The Holy City: What eternal life looks like.

All that has gone before has been prelude. The vision of the New Jerusalem is the message John wanted to start with. It is the eternal life of which Jesus spoke to the hundreds who followed him about. While John saw the being in his vision, one "like a son of man," he was instantly transported to this "place."

The Holy City is not a glimpse of heaven, or whatever you call the life that awaits us after we experience bodily death. It is a description of that life which exists for us right now, wherever we are, if we but want it and claim it.

John was still in prison, but after the vision he was in the city of eternal life.

Perhaps there is just the smallest amount of doubt in the minds of some of you regarding my contention that all of the scenes in Revelation after the first one are literary devices. If so, I think I can convince you that at least John's description of the Holy City is very plainly a literary vision. It couldn't possibly be an actually-seen vision.

And if you can eventually accept that even one of the subsequent "visions" of John is a literary device, why not others? Why not all but the first?

And here is how you will proceed. We will take a very close and careful look at the Holy City as described by John, and we will see very plainly how it could not have been "seen," except in the mind's eye.

Then we will look at what the details of that vision tell us about eternal life, if those details are indeed literary devices. By the fruit of the vision we shall know its nature.

But first, now that we have stopped denying the reality of wrath, now that we have repented of our reliance upon the world, let us hear the Good News, as told by Pastor John. Revelation. Chapter twenty-one.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

Are you remembering to hear this PERSONALLY? Who was the last person we discussed being prepared as a bride?

5He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." 6He said to me, "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. 7He who overcomes will inherit all of this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.

Now, having read the earlier chapters in a certain way, we perhaps hear this version of the Gospel a little differently than we had before.

If the young man comes up to Pastor John and asks, "Reverend, (people do call pastors 'Reverend' for some reason) what must I do to have eternal life?" he would have received this answer:

"Why son, you simply have to be thirsty to have the water of life."

That's an earth-shattering response, but it is wasted on most of us. We simply can't believe that there is no more requirement than to desire it deeply. Yes, I'd say that "deep desire" accurately describes being thirsty. Have you ever been really thirsty? I rest my case.

Most of us insist upon there being a guard at the pearly gate; St. Peter, we are told. He must be there. Ten thousand jokes can't be wrong. You have to have been good to get in. Don't you?

One thing is certain. If we are in a mood to argue the point, we aren't thirsty yet. The next words are for us.

8But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.

Until we get thirsty enough to want to escape the endless cycles of wrath, we are thrown back into the lake of fire for another round of the great tribulation.

But now we look closely at what John wants us to know about eternal life - the Holy City. The description of it begins at verse nine. I'll summarize, you follow along in your Bible.

As we see it coming down out of heaven from the vantage point of a great mountain, we observe that it is a great, huge cube. It is as high as it is square. This is important later.

We can see that it has twelve gates, three to a side. It also had twelve foundations. On the twelve gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the twelve foundations had written on them the names of the twelve apostles.

So far so good, if we just leave it there. We can see it as it is now. But John won't let it rest here. He ruins our nice neat picture by giving us the scale of the thing.

It is 12,000 stadia in length. Well, that's a nice symbolic number, but you must realize that in miles, it comes out to 1,400 miles to a side!

Do you know how far away we would have to be to see the whole thing if it were that big? Let's put it this way. How far away would we have to be to see the entire contiguous United States? It's about the same amount of area. Yep, you'd have to see it from space. There is no mountain high enough on earth to give us that kind of vantage.

John said he was taken to a mountain top to see the Holy City, so it was a "heavenly" mountain top, we'll say. How high would it have to be? The Holy City is a cube, remember? So it is 1,400 miles high. That's pretty high, but I wonder if you realize just how high.

If this cube of a city consisted of a number of floors, or stories, it would look like a big apartment building. Let's say that it had 1,400 stories, each a mile high. Remember the space shuttle? When it is in orbit, it would crash into the Holy City somewhere in the third floor.

Now are we getting an idea of the scale? If the Holy City were on earth, we could get a good look at it from a mountain on the moon.

