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Steven Paulson shares the meaning (and grace) found in All Saints Day
Whenever “All Hallowed Eve” (Halloween) is finished, and the demons are bound back in their prison cells, Christians proclaim the triumph of All Saints Day. The Gospel announces that those who sleep in death will arise: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). But what if we do not see this resurrection of the dead yet? What if, when we look around, all we see are many many graves of the many who have died—and we fear that we are next? Christians do not fear, for they have resurrection already in faith. We don’t wait for that. Yet, we do wait for something. We are waiting to see what we already have in faith. All Saints Day uses the famous dream given to John of the final day when there is a host in white robes worshiping God at the throne of the lamb: ‘who will hunger no more..and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 7:17). So it is that on this day many will sing a famous Danish hymn (with a Norwegian folk tune): “Behold a host, arrayed in white!”
But what if we do not see this resurrection of the dead yet? What if, when we look around, all we see are many many graves of the many who have died—and we fear that we are next?
God knows we need to get a glimpse of the glory that awaits since most of us don’t see much of it now. The 17th-century writer, Hans. B. Brorson, was a pastor in Jutland and saw his share of tribulation—including his mentally ill son and the death of his wife. But he knew that death cannot hold us. The resurrection is not a dream of the pious, but the reality of realities that defines our present more than the suffering we feel. Resurrection is more real than the death we feel. What will it look like, when we finally have the scales removed from our eyes and see as Christ sees? It will not only be the 12,000 of 12,000s from the tribes of Israel—but even the Gentiles—even Norwegians—who will be a huge host “arrayed in white”—“all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). They will have palm branches in hand—or at least spruce branches—and be crying in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!” The cross is a victory—though a very strange one, and one that is seen in its direct opposite in this world—as hunger, scorching heat, and many, many tears. In his second stanza, Brorson put it this way: “On earth their work was not thought wise…On earth, they wept through bitter years…” But, God has sent his Lamb to “guide them to springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 17:17).
But what if we do not see this resurrection of the dead yet? What if, when we look around, all we see are many many graves of the many who have died—and we fear that we are next?
All Saints Sunday is a good day to correct the many false teachings people receive, especially in America, of John’s dreams in Revelation. If you read it without a good preacher, or at least a good scotch, it can wither your little bean of faith. No wonder Luther cautioned about the book and recognized that it failed historically and struggled theologically to give Jesus Christ to sinners. But it can do it with the help of our clear promises of justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law, and by the Christ whom God put forward as the mercy seat by his blood, received by faith alone (Romans 3).
All Saints Sunday is a good day to correct the many false teachings people receive, especially in America, of John’s dreams in Revelation.
It shocked John to see this wild array in white, and he was asked by an elder there to say what was on his mind: “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” Certainly not Scandinavia! Certainly not America! John said to the elder: “Sir you know!” And the elder did know: “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white with the blood of the Lamb.”
Brorson put the answer in his first stanza: “These are the saints who kept God’s Word; they are the honored of the Lord” (Gracia Grindal translation).
How are they honored? What makes a saint a saint? Not works of the law. What then? Why are their clothes so white? Why are they radiant, and why have they beheld God’s glory—when glory kills an earthly man? They have washed their dead robes in the blood of the Lamb. But how is that done? How is sin blotted out? How is death defeated? How is the chief demon, Satan, finally chained in prison? Brorson says, “In the flood of Jesus’ blood they are cleansed from guilt and blame…” They are absolved by God’s word, through the angels—who are preachers. They are washed clean as snow by hearing this promise: “I forgive you all your sins”—and by the Holy Spirit, believing it.
So join the host arrayed in white, listen to the word the preacher gives that drowns your sins and you will say, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!...Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen!” (Revelation 7:10, 12). Then you can free your Seventh-Day Adventist friends from their bondage by saying that there is a greater host than the 144,000—who are assembled not by God’s law but by God’s absolution. All Saints Day is now not the day of remembering past martyrs but cleaning present robes in the blood of the Lamb.
