All Saints Sunday

Revelation 7:9-17, from The Second Testament

9 After these things I saw, and Look! A great crowd that no one was able to count from every ethnic group and tribe and people and tongue standing before the Throne and before the Lamb, having been wrapped with white stoles and date-palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out in a great voice, saying,

“Deliverance [belongs] to our God who sits on the Throne and to the Lamb!”

11 All the envoys had been standing circling the Throne and the elders and the four Living Things, and they fell before the Throne on their faces and bowed down to God, saying,

12 “Amēn! Blessing and splendor and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength [belong] to our God into the Era of Eras. Amēn!”

13 One of the elders responded, saying to me, “Who are these wrapped with white stoles and where have they come from?” 14 I have said to him, “My lord, you know.” He said to me, “These are the ones coming from the Great Trouble, they rinsed their stoles, they whitened them in the Lamb’s blood. 15 Because this is true:

they are before God’s Throne,
they venerate him day and night in his sanctuary,
the one sitting on the Throne pitches a tent over them.
16 They will not hunger any longer nor will they thirst any longer,
Nor will the sun fall on them or any heat.
17 Because the Lamb that is in the middle of the Throne will pastor them, and he will make a path for them to Life’s water-springs, and God will wipe off every tear from their eyes.”