New Jerusalem - Revelation 21:9-27

Okay, we have your handout today, which is one single handout just for today. It has a one-page appendix item. So anyway, and oddly enough, a one-page appendix item on gates, which will talk about in a minute and otherwise six pages and it's just for today.

So that's to clarify after giving you three weeks all at once just so that we keep in pace here. One thing I'll note is that the first paragraph has a fragment in spite of all our efforts to catch things before we go to print. We've got a fragment there so I'll have to clean that up. I'll probably bring a Correction sheet next week so that you'll have a complete sentence.

Okay, we're going to start right in. This is verses 9 through 27 of chapter 21 of Revelation. This is in the New Jerusalem. And this is describing your future and my future. Okay? So this is not hypothetical, but very relevant. This is where we're going to be spending eternity. By the way, how much longer is eternity than the life we have here? A little bit longer, yeah. A little bit and a little bit and a little bit more, right? Verse 9, And then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke to me, saying, Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. Who is the bride, the wife of the Lamb?

This is the church. And an important distinction to make, because last week it says that the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven like a bride. But that's not the same as making a comparison to a bride who is all very beautiful and well adorned and all that. This is actually the statement that the bride, the wife of the Lamb, the church. And what we see here is a description that includes the church and then some. So it's the church and everything that is surrounding the church in the New Jerusalem. So the paragraph begins there, now we know explicitly that the bride, the wife of the Lamb, is the Church.

2 Corinthians 11-2, Ephesians 5-22 and 33. We also had a holy and blameless handout at the beginning of last month which showed kind of a more lengthy series of passages showing the relationship between Christ and the Church as a bride. That theme of Christ being The groom and the church being the bride is carried from the end of the Gospels on into these last chapters of Revelation. It's written of by the Apostle Paul extensively and by all the other apostles.

John finishes the job here with the last book of the New Testament and continues that theme. John himself is a part of the church, betrothed to be the bride, the wife of the Lamb. So he would be most interested in what the angel is about to show him. See, it's interesting, what the angel shows him is actually more than that, but it gives the context, eternal context of the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And here is, isn't this interesting, here's John who's looking at something of which he is to be a part. Of course, that's true of all the things we've seen in the heavenly scene and the new heavens and the new earth here. So, but John is about to see the bride, the wife of the Lamb, the glorified church, and much, much more.

This statement may sound similar to, but it's not the same as what we read in Revelation 21-2. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready for a bride adorned for her husband. And there begins the fragment. The fragment is supposed to be telling you that that verse in 21-2 is a comparison to a bride, but it's not the same as the bride, the wife of the Lamb.

Okay, verse 10. And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. And her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of crystal-clear jasper. Now, John writes about being in the Spirit, A few times in Revelation, and you've got the references there. Here are the references spelled out. What's interesting is those last two are when he is in the Spirit, but has an angel accompanying him.

In each case, however, the point to be made here is the definite article actually is not there. It's actually in Spirit. What does it mean by the definite article not being there? The focus is on the character of the state that he is in. He is in spirit as a character of the state that he's in, and he's consistent. Remember one of the things we said about interpreting Revelation? John's a consistent writer. Every time it's the same. In spirit is actually the way it's written in the original language. And what is this in spirit? What is that? Is that something that happens every Sunday when we get together here? What's different about being in spirit?

Yeah. Highly similar to being in Christ. Well, okay. I would suggest that there is a difference, and that because John is in a particular state of revelation, if you will, in other words, by a work of the Spirit, he is having things revealed to him that's exceptional, unusual. So it's not a positional statement. Being in Christ is something that every believer in the church age has. This is something that he himself is the one who only has it throughout the book. See the difference?

So John is in a special state of revelation. And here's something else that's interesting. He says it early in the book, and he says it very late in the book, and continues it in between. So John is making the point that he's having this special kind of revelation status given to him. Yes.

