of Islam</em>, &quot;Ashab&quot;. This is supposed to connect with the claim that there are 144,000 prophets in Islam Elwood Morris Wherry &amp; George Sale, <em>A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran</em>. The 144,000 who follow the Lamb are thus in purposeful contrast with the 144,000 who are supposed to have followed Mohammad wherever he went. This confirms the entire thrust of our exposition- that whatever previous historical fulfilments there have been, the latter day application of Revelation is to events in the land promised to Abraham in the last days whilst it is under Moslem domination.</p><p>Revelation is full of language which is also found in the Koran- because Islam, like Babylon, Assyria and Rome before them, are offering God&rsquo;s people a fake replica of real spirituality and the true Hope of Israel. They are an anti-Christ, an imitation Jesus, a false 12 tribes of Israel rather than the true. This explains why the promises of the Kingdom of God in Revelation are full of language which is also used in the Koran for the reward of faithful Moslems. Revelation will have intense relevance to the persecuted under Moslem domination- the rewards offered by Islam will be seen to be a fake Kingdom of God. Thus in Sura 2:25,266: &quot;Give glad tidings cp. 'the Gospel' to those who believe Moslems... for them will be gardens under which the rivers of Paradise flow... they will be provided with a fruit therefrom... &nbsp;trees with all kinds of fruit&hellip; they will abide therein for ever&quot;. The final visions of Revelation offer eternal residence in a restored Paradise and eating the fruit of the tree- to those who refuse to accept the religion of the beast, Islam.</p><p><em>Sealed out of every tribe of the children of Israel</em>- This makes more poignant the omission of Dan and Ephraim from the list. Due to their apostasy, they are no longer numbered amongst the children of Israel. The order of the tribes is also not according to their age, but it may be according to their faithfulness to God. This is therefore the picture at the time of final judgment, when the true Israel have finally been made up and numbered.</p><p>The very laboured mentioning of 12,000 faithful within each tribe may be because they are the antithesis to some yet unseen aspect of the beast. In the ISIS magazine <em>Dabiq</em> No. 4 (October 2014) the Islamic State on the back page (p. 56) quote a hadith which states: &ldquo;They will then gather for the <em>Malmanah</em> (the grand battle before the Hour) the equivalent of Biblical Armageddon, they will come under eighty banners, with each banner there will be twelve thousand people&rdquo;. The IS wish to consciously fulfil such Islamic prophecies in order to hasten the coming of the antiChrist and then the Mahdi. Perhaps in an attempt to fulfil these predictions, there will be groups of 12,000 Moslems who play some role in the earth / land promised to Abraham. Their antithesis- the Jews who refuse to convert to Islam- are therefore here presented as twelve tribes of twelve thousand.</p><p>The Koran claims that the twelve sons of Jacob were in fact 'Moslems', and that current Jewish claims to being descended from Jacob's twelve sons are false (Surah 2.140 &quot;Or say you that Ibrahim (Abraham), Isma'il (Ishmael), Ishaque (Isaac), Ya'qub (Jacob) and Al-Asbat the twelve sons of Ya'qub (Jacob) were Jews or Christians? Say, &quot;Do you know better or does Allah (knows better; that they all were Muslims)? And who is more unjust than he who conceals the testimony)&quot;. Again we see the relevance of the sealing of people from the 12 tribes of natural Israel- if at the very time this happens, they are being accused of not being from those 12 tribes, and that in fact it is Arab Moslems who are the true 12 tribes. This situation is reflected by the way in which the descriptions of the 144,000 are in terms elsewhere used by the beast system. Thus they are sealed, just as the beast seals his followers; the great multitude who proclaim &ldquo;Victory&rdquo; before the throne (7:10) are parodied by the beast&rsquo;s followers doing the same in 13:4.</p><p>It is worth noting that two thirds of the Jews within the land are to be&nbsp;&ldquo;cut off&quot; in the holocaust, meaning that a third survive it (Zech. 13:8,9).&nbsp;&nbsp; Having spoken of this period in Rev. 6, Rev. 7:4 speaks of 144,000 Jews as surviving it.&nbsp;&nbsp; A third of the Jews in Israel is about 1.4 million people; it may be that only a tenth of those will ultimately be found worthy. The 144,000 are sealed so that they avoid God's judgments, which would fit the idea of the righteous remnant miraculously surviving in an Arab occupied Jerusalem.</p>