Thursday: The New Jerusalem
John now describes the capital of the new earth, the New Jerusalem. While a real place inhabited by real people, the New Jerusalem and life in it are beyond any earthly description (1 Cor. 2:9).
Read Revelation 21:9-21. What are the exterior features of the New Jerusalem?
Image © Pacific Press from GoodSalt.com
The New Jerusalem is referred to as the bride, the Lamb’s wife. The New Jerusalem is the place Christ is preparing for His people (John 14:1-3).
The city is surrounded by a high wall with twelve gates – three gates on each of the four sides, allowing entry from any direction. This feature points to the universal scope of the city. In the New Jerusalem everybody has unlimited access to God’s presence.
The city is further pictured as a perfect cube; it is 12,000 furlongs, or stadia, in length, width, and height. The cube consists of 12 edges. Thus, the city totals 144,000 stadia, which reflects the 144,000 who are translated without seeing death at the second coming of Jesus. In the Old Testament temple, the Most Holy Place was a perfect cube (1 Kings 6:20). The New Jerusalem thus functions as the center of the worship of God.
Read Revelation 21:21-22:5. What interior features of the city remind you of the Garden of Eden? What is the significance of the promise that there will be no more curse in the city (Rev. 22:3)?
The most prominent feature of the New Jerusalem is the river of water of life flowing from God’s throne (Gen. 2:10). In contrast to the river in Babylon, at which God’s people were sitting as captives longing for Jerusalem (Psalm chapter137), on the banks of the river of life in the New Jerusalem, God’s wandering people of all ages have found their home.
On both sides of the river is the tree of life with leaves for “the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2). This healing does not refer to disease, as on the new earth there will be no disease. It refers to the healing of all the wounds caused by the barriers that have torn people apart throughout history. The redeemed of all ages and from all nations now belong to one family of God.
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I had a friend who was a missionary to the people in some of the remotest islands of the Pacific. Even with today’s modern transport, it is difficult to get to some of these islands. My friend told me about the Seventh-day Adventists in Kiribati, approximately halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii. Their perception of heaven was a place where the Taro crop (a starchy root vegetable) never failed and the lagoon was always full of fish so that they have sufficient to share with one another. For a people who live on an island so low that it could easily disappear in the next 50 years, their view of heaven is pretty basic. Streets paved in gold and built on foundations of gemstones were of little meaning to them, but the principle of sharing with one another was important.
There is much we could say about the structure of the heavenly city, and even the extent of the new earth, but ultimately Heaven is going to be a place where we can fulfill Jesus commandments:
It is up to us to live like we are in heaven now.
Knowledge has increased by leaps and bounds in harnessing the resources of creation. But there’s one thing in which there’s been no progress and that’s in human nature. There’s no change for the better in the heart of man.
Only God can make new. Some have imagined that by means of more education, a cleaner environment, better laws and a fairer distribution of wealth, a new era will be ushered in. These things are worth pursuing, but it’s only God, who through His Spirit, makes all things new. He does it now by the new birth, though its outworking is still restricted, but He’s going to do it completely when Christ returns. The vision of God’s perfect realm continues in more detail, as John focuses upon the Holy City...
DON'T MISS!!!
The new Jerusalem
A city that is beyond any earthly description.
A place where everybody has unlimited access to God's presence.
The center of the worship of God.
A home for the wondering people of God of all ages.
A place where the redeemed of all ages belong to one family.
The capital of the new earth.
A place where Christ is preparing for you and for me.
A place we should not miss!!!
The owner of the city is just now knocking at the door of your heart. Please open and give your heart to him.
....and soon and very soon we shall gather On the banks of that beautiful river.
Talking about prize. Something to look foward to, to wish, to desire. It is good to have a grip of beyond the earth's crash. A glorious end or a super fresh begining. At last, we get to see such a rich environment. The New Jerusalem. Beyond the terrible and ugly prophetic beastful reality we can see perfection built in. The question is "do we need all of that?" Isn't the continuing God's presence our most precious reward? I think that when we get to see the place that God has prepared for His people we will probably realize how much He really cares for us. Because every single detail will probably shock anyone who get to see it. For me, the Holy City could be a marvelous natural habitat. But its description is about an impossible humanly engineered built place. What' s the message here?
God mind is infinite and so powerful that we are unable to understand in fullness anything he does. Our backdrop is sin and we do interpret everything in that light. It takes eternity in the earth made new to begin the process of comprehending His goodness. That is why we will burst forth with songs of praises
In my Quarterly I have noticed that there would be no diseases but it refers to barriers I taught that those who have been saved would loose their differences as well.
You raise an interesting observation. If we are in the business of using our Christian beliefs to raise barriers now, we need to remind ourselves that there is no place for such barriers now.
However, you make an interesting switch between "barriers" and "differences". I don't know whether that was intentional, but having differences does not mean that we are raising barriers. I note that when I discuss the Sabbath School lesson, some folk have a different idea to me on some topics. Such differences need not be barriers, and can be useful in gaining a better understanding about the topic.
I thought the barrier that was mentioned in the lesson is “death”. Death caused all people to be torn apart from each other and it created pain or emotional wounds in many people’s heart. The leaves would cause healing and perpetual existence and death or barriers will be eliminated.
This Jerusalem brings us full swing from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Eden in the context of salvation in Jesus. Tree of life three along with the river of life. Healing is the overarching reality in this place of redemption in full.
We also note that the 144,000 of chapter seven is indeed symbolic in nature, a kind of zip code for location in the New Jerusalem with is 144,000 stadia in cube. The cube being a perfect geometric three dimensional form. In Solomon's Most Holy Place it was also a cube. The place where God dwells, as space of perfection. The redeemed have attained in Christ a perfect fit for a perfect world. As EGW expresses, we will feel we have a perfect right to be there. All of our thoughts and feelings will accord with this place wherein dwells only righteousness.
It will be God's new center of reality. Making His permanent home among a redeemed people. Our purpose here is to be that home of God within us refashioning our souls to comport with the glories still to come. Greater things still to come.