Now, John has about him everything about the Spirit that is true of us. The Holy Spirit has the same ministries. He is indwelt individually by the Holy Spirit. We distribute from time to time kind of a one page list that Hal had put together. of over 20 different ministries of the Holy Spirit. All those were true.

This was a special state that only John is described as having. And it's a special state of revelation for revealing things that the rest of us don't get revealed to us. Even in Revelation 10, Paul is still on earth and he's in the Spirit when he's In his particular case, this is more than just being in prayer, because he begins having these particular, specific revelations that were given to him.

How are these things revealed to us? John was told in chapter 1, verse 19, write, so that all the rest of us would know. what was specifically revealed to him. So would you say that Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, etc. were in a similar state? I think you would have to say that to the extent that you see other prophets having things revealed to them similarly, it would be a It would either be a similar or identical kind of revelation. They had something revealed to them that we ourselves don't get revealed. Let's take, for instance, here is John writing in much of Revelation, we said 150 verses about the heavenly scene, right?

In the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, where does Isaiah go? Isaiah goes into the heavenly scene. you would have to say that that's a similar kind of thing. And John actually responds similar to what Isaiah did. Remember Isaiah's response in Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah thought, whoa, I am in trouble.

I'm a human being and here I am in the heavenly scene with a perfect holy God. And John, when he steps into the heavenly scene, also has a similar sense of I'm not sure I understand everything here and he begins to act inappropriately. Remember one of the elders tells him, stop crying. Twice the angels had to tell him, don't worship me, I'm not God. He was kind of out of context and had kind of lost his bearings in some sense because heaven was such a very different kind of place. And so I think to answer your question, it is either very similar or identical. And it makes sense, especially when you can see instances like Isaiah 6, where here's Isaiah stepping into the heavenly scene in the whole chapter.

Okay, so here's the high mountain, not specified which one. John gives an extraordinary view of things. In our own day, we might compare John's high-altitude view with being in a jet at high altitude or on the top of a very high mountain. Before leaving Carson City, a friend and I went into one of the highest mountains in that area called Job's Peak. We stood up there and were just amazed how far you could see in all directions. Similar kind of thing if you get up in some of the... It's taller, you know, 14ers where you get a view here like just even driving up to Mount Evans.

You look out, boy, it's amazing what you can see. So here's John from a somewhat similar perspective here. And so what does he see? John could see things from this great high mountaintop that he would not have seen from down below. John gets another view of the New Jerusalem, the Holy City, coming down out of heaven from God.

He writes for our own benefit that this holy city is having the glory of God. He did not say had or would have, but present tense. In the tense of John's writing, right there as he's witnessing it, he says he's having. The glory of God is present and ongoing. As we said before, the glory of God is the radiant essence of who he is. This is something important to remember. What is the glory of God? We'll talk about glory to God in the highest. What is God's glory?

It is the radiant essence of who He is. When we say God's glory, we say the radiant essence of who He is. Why do I say radiant essence of who He is? Why should I say that? Why is that important or why would we know that? The radiant essence of who God is comes from, radiant refers to light, right?

And we have some explicit statements in the New Testament. God is love, God is truth, God is light. It is fundamental to God's character. What we have in this world is a created light that is a physical, comparable thing to the radiant essence of who He is. And what we're going to see pretty soon in this passage is that the whole New Jerusalem and the whole world is lit up by God Himself. It will even say, no longer any sun. You'll think, heaven sakes, everything's going to be dark. No. Why? Because of the radiant essence of who God is. The sun, the light that we have experienced, we come in and we turn on the lights. Why? It is a physical phenomenon comparable to who God is, the radiant essence of who he is.

Is this a different light from the sunlight? The sunlight is still a created light, isn't it? of whatever source, whether we have the Sun, whether we have stars, whether we have reflected light from the Sun off the Moon, whether we turn on a flashlight, whether we turn on the fluorescent lights here, in every case those are all created light sources and phenomena, right? In the New Heavens and New Earth there will be no need for any such things because you no longer need a created light. God himself will be the source of light.