How about the gates? Looking at the city, from wherever we have to do so, we can see the gates. From this distance, how huge would the gates have to be for us to see them? They would have to be so large that when we approached them, they would virtually disappear from our view. The top and sides would be so far away we couldn't see them. No wonder they are never closed!

Are you beginning to get the idea that the description of the Holy City is not intended to tell us what it looks like, but rather, what it is like?

So. Eternal Life. What is it like, according to what John portrays?

We already have an idea of its "shape." It is four sided, which reminds us of the four living creatures around the throne. Physical creation encompasses our existence with God. It no longer stands between us and God, either as enlightener, as it was in the original scene, or as barrier, as it was in the series of sevens.

Each of the twelve gates is a great pearl. Now, if we were still trying to insist that this was a literal vision, we would have to ask, "Now, how can a pearl, even a gigantic one, be made into a gate?" Luckily, we know that John is telling us other things as he describes the City.

Jesus told a story to try to explain what the kingdom of heaven is like. He said it is like a man who was searching for pearls. He found one of great value, and sold all he had to be able to buy that one pearl.

No Christian who hears that each gate of the city is a single great pearl could fail to connect the gate to this story of Jesus. Could they?

John tells us much about the value of these portals to the Holy City by such a simple reference. If we will read the rest of his description this same way, we might learn some things.

Twelve foundations are named after the twelve apostles. What is eternal life built upon? The thinking of that day (and ours too, according to the horoscope in the paper) is that there are twelve different types of humans, each with their own birthstone. The apostles of the Lamb numbered twelve as a matter of completeness, and the foundations of the city are the work that was begun by the Lamb, and are broad enough to include all types of people.

We can draw the same type of conclusion from the twelve gates which are named after the twelve tribes. The tribes represent all types of peoples, and there is a gate for any type.

Taken together, the 24 represent the elders in the original scene of the perfect creation.

The streets of gold kind of speak for themselves.

So far, we have been dealing with chapter twenty-one, from verses one through twenty one. We have seen so far in the description, the four living creatures and the elders, represented and present in our experience of eternal life. Where are God and the lamb?

They are next. There are no places of worship in the city, because God and the Lamb are the the temple. We can hear the prophet Joel here. Well, at least I can. Decide for yourself, starting at Joel 2:28.

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. 29Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my spirit in those days.

What do you think? We all have to choose for ourselves, but for me, when I read the above, it says the same thing as when I hear that in the living of life eternal, I will not need a temple.

But while we are looking at this passage from Joel, let's keep reading for just a bit.

30I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. 31The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. 32And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved;

Does this remind you a little of what John described at the blowing of trumpets and pouring out wrath?

Yes, we interrupt this discussion of the Holy City to return once again to the subject of wrath and judgement. Only in our minds and on paper can these things be separated. The reality of eternal life can never be apart from those very necessary realities which lead to it. But when we are putting ideas on paper, it is very difficult to present them as anything but separate. So, I have to keep interrupting like this.

Recently I saw a television "special" on the Revelation of John. As such things go, it was fairly well done. I have one point of disagreement with it which I mist deal with here.

John was portrayed as an extreme religionist of his day, who thirsted after the blood of the dark forces; an itinerant preacher who produced graphic scenes of torture and destruction to frighten Christians into keeping to his idea of the pure faith.

You can see him that way if that is how you look.

I look to John as a pastor, and I see a pastor. He was one who painted his canvases with brush and pigment from hundreds of places in his scripture - our Old Testament.

But while he used the language of the old prophecies, he faithfully transformed them to be fit mediums with which he could communicate the new message he was given to pass on. He conformed to the standard that Jesus established when he said that he came not to change, but to fulfill.

I will not take space here for an exhaustive list of examples of this fulfilling use which John made of the old prophets' words. Look them up yourself.

Go to a particularly graphic description and note the Old Testament source that will be listed in the margin of many Bibles. Look up the reference and compare. See what John did.

Even in the places that people point to as signs of the end of the earth, John takes care to tell us that only one-third or one-fourth of the world will be affected.

