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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 7:14, the great tribulation
The crowd comes out of the great tribulation, the time of distress Daniel 12:1 foretold, when God's people would be rescued.
Revelation 7:14, in every translation this tool compares.
Calling a storm the big one tells everyone which storm you mean. Daniel 12 speaks of a time of distress like none before it, when Michael stands up and God's people are rescued. Jesus called it great tribulation. An elder tells John who the crowd in white are. They have come through Daniel's time of trouble, the great tribulation.
A time of great distress for God's people, from which they are brought through. Daniel 12:1 in Greek has thlipsis; John has he thlipsis he megale, the great tribulation.
Daniel describes distress like none before it. John names it the great tribulation, the phrase Jesus used in Matthew 24:21. Daniel's rescued people are those written in the book; John's crowd have washed their robes in the Lamb's blood. Neither text gives the time a length.
The crowd has come out of the distress, having passed through it. John ties Daniel's time of trouble to the Lamb's people, cleansed by his blood. Beale says the tribulation began with Jesus' sufferings and runs through the church age, rising at the end.
Not a phrase from Daniel. Daniel speaks of a time of distress like none before it. The name great tribulation comes from Jesus in Matthew 24:21, which points back to Daniel.
Beale calls Daniel 12:1 the likely origin of the great tribulation, since outside Revelation the phrase occurs in the New Testament only in Matthew 24:21, a fuller reference to Daniel 12:1. He notes the War Scroll expected God to protect the saints through Daniel's time of distress, and that 1 Maccabees 9:27 already saw a great tribulation in the second century BC. In the vault's Septuagint, Daniel 12:1 reads kairos thlipseos hoia ou gegonen. Keener says the phrase refers to Daniel 12:1; the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says it probably evokes Daniel 12:1 with Matthew 24:21; the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible says it alludes to Daniel 12:1; the CSB Study Bible cross-references Daniel 12:1 and Mark 13:19. Heiser adds Jeremiah 30:7, the time of Jacob's distress, which scholars link to Daniel 12:1. The grade is drawn here: the phrase and the idea point to Daniel.
Heiser rejects equating the great tribulation with the seventieth week of Daniel, since no verse ties tribulation to a week or seven years. Its Old Testament context, he says, is Daniel 12:1, with Jeremiah 30:7, the time of Jacob's trouble, and Matthew 24:21. Four things can be said for sure: it is tied to Daniel 12:1 and Jeremiah 30:7, linked to Matthew 24:21, comes before the final judgment, and involves persecution of believers. He reports Beale's view that it is already but not yet.
The sources differ on when the tribulation happens. Beale says it began with Christ and runs through the church age. Heiser and Beale note that no text ties Daniel 12:1 to a seven-year span. MacArthur reads the great tribulation as the later half of a seven-year period still to come, Daniel's seventieth week. The crowd, in his reading, are people saved and killed in those years, who were not yet believers when the church was raptured before it. Charles and the futurists Beale names place it at the very end. The CSB Study Bible links it to the hour of testing in 3:10 and a possible rapture before it. The ESV Study Bible gives both views.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), The Great Tribulation: Its Background and Nature, and Its Location in Time
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 7:13-14
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 7:14
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 7:14
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 7:13-14 and cross-references at Revelation 7:14
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 7:13-14
- Septuagint, Daniel 12:1, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 7:14
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 7: The Sealing of the 144,000, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 3:10 and 7:14