There's one other thing, okay? There's one other thing, and that is that the present world that we're in, so this is something, you know, what was one of the first things that God created? He said, let there be light. Actually the sun was not created until the fourth day. But let there be light. So he created light before there was even a light source. One of the first things that God did was to create a physical entity that was comparable to who he is. Isn't that interesting? Before creating the sun and the stars or anything of that sort, he created the light before there was a light source.

It's interesting that many of the pagan religions tend to focus on the sun. You know, they have like Ra, the sun god, right? They will focus on the moon. And a lot of the Middle Eastern religions had Inanna, the goddess of the moon, or some variation on that. There was even, from early times, from Babylon, astrology, which points to the stars. All the different light sources, whether direct or reflective, were something that the pagans tended to focus on.

But what God did at the very first step is let there be light. He created the light without a source. Why? Who is the source, or where is the source of the light that he created? Himself! Yeah! See, we tend to think of light as a physical light source, but what's the first thing God does? He makes light where He Himself is the very source of it.

We can fail to understand the character of God's glory by not including radiance, by not including light in it. We have to understand that the radiant essence of who God is, that is His glory, that is Himself. Light is not just something created. It's not just something we perceive. It is who God is. It is His character, His radiance. Seeable light, yes.

However, the interesting thing is that it doesn't seem to require these physical eyes necessarily, although it's visible by physical eyes. Let me give you an example. When we think about it this time of year, here are the shepherds out in the field in Bethlehem, right?

An angel appears, and what's one of the first things that the angels always say when they show up? Don't be afraid. Why? Because they were something, if you had no idea what they were, you ought to be afraid. It's very fearful. What on earth is that intensely bright light which never shows up out here in the dark while I'm watching sheep? You know?

So one of the things the angels say from beginning to end of the Bible, don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. And then twice in the book of Revelation, here is an angel so bright that John begins to worship, thinking it's God. And the angel says, wait a minute, you haven't seen anything yet.

I'm just a created being. The human ability to distinguish between what is God's glory and what is a glory coming from a created being or created thing is limited. God's glory, whether emanating from him, or whether a being that he has created is something so awesome, it's off our scale of registration.

I wonder if this is the same kind of light that came from Moses when they said, cover your face or something. I would say so. Moses as a created being had light of such a character as Baal, this guy. We can't look at him. OK, let's look at the top of page 3, verse 13. Oh, I'm sorry. I skipped top of page 2, rather. Flipside. John immediately makes a comparison with precious stones. We're going to be reading quite a bit about precious stones in these next two chapters.

The description of the new heavens and new earth, John picks various precious stones to describe. It's like this and like that. to describe what the new heavens and new earth is like. And so we're going to be seeing that a lot. There's a few reasons why these descriptions of our eternal home include many precious stones. And we've got four points there. Precious stones are rare and valuable on earth now, but will be abundant and evident in this eternal home. What is rare and valuable now will be typical of our eternal home.

People go and search the earth and have big mining projects to try to find these things. Prospectors go and look for them and they'll just be everywhere. What's rare and valuable and takes great effort and people put out significant funds for will be just typical and everyday. Not that anything will be humdrum.

Number two, the precious stones for each of the tribes of Israel were something only the high priests wore. So these precious stones would picture Israel in communication with and in fellowship with God. In fact, let me show you some more shots here. There we go. Here's stones in the breastplate of the high priests. By the way, this is from a museum in Jerusalem. where the Temple Mount faithful have the various things ready for the Temple, ready to go. And it's like within a short distance, relatively speaking, of the Temple Mount itself. They're itching to go and ready to go with this stuff. So this is from that particular display. Here's some displays of gold and precious stones of various kinds.

3. Precious stones do not have light in and of themselves. Their brilliance and beauty and luster are there only as they reflect the light source, or refracted, or however you want to say it. As will be very clear, the Lord himself is the continuous and ever-abundant light source.

