The New Jerusalem; part 2

The New Jerusalem

Part 2

By Richard P. Joseph

So, what is the New Jerusalem?  Let’s back up and take a look at Revelation 21:1;

21 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.

Now let’s look at the next verse;

2 Then I, John,[a] saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

My question is this; are these two things the same?  They are certainly related but they may have their own place.  Is it possible that the first verse alludes to the new world order that occurred at the consummation and the second verse is the heavenly realm?  The first verse appears to indicate that the Old Covenant has come to a close and the New Covenant has begun.  Related to that is that the old temple system is obsolete but the new temple system is now in effect but remains in the unseen realm.  I also believe that there was a cosmological shift that now allows Christians to access the throne of God in a more direct and functional manner than what occurred with the old temple cultus.  The new temple, which is built on the foundation of the apostles but maintains a continuum with the old testament scriptures shows us that God is indefinite but is now more accessible to the entire world than it once was under the old “heavens & earth”.  This brings me to the functionality of the Christian way.  I believe fruitfulness and functionality are some of the main attributes of Christianity.  One way you can inspect fruit is by how functional or productive something is.  Everything Jesus touches is fruitful and bountiful.  He gives life to dead things.  He gives life to dead marriages, he gives life to lost souls, he produces vibrant societies, he gives life where there was only death.  This is why preterists should be among the most vibrant people on the planet.  We are not waiting for the earth to be burned up and destroyed while we tuck our tails between our legs and sit idle while the homosexuals and the Muslims rule the earth.  It should be quite the opposite.  Christians should walk in victory over all other entities on this planet.  We should be the ones ruling with justice, love and honesty.  It is our duty to be victorious, not to be cowards just sitting back and watching our society go to pot.  We have the power to do it but all I hear are pastors telling their flocks to sit and wait for the big Jesus to come in the sky and destroy the earth.  Jesus already did his part, he is now waiting for us to do ours.  That is what “faith” is really about.  He is with us and wants to lead us to victory but nobody is listening.  Faith requires action on “our” part.  We are living in the new heaven and earth but we act like we are sitting in a jail cell waiting for someone to rescue us.  Folks, we have been rescued by the blood of the lamb, now get up and get busy!  

So, I believe the new heaven and new earth are what replaced the old system.  Look at 2 Peter 3:5-7;   5 For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, 6 by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. 7 But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

Peter says that the old world perished by water.  So how come there is still life on the earth if it was wiped out?  The reason there is still life on earth is because, even though much life was lost, the real goal was to wipe out corruption, not the earth.  The “world system” of evil was wiped out, not the earth necessarily.  So when Peter talks about his current earth being burned up, he is not talking about the earth but rather the “evil world arrangement”.  This is the corruption that the Jews turned the old law into.  This old system was vanquished to make room for the everlasting kingdom of Christ.  Paul goes to great lengths to explain this point of the old system coming to an end in order to make room for the new covenant.  I would quote him but all you need to do is read any of his letters and you will be inundated with the message of the new heavens and earth.  

So, if that is the new heavens and earth, what is the New Jerusalem?  

The old Jerusalem was a physical place that was the epicenter of Judaism.  It was the one place on earth where the true God was supposed to be represented.  YHWH was to be defined by only one group of people so as to prove his path to the Messiah.  If anyone on the earth could just come up with some religion then nothing would be defined at all therefore God had to make a covenant with a person (Abraham) and a people (the Jews) in order to demonstrate his majesty to the world. That prevents any other person (such as Muhammad, Hare Krishna, Buddha etc) from ever making any claim to the true God.  The old Jerusalem was proof that man absolutely could not be obedient to God.  The New Jerusalem is the place where God himself has rescued us from ourselves.  It is a real place although imagery is all we can understand.  I believe the New Jerusalem is a description of the church on earth and our cosmological interaction with the heavenly realm.  We believers are the true bride so the description of the New Jerusalem is of the true believers.  The one passage that has always stumped me was Revelation 21:1b where is says “and there was no more sea”.  There are probably as many explanations of this as there are commentaries.  Here is one from Matthew Henry’s Commentary;   There will be no sea; this aptly represents freedom from conflicting passions, temptations, troubles, changes, and alarms; from whatever can divide or interrupt the communion of saints.   

I am not sure I even go along with that except to say that the part about dividing might have some truth to it.   A sea usually divides one piece of land from another, sometimes by great distances and has much obstacles that need to be overcome to cross it.  That is why I am going to suggest that the “sea” may be the gulf between man and God.  I am convinced that this chasm has been bridged by Jesus Christ and we can now access the spiritual kingdom of God from the earth after AD 70.  That is why I say there was a cosmological shift that occurred at the consummation of the age.  That is why the New Jerusalem really does remain in the unseen realm but we should be interacting with it even now as it is operational on earth as it is in heaven.  I cannot possibly give all of my thoughts in this short blog piece but I hope these small ideas will lead us to a better understanding of how the bride is now interacting with the king and how the bride will be with the groom for eternity as well.