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Revelation (Part 25)

Revelation 20:7–21:8

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 20:7–21:8


“When the 1,000 years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out and deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them from battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the Devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”

Now this raises another whole set of interpretative questions. Amillennialists who think that the millennium is already bound up with this entire inter-advental period see this now as the final tribulation; this is the great tribulation at the end. Surrounding the great city, really, it becomes the city of God. It’s the vilest final attack on believers.

Those who belong to the first resurrection, they’re so called simply because they have resurrection life; they’re Christians. So this is just another way of describing the great tribulation. But if, for the reasons that I’ve already suggested, that doesn’t work for earlier in the chapter, then you’re constrained at this point to read it another way. How? Well, there are really two dominant approaches.

1. Literal.

The approach that is bound up with classic dispensational, pre-millennial, pre-tribulationism is that this takes place literally in the Middle East. The Holy City, the Blessed City, here is Jerusalem. Gog and Magog must be peoples that are connected with the Gog and Magog of the book of Ezekiel.… Gog, king of Magog, who is from somewhere up in the Assyria area.

As a result, any number of books have been written to argue (it’s getting a little less believable now) that these are the forces of the USSR that are coming down on Israel. This is going to be the battle of Armageddon; that is, on the plains of Megiddo. This is the final outbreak at the end of the millennium. Well, I can’t think of any simple way of saying that’s wrong, but I have to say I’m not convinced.

2. Symbolic.

What we’ve seen, again and again and again is the way the book of Revelation uses these Old Testament characters and figures and places. It uses them because, in our real history, there is something very analogous going on, but it’s using them in a symbol-laden way. For example, Babylon. Babylon isn’t really Babylon; it’s the Roman Empire, then through the Roman Empire, any number of things that come along again and again and again.

Gog, after all, was a real king in the ancient world: Gog, king of Magog. But after all, the Assyrians are all gone. There is no nation like that today, just as there is no Babylon today. You cannot, on the one hand, say “It’s literal, only here it’s symbol,” and say, “I’m just taking a literal exegesis.”

Nobody thinks it’s the real Babylon. Everybody thinks it’s either Rome or Jerusalem. So everybody understands that the real Babylon was literal, but as applied in the book of Revelation, it’s no longer Babylon. This is a symbol-laden thing. Why do we not do the same thing with Gog and Magog?

Even Armageddon, on the plains of Megiddo where so many battles were fought again and again and again.… If you look at a map of Israel, it’s an area where.… It’s right on the trade routes. If you take a look at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, over here you have Greece and Rome, and over here you have the Tigris-Euphrates system with Babylon and all the routes heading east toward India and China.

Farther down, the Arabian Peninsula with their fabulous well, and then down here you have Egypt and all the wealth of Egypt, the granary of the empire and so on. All the roads come together through little Israel, and one of the best places you can have chariot fights (the ancient equivalent of tank warfare) is Megiddo. Thus it became symbol-laden for the final clashes of the people of God against everybody else.

Within that framework, I’m inclined to think that the way the whole book has been using symbols along the line, all the way through.… I think that wherever the people of God are, who have the resurrection bodies at this point.… During this time of millennial splendor, there are people getting converted, they’re still people coming in, but there is such a violent wicked outbreak against the city of God (that is, against the people of God) that it is the antitype of all the clashes of the battles of Megiddo that have ever been.

I think that’s where it’s heading, and Christ steps in decisively and destroys them with the word of his mouth. Now it’s at that point that finally, there is final judgment, and you get this passage in verses 11 to 15, which we looked at a bit last week. Now then, let’s come to chapters 21 and 22. Let me come in from the side angle, if I may.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:19–21, Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Now that last expression, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” is, I think, regularly misunderstood. You may recall that I opened this passage in the first night. It is frequently taken to mean that followers of Jesus should guard their hearts or they will be misfocused on purely transient treasures. After all, does not the Bible itself enjoin, “Guard your heart, for out of it flow the well-springs of life”? (There is a Steve Green song, “Guard Your Heart.”)

But that is not what this passage says. It does not say, “Guard your heart, for your treasure will follow your heart.” It tells us rather to invest much treasure in heaven, because our hearts will follow our treasure: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Now understand as well, that heart, in the biblical sense, does not simply mean your emotions; it means your whole personality. Where you’ve invested so much, that is what you will think about, that’s where you’ll go, that’s what you’ll dream about, and that’s what you’ll go to.

So for example, let’s say a couple has no children and they invest all of their time and energy and money and daydreaming and resources into building a fabulous house that is really the epitome of everything that they’ve ever wanted to do and build and own and so on. It will become, for them, just so much their palace, where their heart goes, and they wake up and think about that, that their hearts follow.

It is extremely important, then, for Christians to maintain a high valuation of our destiny, our ultimate home, the new heaven and the new earth, for such a valuation will draw our hearts in that direction. In other words, if we invest a great deal in heaven, as it were, then our whole beings will be drawn in that direction: “Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.”