4. John points out that the precious stone is very costly. There can be no doubt that our eternal home, though totally free to us, has been given to us at a very high price. that price being the very blood of the Lamb. Verse 12 then has, it had a great and high wall with twelve gates and the gates twelve angels and names were written on them which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel. This number 12 keeps figuring into these chapters. We see it here in this passage. Revelation 21-12, gates, 12 gates, 12 angels, 12 tribes, 12 foundation stones, 12 names, 12 apostles, 12 gates again in verse 21, and 12 pearls.

So now he describes this great and high wall. We're actually going to get a little more detail on that in a little bit here. One of the things I'd like to have you work on there is an appendix. It's the seventh page on your handout. There's an appendix there. It's a one-page appendix on the meaning of gates. It's the one that has a picture of the gate of Damascus.

Like that. At least it's similar. What you have is a picture from 1870. By the way, I like the old photograph because they're put there before all kinds of gunk has been put up at the various sites. Jacob's Well, for example, was recognizable as probably close to what it was during the time of Christ. But now you've got to go through all sorts of signs and pay to see it and everything else. I like these old pictures.

At any rate, look at the gates in the Bible. To possess the gate of a city was to possess the entire city. Next bullet down, many cities did not have a designated marketplace within the city, but instead had their marketplace around the gates. Official transactions were often done at city gates. Kings and royalty often addressed people of varying rank and status in the city gates. Legal cases and judgments were often brought down to the officials and elders at the city gates. Judgments were commonly carried out at the city gates.

They said, okay, we're going to do this to you. That's what happened. Right there. Some larger cities had temporary prisons at the gates only to hold someone until the officials or elders could hear the case. Judgment did not include more time in the temporary prison, as we do almost universally now.

To sit at the city gate meant to be honored. And to enter the city gates often meant citizenship. To lift up the heads of the gates was an expression for opening the gates and rejoicing and welcome to someone. And conversely, gates that sink are an expression of hopelessness, despair, and the defeat of the city. Now, looking at those, which ones of those do you think apply to the gates of New Jerusalem?

First, third, and fifth. What's that? First, third, and fifth. You said first, third, and fifth. Possess the gate of the city was to possess the city entirely. Okay. And the third one, the official transactions often done at city gates. The fifth one here, legal cases and judgments often brought before officials and elders at the city gates. Okay. Any other thoughts? Citizenship, yes. And that's one thing. Where's our citizenship? In the heavens. Is that going to be here? Yeah, it will be.

To sit at the gate meant to be honored? So it's interesting, this gates thing is not just some rather meaningless physical statement. It's something with actually a lot of significance and importance. So the fact that these gates are here and what happens at the gates is of value.

We see a pattern in this verse that continues in chapters 21 and 22, that being ongoing reference to the number 12. I'm sure you've noticed that Israel is mentioned here. We'll get back to that in a minute. It is important, so don't lose track of it. Now we'll go to the top of page 3. Verse 13.

There were three gates on the east, and three gates on the north, and three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. This pattern of three gates on each side also reminds us of Israel, since every time Israel camped out in the desert, they were camped in precisely the same configuration. See, often, if we think of Israel out in the desert, we just kind of think of this mass, but they actually had this organization that you see right here. Three tribes on each of the four sides, or a total of twelve. And that was what they were commanded to do. And, so interesting. Now, let's ask this question.

If a Gentile were to believe and want to come in to the area around the tabernacle, who would they have to go through? They would have to go through Judah, but essentially they would have to come through Israel, right? Whatever direction they came from, they would ultimately have to go through Israel to get into this tabernacle. So what does God do in this New Heavens and New Earth and the New Jerusalem?

He makes it so that the Gentiles, and we're going to see that very shortly here, the Gentiles, in order to enter the New Jerusalem, come through Israel. Just like we see in this pattern here in the Old Testament. But we'll get on to talk more about Israel in just a minute, so don't lose track of it.