John doesn't foretell the end of the world. He foretells its salvation. It is our experience of this new life which we are looking at now, painted for us with the brush of Joel, Micah, Isaiah, and scores of others. Painted on the canvas of the Holy City.

We are not speaking here of a cloistered existence apart from the rest of the world. Still in chapter twenty-one, hear the Good News.

23The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.

The passage and the chapter end with the assertion that even though the gates are always open, nothing impure will ever enter. What keeps them out? Their own lack of thirst, which is the impurity. Life for us has been adulterated, watered down by imitation water, and we have become satisfied with it. Only when we thirst for something more do we recognize what we have been settling for (wrath), and decide we have had enough of that (repentance) and come out of Babylon, subject ourselves to the examination of the great physician Christ (judgement), and gladly undergo the treatment (sanctification - the refining fire).

Somewhere during this process, we discover that we have passed into eternal life.

But where are we in John's picture of the Holy City? We are spoken of next, in chapter twenty-two.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city and his servants will serve him.

There we are! Servants, right? But...I sort of thought we/I might rate a little more of a mention than that.

The whole passage has been about us.

What was our only requirement to go in? Thirst for the water of life. What is located right by the river of that water? The tree of life; that's you and me, brother; you and me, sister. The tree of life.

Need convincing?

The tree of life bears twelve kinds of fruit, one for each month. The association of twelve with the people of God has been spoken of in these pages. In the drama about the two witnesses testifying in the streets of Jerusalem, they are referred to as the two olive trees.

And when we are referred to as the bride of Christ by Paul, what adjective does he apply to us? Fruitful.

When we are told that the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations, I think of the healing hands of Jesus, and those of the early church. The hallmarks of Jesus' ministry were healing and teaching. To me, the tree of life is us, when we are living life itself, life eternal.

We began this study asking the question, and only half in jest, "Where's the beast?" We found evidence that the beast is us, or in us when we allow it. We might recall that Jesus identified Satan as being in Peter when he looked right at Peter and said, "Get you behind me, Satan."

But that is only half of the point to that interaction. Jesus had also called Peter blessed, and the cornerstone of all that was to follow.

We need to continually remind ourselves that we are at one and the same time, the throne of the beast, and the tree of life. And we need to continually remind ourselves that even though the foregoing might be true, the two possibilities are not evenly balanced.

To think of ourselves as the fulcrum of two opposite and equally balanced possibilities is to commit the error of dualism. Life is not a battle between good and evil. Our battle is internal, and the evil is of our own allowing.

Twice, in the pages of Revelation, the forces of good and the forces of evil face each other to do battle. Neither time results in fighting. The evil side just goes away.

The beast only has power as long as we allow some of ours to be used. As soon as we stand and say, "No," his power is gone.

A final word needs to be said about John's final warning, or instruction. In verses eighteen and nineteen of chapter twenty-two, John warns any hearers of the prophecy of this book, Revelation, against adding anything to the words of the book, or taking any of them away.

When I discuss these matters with those who are locked in to a particular type of understanding of what the Revelation means, I am often accused of adding to the words of the book.

In all honesty and humility, let me suggest, as quietly and kindly as I can, that if this seems to you to be the case, perhaps you are taking words away by inattention to some or prejudice toward others.

The only way any of us can work with Revelation is to continue to press for understanding, having asked for the aid and guidance of the Holy Spirit. As we do so, any violation of John's rule cited above will be brought to our attention very forcefully...by the Holy Spirit.

But any who feel the need to "speak for God" in this matter to warn another that they are in error, come dangerously close to judging.

I had a seminary professor once who said, "Anything you can't laugh at has become an idol for you." Over the years I have come to agree.

Perhaps you don't feel like laughing at Revelation or any other scripture. At least, for the sake of avoiding making an idol of our holy scripture, you can practice, at the very least, a sense of playfulness regarding scripture.

Jesus joked about God, and encouraged us to address the Creator as, "Daddy." We might allow ourselves the same privilege regarding God's word.

Blessings and peace.

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