In Revelation 19:1, relaying what he experienced in a spiritual vision,
the apostle John states, "After these things I heard a loud voice of a
great multitude in heaven, saying, 'Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor
and power belong to the Lord our God!'"
Must the great multitude praising God here be throngs of saved human beings
now living in heaven? Have any human beings ever ascended to heaven?
The popular teaching is that when Christians die they immediately go to
heaven, where they take up residence in their permanent abode. But can
we find such a teaching in the Bible?
To understand the truth on any biblical teaching, we must consider all the
passages on a subject. When we do, the truth then usually becomes clear.
We must also look at plain biblical statements and passages first, and
from them come to understand the meaning of those that are less clear.
Notice one such clear statement in John 3:13: "No one has ascended
to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of
Man [Jesus Christ] who is in heaven."
John wrote these words decades after Jesus died and ascended to heaven-and
well after many of Christ's followers had died-but he still affirmed
that no one other than Jesus had gone to heaven.
Whose voices, then, could John have been hearing when he recorded in the
book of Revelation what he heard and saw? He refers to voices many times
in the book. Let's notice one example in particular:
"Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne,
the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand
times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice:
'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom,
and strength and honor and glory and blessing!'" (Revelation 5:11-12).
So there are at least hundreds of millions of angels, and the voices in
Revelation 19 could well be theirs.