Verse 14, And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. So the walls will have twelve foundation stones, and on those twelve stones are the twelve names of the twelve apostles. These twelve are the apostles of the Lamb.

So in the last two chapters of Revelation, our Lord is not called Christ any longer, which means Messiah, or Anointed One. the name of the one who reigned throughout the millennium. Instead, he is called Jesus or Lord Jesus, but most often, the Lamb. Isn't it interesting, what kind of a Lamb is he? In what way was Christ the Lamb? In what way is he the Lamb? The sacrificial Lamb. Isn't it interesting that as we step into this new heavens and new earth, Christ retains that identity of the Lamb, the one who was sacrificed for us. Isn't that interesting? We will always see him as the one who was sacrificed for us. Why would that be? Why is that so important? Would that continually be brought up? I wasn't going to answer, I was going to ask. Okay.

Reading through Leviticus and you have the burnt offering, the fellowship offering, the wave offering, and all these other different offerings. So which one, was he all of them? I would, as a generalization, I would say yes. I think particularly, all of this is prefaced by the Passover lamb.

And I can be very specific about that. Because Paul said that, Christ our Passover in 1 Corinthians. So that's very clear. So I think, and what you find is the Levitical system was put in place after the Exodus. So the Passover lamb is really the ultimate picture. Although as you go through the sacrificial system, they're ultimately other individual pictures of Christ as the Lamb, but the Passover Lamb is the one most explicit and most clear. So you're talking about the blood on the doorpost?

Yes. I think it's important to recognize it's not that we're going to remember all the sins. I don't think we will. I don't think that's what's going to be forefront in our minds and thoughts, because no more mourning or crying or pain. That's not going to be the point.

But what we will remember is He loved and He gave. He loved and He gave. Ephesians chapter 5, Galatians chapter 2, He loved and He gave. He loved and He gave. John 3, for God so loved the world that He gave this only begotten Son. He loved and He gave. There are Lamb, the one who loved and gave, who for the joy set before him endured the cross.

That will ever be before us. Always. There will not be an eternity, any moment that that fades away. I think the magnitude of it will grow like a crescendo that never reaches its peak. Look, there are the Lamb. who loved and gave. You can imagine John the Baptist just kind of trying to give the Jews a glimpse. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Twice he says that in John chapter 1. We're going to be conscious and aware, not of the sins. No, I think those will be long faded. Not of the pains and agonies of this world. Nah, not that.

But this is the one who loved and gave. Loved and gave. Not only that, but we of the Church will look and say, we were also united with Him, identified with Him, or as Paul puts it in Romans 6 and in Galatians chapter 3, we were baptized into Him. Into the Lamb. The one who loved and gave. The Apostles are a foundation.

That's, by the way, something we're going to look at again in the main service, but in Ephesians 2.20, the Apostles are a foundation. Hebrews 11, 8-16 also says, By faith Abraham was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. All these, that is, those listed in Hebrews chapter 11, including Abraham, died in faith. without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, but as it is, they desire a better country that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be their God, for He has prepared a city for them.

This is it. This is it. We're reading about it now. Page 4 there. Amazingly, the Lord takes mere human beings, these apostles. Imagine, here's this guy. He's just a fisherman. How many of you have ever seen Lake Tahoe? The Sea of Galilee is similarly shaped and about two-thirds of the size. So here's this lake. That's where Peter and James and John and a few of the other disciples were from. They were just fishermen. And they didn't catch big fish. And their boats weren't big. Those guys.

Isn't it amazing what it just takes playing everyday people. Imagine here is Simon the Zealot. This guy is a Jewish terrorist. And he says, I'll take that one and make him one of my disciples. Or on the opposite end, I often wonder and shake my head and chuckle at who the Lord might have sent out two by two. Imagine, here's Simon the Zealot who hates the Romans to the place where he would put his life on the line to kill them. And here's Matthew who collects taxes for the Romans. And wouldn't it be funny if the Lord had put those two together? We don't know that that happened, but I chuckle at the thought.

