With the blowing of the seventh trumpet, John had heard the glorious proclamation in heaven that “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Revelation 11:15). In chapters 12 and 13 the Lord showed John how “the nations raged” (Revelation 11:17) against that delightful reality. John had seen the vision of the dragon, striving to devour the baby Jesus (Revelation 12:4), being expelled from heaven to earth (Revelation 12:8, Revelation 12:12) and then in fury seeking to destroy the church of Jesus Christ and her offspring (Revelation 12:15, Revelation 12:17). To accomplish that goal, the dragon aligned itself with the beast from the sea (Revelation 13:1–10), who in turn teamed up with the beast from the earth (Revelation 13:11–18). In the face of the presence of these three terrible beasts, it would seem that heaven’s proclamation of Revelation 11:15 was an empty hope, and the future of the church on earth impossible. That is the setting of the vision of Revelation 14:1–5. Here we are assured that any hellish effort to destroy the church of God is guaranteed to fail (see Matthew 16:18), for all the elect of God survive, every last one of the 144,000. This paragraph, then, provides great encouragement for God’s children in the face of Satan’s rage.
1 Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.