Whereas, if you’ve invested most of your energy and time and thought in something else: looking nice or having ideal children or whatever (you have more chance with the former than the second, I suspect), then that’s where your life will go, won’t it? Few passages, I think, will prove more helpful in establishing this high valuation of heaven and earth than this one before us. I’ll break it up this way: what is new (Revelation 21:1–8), what is symbolic (Revelation 21:9–21), what is missing (Revelation 21:22–27), and what is central (Revelation 22:1–5).

1. What is new.

Revelation 21:1–8. “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. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He 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.’ He 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. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But 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 sulfur. This is the second death.’ ”

What is new, then, is quite frankly nothing less than a whole new heaven and a new earth: a new universe. The language of “new heaven and new earth” you find already in Isaiah 65, verses 17 and following. You find it in 2 Peter 3:10–13. In other language (that is, without using the precise expression) you find it, for example, in Romans 8:19–22, where we’re told that the entire creation groans in travail, waiting for the adoption of sons. You have no “new heaven and new earth” language, but it is the same sort of assumption.

Where we’re heading, finally, is a whole renovated universe, a universe that is in some way connected with this one, but utterly and totally without sin and loss and decay. Now exactly what this will entail is doubtless beyond, in large measure, our capacity to imagine. Indeed, even what the relationship is between the new heaven and the new earth, on the one hand, and our old dying universe, lies at the very periphery of our vision.

In exactly the same way, Paul has some difficulty trying to explain what resurrection bodies will be in 1 Corinthians 15. He draws analogies at the end of the day, “Well, it’s something like the relationship between a seed and a tree that grows, or a seed of wheat and the whole wheat stalk. It’s organically connected in some way, but they don’t look alike. They have different uses and functions; one is just sort of a microcosm of the latter.”

You’re stretching at the very periphery of what God has disclosed at this point, and just as it is extremely difficult for a person who has spent all of his or her life in one culture to imagine what another culture is like.… I mean, you get some books on it and nowadays, we see films and videos and that opens up our eyes somewhat.

But before the days of videos and moving pictures, or even stills, to imagine what another culture is like would have been extremely difficult. So how then do we go about imagining what a new universe will be like? You’re pushing at the very edge of the capacity of the human being to understand and to imagine and to take in.

One small detail that John immediately includes in verse 1 is that there is no more sea. Now I’ve said already that the sea functions in Jewish literature as a symbol, often for chaos (sometimes it’s the real sea that you sail ships on … ask Jonah), but because they were not a sea-faring people, it often served as a symbol for chaos, destruction, danger, even evil.

Hence a passage like Isaiah 57:20 says, “The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.” If you go down to a local lake on a very still day, it’s quiet, but a sea, at least where the sea meets the shore, is never quiet because the tide is always coming in or it’s going out. The only question is how high the waves are, but it’s always doing one or the other.

Now, a sea right out in the middle of nowhere (sailors tell me) occasionally, every once in a while, is glassy, but it’s rare. On the shore it never is … never, never, never … because the tide is always coming in or going out. That’s the picture here: “The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.”

Then if you recall, the sea in Revelation 4, standing between John and the throne.… I suggested there the most likely interpretation, in terms of Jewish usage, is the whole fallen order standing between him and God. Then in Revelation 13, if you recall, there is a beast that comes out of the sea and a beast that comes out of the earth.

But now, John says, there is no more sea. I think it is simply another way of saying, not, “There are going to be very different hydrological principles in the new universe.” John is not interested in the quantity of water that will be there. What he’s interested in is there will be no more evil, no more chaos.

Then in verse 2, the language changes: “I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” This is extremely important. This is not meant to be something other than the new heaven and the new universe, or some tiny part of the new heaven and the new earth; rather it is another way of depicting the same reality.

Do you remember in chapter 5, it’s announced to John that the Lion has prevailed to open the scroll, so John looks up and sees the Lamb, because the Lion is the Lamb. You’re doing that sort of thing in apocalyptic all the time, you’re mixing your metaphors. So here, if you read closely, you don’t have two, you have three. On the one hand, it’s the new heaven and the new earth. On the other hand, it’s the New Jerusalem. In the third place, it’s a bride.

Now the bride is adorned like a bride at first, but then the bride becomes a central figure a little farther on in this chapter. So you can think of this whole new thing in slightly different ways. There are different emphases in each case. The bride becomes the figure that actually marries the Lamb. Yes, in that sense it’s the people of God, not the whole renovated universe.

The city is more ambiguous. On the one hand, the city seems to represent the whole people of God, yet on the other hand, the people are in the city. They’re going in and out of the city, in fact (a little farther on, we’ll see what that means as well). So you have what some people call tensive symbols: that is, not symbols where you have something that simply represent something else on a one-to-one basis (this represents that), but something that suggests and fills out and is evocative of another whole collection of things. It’s a tensive symbol.