And those guys, yeah. The fishermen. The tax collectors kind of off at the edge of the empire in some rather unimportant but troublesome place. Yeah, those guys. These twelve. Here's Simon, the once loud-mouthed and at times cowardly fisherman. That one. That guy. Imagine, who's writing this account that we're reading here this morning? John.

Was he one of them there? Does he make a big point of the fact that his name is one of those? Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Doesn't make a big point out of it at all. But it's interesting. He was there. It was one of the ones. Right? There's another point we've been making about Israel here, before we're done today, and we've come to that time. The point is this, now that this new Jerusalem is being revealed, we see that though the eternal home for Israel and the church is the same, Israel and its tribes are still separately identified from the church and its founders. Both Israel and the Church have a place as part of the people of God, but the identity of this new Jerusalem, this eternal home for us, is to have Israel and its twelve tribes as separately identified from the Church and its foundational apostles.

Yeah? So in other words, when it talks about the breaking down of the walls, which Pauline letter is that? Ephesians chapter 2. Okay. So basically he's You still have the church, you still have the Jewish nation. What you have continuously, and it starts in the book of Genesis, is you have the Gentiles identified as a people, and by the way, there's a supplement that I handed out previously, and it's the three people groups into eternity, and that identifies the Gentiles, and then Israel is the second body, through Abraham, broken into a different line. And then the third one is the Church, which is a new creation consisting of Jews and Gentiles, those saved from Acts 2 to the Rapture, as a third body. And the Church consists of Jews and Gentiles, but it is a new creation.

The wall that you're talking about, remember, was the dividing wall, which was the law. And he put it out of commission, is what he essentially did. In fact, we're going to see that same word this morning in the passage. Catergeo is what it is. To do away with, to put out of commission, the law for the sake of the church. Yes.

What is interesting is, what's the ethnic origin of the apostles? Jewish, right? But they are, and were those apostles there in the book of Acts? They were the foundational apostles. All of Jewish ethnic origin, matter of fact, something else, they are going to have, those apostles will have a relationship with Israel.

And what is it? They will judge the 12 tribes. So there will be a relationship there, but it's again separate, separate entity. They don't just meld in with them and lose their identity. What scripture continues to teach is that there are these separate peoples of God. Are they all people of God? Yes, that's what that supplemental handout spells out. But Gentiles, Israel, as two ethnically oriented and originated groups that will be saved as Gentiles and Jews, and then the Church, which is a combination of those two. And those who are saved from Acts 2 to the time when the Lord takes the church home to be with him, the rapture, have primarily a church identity, not their ethnic origin as their identity. Okay, verse 15.

The one who spoke with me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city and its gates and its wall. The city is laid out as a square and its length is as great as its width. He measured this city with the rod, 1500 miles, its length and width and height are equal. And he measured this wall, 72 yards, according to human measurements, which are also angelic measurements. Very interesting.

So here's the one who spoke to John, this angel. It was the one of the seven who had been given the task of pouring out the last seven plagues in the tribulation period. This angel has a measuring rod. You may recall from Revelation chapter 11, or not. But the first seven verses, John was given the task of measuring the old Jerusalem. Let's take a look at some of the contrast between that measurement and this one that John describes here. So John measures both of them in chapter 11 and chapter 21, ten chapters later.

The Greek word for the rod that he measured with in chapter 11 was a rabdos. This one is a Kalamas, and there's a reason for the difference. The Rapdos was a judge's judgment rod. This one here is not that. The material is likely made of reed in chapter 11. Here it's made of gold. The measure was John in the old earthly Jerusalem. Here the measure is an angel. The purpose for measuring was for judgment, in chapter 11, and here, simply to get the dimensions. No judgment is involved. Why is no judgment involved here?

