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"What is the most exciting experience in your life?
"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."
Imagine a new heaven, a new earth, and no sea, nothing to keep people apart. Imagine Satan gone forever. In Revelation 21 we don't have to imagine, we are permitted with the help of the apostle John to see all this and more. John gazes into eternity as God's plan of salvation finally runs its course. The King of kings has reigned over the world for one thousand years and everyone has received their just reward. John stares into the eternal state beyond the struggles of human history. With John we see that God has made a new setting for the now glorified human race, an earth free from the scars of the rebellion Satan inspired. This need for a new creation of heaven and earth is sensed throughout the New Testament. The apostle Paul says there's a new creation in those who are in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), which is in tension with their own earthly bodies and the rest of creation (Rom 8:18-22). Because of this he can say, "We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Cor 4:18). Peter expresses this as looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness" (2 Pet 3:13). Now in Revelation we get a picture of that happening as God says, "I am making everything new!" (Rev. 1:5).
Some say this will be a restored heaven and earth. The old will be purified, but not destroyed. In fact, the real issue for them is moral purification, not physical renewal, although such restoration must be included. What mankind was lost before when driven out of Eden will now be realized in a return to a perfect world.
Yet, the apostle John is told the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. And Peter wrote, "The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare...That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat" (2 Pet 3:10,12). In other words, the heavens and earth are so polluted that what is needed is something like the Genesis flood, destruction, and re-creation, but this time the destruction is done by fire, not water. Thus, while the goal is moral purification of the world, the moral and the physical are so intertwined that this requires a major physical overhaul, one so extreme that it's called a new creation.
This new heaven and new earth will have a new city. God's city. A new Jerusalem. "And I saw the Holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband (Revelation 21:2 NIV). This city comes straight out of heaven. The city we are going to live in forever is not of our building or our doing. God is the architect, the builder, and the interior decorator of this city. This is the promise Jesus made when He said to his disciples, "I am going there to prepare a place for you," (John 14:3). This is the result of His work.
It is a beautiful city because it is "Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." We all love weddings, don't we, especially when the bride makes her entrance at the beginning and comes down the aisle for everyone to see her? There has never been a more beautiful city. That's why she is called a bride. I've done a lot of weddings and I can honestly say I've never met a bride that wasn't beautiful. I imagine even God is excited and can hardly wait for the moment when He unveils this Holy City.
Don't worry about the size. There will be plenty of room for everyone. The dimensions are supernatural (Rev. 21:15-16), and they contrast sharply with the doomed city of Babylon.
Although hard to imagine, this Holy City is made in an exact square of 1,500 miles. In fact, it resembles the shape of the inner temple where God appeared in the temple in Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies. Now there is no need for a temple because the whole city, a metaphor also for the people of God, is the temple, in fact it is the dwelling place of God. This Holy City is large enough to contain all the landmass from the Appalachians to the California coast and from Canada to Mexico. It is going to be forty times the size of England, ten times the size of France and larger than India and that's just the ground floor. The city stands as tall as it is wide. If God were to stack the floors in this city like an architect would in a building, it would be over 600,000 stories tall, higher than the tower of Babel would have been and more glorious than Babylon in this age.
The foundations of the city walls sparkle with precious gemstones; jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. Its twelve gates are each made of a single pearl. The great street of the city is made of pure gold, like transparent glass. What could not be accomplished in Babel--a city to the heavens--God grants as an overwhelming gift.
What makes this city so magnificent, though, is not how big or beautiful it is, but Who lives in it. If you know Him, then you know what I mean.
I heard about several good friends who enjoyed hunting and fishing together and had decided to go to Alaska to hunt. Early one morning they were sitting around the fire drinking coffee and watching the sun come up. Several weeks before this trip, the oldest of these friends had become a Christian, but he hadn't yet shared the excitement of his new life in Jesus Christ.
As they sat around the fire, they began talking about their various adventures. One of the younger men asked the others, "What is the most exciting experience in all your life?
Well, the first man told of a tiger hunt he'd been on and how they had to stalk this tiger for more than two days. He said the final six hours of that hunt were the most thrilling of his life when he found himself face to face with that tiger. Just as that hungry animal leaped, he fired and just a few feet from where he was standing that great tiger fell dead. He said, "That was the most exciting experience of my life."
The second man told of an experience there in Alaska, north of the Aleutian Islands that involved an enormous grizzly bear. He said it all happened so fast it wasn't until the whole experience was over, he realized how close to death he'd been. He, in a split second, came face to face with an unbelievably huge grizzly bear, and he said he had to squeeze off three shots at point blank range in rapid-fire succession before that grizzly bear dropped at his feet. He said, "that is the most exciting adventure of my life."
Well, finally the oldest man spoke. He said, "I wish I could tell you about my most exciting experience, but it hasn't happened yet." One of the men said, "Well, when will it happen?" He said, "The first second after I die, when I stand face to face in the presence of Jesus Christ."
If the most exciting moment of our life is behind us, we're lost. But if the most exciting moment of our life is still in front of us, we're saved. I hope we will all know, and never forget, that when the time comes for us to face death, if we know Jesus it is a great gain to die, because it will be the most exciting moment in our life.
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Rev. Charles Eldredge is a member of Maitland Church of the Brethren. He has a Facebook page and can be contacted by email: ce1133 @verizon.net.