The New Heaven & ANew Earth
Revelation 21-22
YOU are a NEW CREATION in CHRIST
It tells the epic story of
God and his creation
of
blessing, temptation, sin, exile, and
salvation.
For those of us reading this today,
we have the advantage of
knowing
the entire story was leading to
Jesus
All in all, it is an epic book telling an even
more epic story,
which begs the question, how
does it end?
That,
my
friends,
is the
book of Revelation,
a story about
Babylon, Jesus, and judgment,
we
are going to focus
on the
very end-of-the-end
of
the most epic story ever told!:)
With that, we jump to “the end”
(Rev. ch 21 & 22)
The revelation includes-with a final vision
of the marriage of heaven and earth
where an angel shows John a stunning bride
that symbolizes the new creation
that
has come forever to join God and his covenant people.
God announces that He's come to live
with humanity forever and that
He's making all things new.
Wait, wait, wait before we "jump" too far and start concluding
what exactly we are reading here,
we should take a moment to appreciate
the level of symbology and metaphor
that Jewish apocalyptic writers used.
They would employ this symbology to
convey massive theological truths
in ways that invested their words
with the cosmic meaning the prophet believed them to possess.
The Revelation is no exception,
so there is a lot of symbolism
to wade through to get to the meaning.
Symbols
of
ANew Creation
At this moment, the earth is cut off from the full life of heaven.
I don’t think we have to look too far before we can confirm this by mere observation: crime, inequality, rampant greed, and selfishness.
To use a biblical metaphor, creation groans like a woman in childbirth.
But the new creation is here, taking form even when we can’t see it.
We do sense hints of it now and then, though, just like we might make out an elbow or foot poking from within a pregnant woman’s belly.
One day it will be pushed forth
into life,
like a new baby emerging
from the womb.
So let’s talk a little more about this
rebirth,
because it's where this whole
story is going!
SO Exciting!
We have to remember that we can easily get lost in some of the details here. John is using apocalyptic symbols and metaphors to describe this event, just like the Old Testament prophets used poetry. He wasn’t transcribing a video-perfect version of what was to come.
Instead, he was attempting to express an unexplainable conviction,
of which sometimes only metaphors and symbols will suffice.
This then begs the question, what symbols
is he using to convey
this
future hope?
ANew Garden of Eden
In John's symbolic
vision of this great rebirth,
he saw
Anew heaven and earth—a
clear reference to
the
very beginning of the biblical narrative.
Amazing!
So, what did it look like?
“Then he showed me a river of the
water of life,
clear as crystal,
coming from the
throne
of
God & of the Lamb,
in
the middle of its street.
On either side of the river was the tree of life,
bearing
twelve kinds of fruit,
yielding its fruit every month,
and
the leaves of the tree were for the
healing of the nations."
Revelation 22: 1-2
Its an all-new
Garden of Eden,
the
paradise
of
eternal life with God!
This is an image of the Old Testament
prophetic echoing
all the way back to the
first pages of
Genesis
John saw the tree of life there, accessible to all
and
eternally yielding fruit.
It could do this because
its roots had access
to
the eternal river of life,
which can dispense nourishment to all
the new creation because it flows from
the
presence of God himself.
However, in John’s account of a garden, humanity wasn’t represented by a couple. John describes seeing all the nations there, working to cultivate the garden as Adam and Eve did in Genesis. For John, the fulfillment of God’s purpose through Jesus would result in the restoration of humans to their place as co-rulers of God’s world, ready to work with God to take creation into uncharted territory.
A New JerusalemBut it's not just a return back to the garden; it's a step forward into a new Jerusalem, a great city where human cultures and all their diversity work together in peace and harmony before God. John first described the new creation as a marriage of heaven and earth. Heaven is represented as both a city and a bride, coming down out of God’s heavenly domain and landing on earth, much like the staircase Jacob saw in his dream. John called the city-bride a “new Jerusalem.” It was so marvelous that he could only describe it regarding brilliant stones.
Jerusalem itself was a powerful symbol for John. It was the first and only city where God resided in a permanent holy house, the first city where kings worshiped the true Creator. At the heart of the Israelites’ Promised Land, Jerusalem represented the ultimate Promised Land: all of restored creation. John depicts the reunion of heaven and earth as the descent of a new Jerusalem. Unlike the old Jerusalem that was corrupted and dishonored by most of Israel’s kings, the new Jerusalem would be ruled by a divine king. This new city would be built by God, not by human hands.
But NOT ANew Temple
John was a master of the Hebrew Scriptures, and his vision of the new creation is a kaleidoscope of images drawn from the biblical poets and prophets. His goal was to create a visual collage of Old Testament metaphors that forces us to reckon with the meaning of these images.
A great example is John’s physical descriptions of the
new Jerusalem in Revelation 21:15–
He says the heavenly city has four sides, each with three gates, corresponding to the 12 tribes of Israel. Then he mentions 12 huge foundation stones, which correspond to the 12 apostles. After this, John says the heavenly city is a perfect cube, each side being 12,000 stadia, or 1,400 miles. Then we’re told that the walls were 144 cubits high, or about 200 feet.
And in the most surprising twist of all, there's no temple building in the new creation! The presence of God and the lamb that was once limited to the temple now permeate every square inch of the new world. There's a new humanity there, fulfilling the calling placed on them all the way back on page 1 of the Bible. Humanity will rule in God's image, partnering with God in taking this creation into new and uncharted territory. And so ends John's apocalypse and the epic storyline of the whole Bible.