It's already occurred. Pardon? It's already occurred. It's already occurred, that's right. It's already happened. Yeah? It's coming after the great tribulations. Yeah. All the judgments, remember we had a summary of all the judgments that take place? They're all done. You don't want to know how many times you're going to get judged in this new heaven's new earth. You want to know how many times you're going to get judged? Eight. Not happening. You're done. Isn't that cool? Yeah, all done.

The structural life, there are seven years for this tribulation period in Jerusalem. This one is eternal. Everything we build on this earth tends to have a lifetime to it. Some things last a long time, some don't. But this one doesn't have a lifetime to it. The old Jerusalem was what got measured, now the new.

Something else, and I'll need to get the slide up for you. Here is an example of a measuring rod where they would take the measuring rod out and it had a hinge so you could get more length. That was their idea of a tape measure. So take it and fold it. So here's a measuring rod. They would make it out of bone for shorter lengths. Longer lengths were made either of wood or of bulrush reeds. We have no instance either in writing anywhere else or from archaeology of a gold measuring rod.

This is the only time. Why would this thing be made of gold? Why gold? It's a common material in there. Yeah, first of all, this is the common material in heaven, not something rare, hard to come by, most people never see it, that kind of thing. So yeah, it's the common material. Why else? Symbol of purity? Symbol of purity, yes. That would be another reason.

Something that doesn't change. These measurements are going to last. This is going to count not just for some period of decades or centuries even. It's going to last. Symbol of purity. Why else? Value. Value, yes. Very important. You measure something with a gold measuring rod when it's of high value. Which is, I mean, they never had any measuring rods that we have any record of that were made of gold. So this is like phenomenal value.

Okay? Yeah, good. Those are all important and good points. Question? Okay. This city, it comes down. Yes. We talked about it before. And you said that it may not come down all the way to the earth. Now, I have several questions. I don't want to take up time. No, that's still a valuable question.

The question I have, okay, some people Here is why I think the pyramid idea, while not completely off track, is probably not what John intended. One is that you don't really have any, you know, he's modeling this after kind of the ancient city structure, where you have, you know, here's walls and here's gates and that kind of thing. And his description of the gates and the walls and all that wouldn't quite be fitting a pyramid. We're not aware of any pyramid that was quite structured in that way.

Plus he does give a thickness of it, which is while quite thick, wouldn't quite structurally fit. it's above the earth because if it's like the sun, then the earth must rotate and the sun must be a constant. Here's the interesting thing, and we actually have in the text, but it's obviously, you know, we're not going to get time to look at it all. Here is a key thing. It says it comes down out of heaven. It doesn't actually say this thing touches the earth. It doesn't say that it doesn't either. But it comes down out of heaven. But here's why it is either on the earth or very close.

And that is something we're going to see later on. And that is the nations bring the glory and honor. The kings of the nations bring the glory and honor of nations into it. might have a golden gate bridge. Yes, yeah. You know there may be some access you know that allows a ramping up but I don't see it suspended way above because people are going in and out of it all the time. Here's one thing. Think about the ancient cities.

At nighttime what do they do with the gates? You close them. As a matter of fact, they would even close the gates and put big bars across and all that. Why? You don't want some army attacking in the night when you can't see them and can't respond. You want to get some kind of protection. So what they would do is when the sun goes down, the gates closed. That was just standard operating procedure from ancient times into the Middle Ages. Night time, close the gates. Bar it up. Lock this thing up. At best they would have a small gate in the middle of the larger gates at times for single person access.

Any other question? This is the new heaven and the new earth. Yes. So the old one has passed away. That's correct. So a lot of things could be different. Yes. A lot of things could be different. And of course when we get there we'll say, of course now I understand. What we see here is certainly revelation enough to get some, in some cases, more specific understanding than others. But yeah, it's possible we get there and be a little surprised by some of the things. Oh, I always envisioned this, you know, and it ends up being something a little different. But what's communicated there is clear.

