At the beginning of Revelation 11 we are just about to be told about the 7th Trumpet, but God says 'Hold everything, we are going to have a parenthesis'. The same thing happened with the seals - One, two, three, four, five, six, and then God said, "Hold everything"'
There is a simple reason for the "Hold everything"; God has something very important to say, "Before we move on to the conclusion of this scenario, let me bring you up to speed on who made it into the Kingdom and who didn't" It's time for the separation of the wheat and the tares. We are about to be reminded that not everyone who refers to Jesus as 'Lord' is going to make it into the eternal rest of era Seven, the promised Millenmium (Matthew 7:21).
God then says to John, "Here is a measuring rod, now go in there and measure the sanctuary". The Great Temple in Jerusalem was quite a large, spectacular building. It had many courts - the outer court was known as the court of the gentiles, the inner court had the sanctuary right in the centre. The Greek word for that part was the Naos - the Holy of Holies. In the Old Testament it was called Mount Zion, it was the innermost part where God was. According to the Old Testament, God's presence was only known, felt and seen in that sanctuary, and then, only by His people.
The request that John "go in there and measure the sanctuary" seems at first to be a rather pointless request. Barely a decade had passed since the Great Temple in Jerusalem had been razed to the ground in 70 AD when the Romans quelled the Jewish uprising of that time. There was no temple to enter and measure - not a physical one, anyway. But as the first verse of the Revelation indicates, this revelation had been given in signature, therefore the Temple John was asked to measure was not the physical temple in Jerusalem, the place where God's people communicated with God, but the Temple Jesus spoke of, that would replace it, the temple "not made with human hands" (Mark 14: 58).
Addressing the Christians of Corinth, 1 Cor 3.17 as well as II Cor 2.16 says, "don't you know that you are the Temple of the Living God, Temple of the Holy Spirit?" The word there is the same word as here - Naos; sanctuary. "Hey you Christians, you true believers, don't you know that you are the sanctuary where God lives? You are the dwelling place of God. That is who you are, the new Temple of Jerusalem". Ephesians 2.21 says the same thing, that we are being built together a holy temple, naos, a habitation of God by the Spirit. That is who you are - the sanctuary of God.
So what God is saying to John is, "Now John, I want you to walk right over there into the Vision and measure off the sanctuary, that part that is separated, and take special note, John, of the altar there." John would have been familiar with the golden altar in the Temple at Jerusalem where incense was burned and offered up to God. "And John, I want you to notice the worshippers that are in there; mark them off. As for the rest of the Courts of the Temple, leave them out of your calculations, that is left to the world. All those forces seen pouring over the River Euphrates in the vision of the sixth trumpet, with their man-made rules and regulations and religiousity that have taken over the church. I've let them all march into the Outer Court of the Temple and allowed them to trample it down. So don't bother measuring that part of the temple. Leave it out, because it's not part of the Naos, Mount Zion, the true church, the New Jerusalem."
What does it mean? The Church is not as big as it looks. The Temple looked very big but God said they have polluted it; all those in that part of the temple who call themselves by the Name of God (christians) but are not of God, they can have it. It is only those in the Naos, the sanctuary, those that have been separated and marked out, whose prayers are heard.
Jesus often spoke of this moment in time; it is a time when the sheep (his flock of followers) are separated from the goats (blow-ins), that time of harvest refered to in the parable of the wheat and tares when the wheat is separated from the tares, and the tares are cast away and burned.
The warning here to the seven churches is that going to the temple (the church) doesn't make one a true worshipper. You don't know whether a person is in the Naos by whether or not he goes to church. You know by them having a living spiritual relationship with God, which is evidenced in the fruit of their day-to-day living. Are they self focused or others focused?
Those in the inner court are the sheep of His pasture, they hear His voice, they know him and they are known by him (John 10: 27) because they live in the Naos - the Holy of Holies. They are the small remnant, the third referred to throughout the Book of Revelation, the few that find the narrow way that leads to eternal life (Matthew 7:14), those who belong to God and cannot be touched. The rest have a form of Godliness but deny God's power the right to operate in their lives (2 Timothy 3: 5). God has allowed them to take over the outer temple and they see themselves as God's people. But God has shut them out.
So when and where does this all take place? Armageddon.
The Battle of ArmageddonThe Book of Revelation makes three references to those who are allowed into the Naos. These are the ones who have been redeemed (Revelation 14:3–5), who had his name and the Lamb's Father's name written on their foreheads (Revelation 14:1), the servants of God (Revelation 7:3–8). They are defined in Revelation 14:3–5 as numbering 144,000.
Of course, as this is the Book of Revelation we are reading, and it was written in 'signature', this is not a numercial head count but the sum of the symbolic value of its numbers. Revelation 7: 3-8 tells us what those numbers are: 12,000 from every tribe (there were 12 tribes) of the sons (children) of Israel (12,000 x 12 = 144,000).
Why 12? The Children of Israel 'signify' the first number 12 - those who belong to God, as it were, his family. The second number 12 references the family of man (every tribe and nation - Revelation 7:4-17) from which God's family is drawn, the combination of which is expressed in the equation 12 x 12.
Why 1,000? 1,000 signifies human completeness in God, being 10 to the power of three (10 x 10 x 10) or in signature, man's ordinal perfection (10) to the power of God's perfection (3).
To signify that those being described include people from all the families of the earth (12) and not just one tribal group or nation (12,000), their total number is 144,000 (12 x 12,000).
Elsewhere in The Book Of Revelation we see references to the foundation of the New Jerusalem as being 24 stones, which symbolise the 12 tribes of Israel of the Old Testament and the 12 apostles of the New Testament. It is upon what these 24 stones symbolise (God's people under both covenants, old and new, jew and gentile, male and female) that the New Temple, the one "not built with human hands", stands.
In the Old Testament God warned the Children of Israel through the prophets that, if they continued to turn to other gods, they would be punished by being removed from the land promised to them in His Covenant with Abraham. According to the prophet Ezekiel, when the Israelites refused to repent of their sins, this punishment was multiplied seven-fold from 360 years to 2,520 years. The 2,520 years began for the House of Israel in 722BCE, and finished in 1798 AD, a significant year in our study of the Sevens of the Book of Revelation.
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