This sounds like a structure that defies mathematics,
and some people leave it at that. But John wasn’t
trying to document a
blueprint
He was using two distinct Old Testament
references to craft a deeper meaning. Let’s break this down:
The image of a city on a high hill
with 12 gates corresponding
to the 12 tribes of Israel
is adapted from Ezekiel’s vision of the
new Jerusalem in Ezekiel 40
The concept of a cube is derived from 1 Kings 6:19–20
which specifies that
the
Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple was cubic.
The results of combining these references only
makes sense on a symbolic level. If you try to draw it,
the numbers just don’t work. But John’s goal
was to communicate that Ezekiel’s idea
of anew Jerusalem
would be one giant temple with the same qualities
as the
Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple.
Still confused? I'm in the same boat.
It means there will be
no need for a
physical temple
or
Holy of Holies in the new creation
because the
fullness of God’s presence
will be everywhere.
All of
Anew creation
will be
God’s Holy of Holies.
A Whole New, Vague Creation
John's visions leave most of our questions about the
new creation unanswered—and that’s not a bad thing.
John’s goal wasn’t to satisfy our curiosity about the new world, but to instill confidence that the creation would be
reborn just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead.
This is the hope of the story of the Bible: God’s domain and our domain will one day completely unite. All things will be made new. Death will be replaced with life. The whole earth will be a recreation of the garden, and the glory of the temple will cover it. Every nation will be blessed through the power of the resurrected Jesus, and God’s own personal presence will permeate every square inch of the new creation.
Ok! So, I can buy all the visions of the future in which I can place my hope, but you still haven’t told me where I go when I die?
On Earth as it is in Heaven:
There is not even one passage in the Bible that talks about “going to heaven” after you die. The phrase “go to heaven” doesn’t appear anywhere in the Old or New Testaments about death. Not once. This doesn’t mean the Bible has nothing to say about what happens to God’s people after they die. It just means that “going to heaven” isn’t the way biblical authors thought about it. Let’s look at the New Testament passages that speak to what Jesus’ followers will experience after they die.
- Jesus spoke to the repentant criminal being crucified next to him, saying, “Today you’ll be with me in paradise.” - Luke 23:42-43
Paul discussed his possible execution in a Roman prison, and he said death wouldn’t be so bad. It would make the Philippians sad, but he would get to be “with Christ.” - Philippians 1:21-24
Paul talked about the true hope that drives Christian faithfulness, even in the face of death. The result of death, he said, was being “with the Lord.” - 2 Corinthians 5:6-9
Notice the consistent factor is not that people will “go to heaven,” it’s that they all use the same phrase: Our hope is about being “with Jesus.” Both Jesus and Paul believed that not even death could separate people from God’s love, and that Jesus’ followers would be with him after death.
However, Paul does not envision this disembodied mode of existence as permanent, or even desirable. world “we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.” He’s referring here to a resurrected body believers will inherit when they are finally made like Jesus. For Paul, the end goal is not disembodied bliss in heaven, but rather a restored physical existence, which is a gift from heaven
But what about the interim period, when our mortal bodies rot in the ground?
Paul describes this interim experience like “falling asleep.” He wasn’t alone in using sleep as a metaphor for death.
It was common in Jewish culture to use the
phrase
“lay down with my ancestors” to talk about death.
The prophets described death as a
form of sleep
and
the hope of future resurrection
as “waking up.”
Remember that these are poetic metaphors,
so we shouldn’t analyze them for precise information about
what we will experience after we die.
In the Revelation, it would seem John’s hope somehow resides
in the specific manner in which Jesus was resurrected.
Just as he went through death and came out the other side in a transformed physical existence, so also his people can hope for the same. The risen Jesus was physical, not a ghost. He ate food and drank wine and talked with his followers about the Kingdom of God over the course of a few weeks. He had scars on his hands and feet. There was no mistake. They were touching and talking with the same Jesus they followed up in the hills of Galilee.
But the resurrected Jesus was also different. Really different.
Some of the disciples didn’t even recognize him at first glance.
And while Jesus’ body was physical,
it was physical in a way that was different from ours.
He inexplicably appeared and disappeared from rooms,
baffling the disciples.
There were no categories that prepared them for this moment,
so all they could do is tell the odd stories we
find in the New Testament.
This paradox of “the same Jesus and also a different Jesus” is precisely what John was trying to communicate about the “new heavens and earth” in the book of Revelation. He was convinced that the future of the universe walked out of the tomb on Easter morning, simultaneously the same and different.
What was true of the risen Jesus
is what will be true for all creation
when heaven and earth
completely reunite
So while we can’t say you’ll “go to heaven” when you die,
we can say that one day you will be
resurrected and reborn
LIKE
Jesus in the resurrection.
Even better,
that means you’ll be WITH Jesus!
Now THAT is worth writing home about, and in this case,
was worth John writing the
churches in Asia minor to remind them about.
A great example is John’s physical descriptions of the
Anew Jerusalem
in
Revelation 21:15–21
Revelation 21:15–21
He says the heavenly city has four sides, each with three gates,
corresponding to the 12 tribes of Israel.
Then he mentions 12 huge foundation stones,
which correspond to the 12 apostles.
After this, John says the heavenly city is a perfect cube,
each side being 12,000 stadia, or 1,400 miles.
Then we’re told that the walls were 144 cubits high,
or about 200 feet.
And in the most surprising twist of all,
there's no temple building in the new creation!
The presence of God and the lamb that was once limited to the temple now permeate every square inch of the new world.
There's a new humanity there, fulfilling the calling placed on them all the way back on page 1 of the Bible.
Humanity
will rule in God's image,
partnering with God
in taking
this creation into
Anew and uncharted territory.
And
so ends
John's
apocalypse
and the
epic storyline of the whole Bible.
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