Here is this wall measurement, 72 yards or 216 feet thick. That's thick. It's about two-thirds of a football field thick. Pretty thick. Now, in spite of the thickness, here's the other interesting thing. Very thick, but transparent. Why do we say that? We're not going to have time to get to it. Very thick, but transparent. So if we have walls here, you can't see through them even though they're less than a foot thick. Here's 216 feet thick and you're going to see through them. That's a different kind of material.

The light will pass through them because the Lord is its light. The Lord is its light. Why? His glory is the radiant essence of who he is. Radiant meaning heat? Pardon? Will that also mean heat? Well, it's very interesting. It doesn't go into any detail describing the heat aspects of it. I assume that it's not going to be an issue. Whether that's because things are not heat sensitive or whether heat will have some different character than what we know now, I don't know. I doubt we're going to walk around feeling like, boy, it's chilly tonight. I doubt that the new heavens and the new earth will have any debates about whether global warming is going on. Okay. Last question. Yeah. Okay.

So the nations go into this new world order, it's called, okay? So this is the new heaven and the new earth. The old earth has passed away. So I can understand how the church gets there, because we get new bodies and we go through the process. Yes. But the nations don't. So how do the nations... Resurrection. Remember there's resurrection.

They stay alive and they walk into, according to Isaiah, right? They walk into, after the millennial period of time, they walk into this new, whatever you call it. If it's a totally new heaven and earth, how do they get there? I think what you have to say is the Lord's getting rid of all the physical material that's here, right? And essentially people are transferred over. And here's an interesting thing.

When Jesus was resurrected, could He, as the firstborn of the new creation, Could he have been of new creation material walking this planet? Might be, yeah. New creation material walking this planet, right? Also when Adam was created, God placed him into the Garden of Eden, right? Yeah, and God placed him there. But let's think about this. Here's Christ, first born of the new creation, and then what does John say when we go to be with the Lord? like him, having new creation material bodies. So what you see is the Lord, from Christ's resurrection on, the Lord is actually beginning to build the new creation, starting with the people who were populated.

But that's not the nations. Yes, however, the ethnic Jews who are saved by faith and the ethnic Gentiles who are saved by faith, both those groups apart from the church, are also resurrected at the end of the tribulation period, the beginning of the millennium. So there is that period too. In that resurrection, we have every indication, and here's Israel showing up, we have every indication the Lord is taking those people and he's not starting over, he is transferring them over into the new heavens and new earth. But they will have the same body of flesh. The one that they were resurrected with. Yes, they do.

And that's an interesting question, something we didn't get time to cover, but is in fact something the Bible does not directly address. Actually, we did cover it briefly. The Bible does not say what happens to those who die or live to the end of the millennium. What we can assume And it's just that. What we can assume is the Lord will deal with them similarly. But the Bible actually does not address that. I can't find any passage that addresses it directly.

There will, however, be an opportunity from Revelation because the Lord Jesus Christ himself will be the one there on planet Earth to tell them what's not revealed to us in Scripture. There will be babies born during the millennium. There will actually also be people that die and there will be people that live all the way to the end in these physical bodies. So you'll have all those different instances and the Bible does not directly answer the question of what happens to them. But I think two things.

One is we can see it's probably something similar to what is revealed in Scripture, one. And two, Christ himself, since he will reign on the earth, will have the opportunity to reveal to those people, personally and directly, what will happen with them. Which may be the reason it's not revealed to us. Isn't that interesting? No. Okay. I think we've run out of time. The second buzzer was Frank.

Lord, we do thank you. Just as we look at this, we're towards the end of the book, and yet these are amazing and astounding things, things about which, while much is revealed, we could still wonder about many details. We trust you have full answers and knowledge and capacity to handle those details and to reveal them to the appropriate people at the right time. We just thank you for what you have revealed to us and shown us because you love us forever. We just pray in Jesus' name. Amen.