And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty-four thousand, who were redeemed from the earth.
This is the 14th chapter of Revelation, and there are some curious things in this chapter we need to understand before we continue. John is in vision, and he is writing down the things which he sees. Don’t bother trying to conjure up a mental image of this, for what John saw is pure imagery. I think I saw a painting somewhere, a drawing someone did once upon a time of this particular chapter. And what they drew was a mountain, and they had a sheep on it—a small sheep or lamb—and they had a whole hoard of people, with every one of them having some kind of Hebrew letters scrawled on their foreheads. Well, that sort of thing is basically useless. John’s is a verbal description and is intended to be conveyed verbally, but what he’s talking about is not lambs and scratchings on people’s foreheads. It’s something else; it symbolizes something else.