Revelation 7:13

d. ELDER’S explanation, and glorious picture of their HEAVENLY STATE, Revelation 7:13-17 .

13. One of the elders It was fitting that one of the representatives of the Church should unfold the mysteries of the Church triumphant. Nor must we puzzle ourselves to know how one of the circle of elders, enveloped in the crowd of the great multitude, and that girt round with the circle of countless angels, could address an outsider, as John, who stands surveying the whole assemblage. Allow the freedom of a celestial vision. The inner circles within the outer circles can transparently be seen with the supernatural eye, for the outer circles are transparent, though visible to its glance. And in the spirit-land distance is no obstacle to utterance and hearing. Celestials (and John was now a pro tem. celestial) can converse without voice, by pure impartation of thought. See our note on 2 Corinthians 12:4.

Answered He answered the unuttered questionings expressed in John’s eyes. So in Acts 3:12, Peter answered the “wondering” of the crowd in Solomon’s porch.

What The angel answers by first stating John’s mental question. The Greek is more elegant than our English. These, the arrayed in robes white, who are they, and whence came they? “In this,” says Bede, “he interrogates that he may teach.” Often the most skilful interrogator is the wisest teacher. Wetstein remarks that these questions occur in both Homer and Virgil as the ordinary queries put by ancient hospitality to strangers. Such was the early habit in America, as foreign travellers often tauntingly reported. Yet one English traveller justly remarked, that such questions had a different sound in our Western wilds from similar ones in the streets of London.