The concept of a New Jerusalem unveiled in Messiah’s coming finds its roots in the return to Jerusalem after the exile. The argument was if we had a New Jerusalem after the exile, a fortiori, how much more will we not have a New Jerusalem at the end of the age?

This is so even in inter-testamental Jewish apocalyptic. For example, in a document called the Testament of Dan, written in the first century, the New Jerusalem is a place in which the saints rejoice and enjoy the glory of God forever. In another document called 2 Esdras or 4 Ezra, it says that the New Jerusalem is not just the old city rebuilt, but a new one built to a heavenly pattern. That’s just Jewish language. I’m not saying that the Bible is only using Jewish language; I’m saying that it uses the language of the people of the day to convey the truths of God.

In the New Testament, these things are taken up again, as in Galatians 4. “Jerusalem that is above.” That is not just the earthly Jerusalem, but the Jerusalem that is the very abode of God, where the people meet with God. Or “the city whose builder and maker is God” in Hebrews 11:10. In other words, Abraham was looking for a city, but not just any old city, not just an old city in the ancient Near East. At the end of the day, he was looking for a city whose builder and maker was God. That is, to be one with God and the people of God.

Or in Revelation 3:12, those who remain faithful in Philadelphia are inscribed with “the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God.” That is, it’s coming down out of heaven. They participate in the New Jerusalem. That is, they participate in the consummated glory. That’s the point. Thus the vision of a New Jerusalem coming down out of the heaven embraces several intrinsic elements.

First, it is the antitype to the Old Testament Jerusalem. The Old Testament Jerusalem was the covenantal center. It’s the place where the temple was. It’s the place where God met with his people. It’s the place in which the king ruled. It’s the place where the high priest was. So if you now have a place where prophet, priest, and king are … where the people meet with God, not just annually at the high feast, but perpetually … what better thing to call it but Jerusalem?

Second, this is also telling you a bit how to read your Bible. There are typological structures already in the old covenant that are anticipating this ultimate antitype: the New Jerusalem, par excellence. Then there is the notion of it coming out of heaven. This is an act of God, as is the creation of the church itself. What finally happens is not just sort of setting up of temporary rule; there is an act of God that just comes in and takes right over. That’s what’s finally needed.

Third, I think also, and this is very important, it is a profoundly social hope. Usually when we do think of heaven, we are inclined to think of heaven in splendidly isolationist terms or familial terms … going and seeing your mum again. But most of us in the West tend not to think in social terms.

Many of us, unless we’re sort of brought up in rural West Virginia, tend to think of cities as cesspools. Now there are some of you who have maybe been brought up in New York … you know, you just can’t stand fresh air, and anything that doesn’t have buildings at least 40 feet high is already slovenly and amateurish and unsophisticated. There may be some city dwellers like that.

But for many, many believers, cesspools and cities both begin with C. They are sinkholes of iniquity. Yes, glitter, and yes, sophistication, but with a certain concentration of evil. The more people, the more sin. In a sense, we’ve already seen that in the book of Revelation, after all: the great city, Babylon the Great.

At the same time, the answer is not to spread them all out and make them thin throughout the whole universe so you don’t get two people conspiring together, but a new city, a New Jerusalem. Not Babylon now, the New Jerusalem. It’s a social vision. If, at the end of the day, you have people who really do know their God and love him, and love each other, the consummated new heaven and new earth is a wonderful social reality.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in any city, people really were selfless to the nth degree and were passionately committed to the other’s good in the service of one enduring Master? Couldn’t the city be a great place? There wouldn’t be any loneliness in the city then. It’s astonishing that our cities have gotten connected with loneliness. Bar the door, put on the safety locks and chain.… We wouldn’t do that in such a city.

Then it changes again: she’s a bride. What does all this mean? “A bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” This one’s coming out several times here; it’s going to show up again in chapter 21, verses 9 and following: “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And then at the end, the marriage supper of the Lamb is coming up. What’s going on? What is at stake here?

I think there are several things that are at stake. It’s unpacked in part in verses 3 and 4. Let me deal with those first and then come back to the bride; I think it will be easier that way. “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’ ”

This is a fulfillment of many Old Testament hopes and passages. There are many, many passages that speak of God being their God and he will live with them. That’s a common motif. For example, under the old covenant (Leviticus 26:11–13): “I will put my dwelling place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high.”

Now in the context of the old covenant, God being among them and being with the people was bound up with the tabernacle being put right amidst the tribes. He would actually be with them. God manifested himself to no other ancient people the way that he manifested himself to these people.

That is bound up with the notion of Jerusalem under the old covenant as well, isn’t it? God takes up his dwelling place in the Holy Place, the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle and appears in the shekinah glory over the ark of the covenant, between the cherubim approached by the high priest once a year.… It’s all part of the whole heritage. God abiding with his people.

Then, when the old covenant believers look forward to the new covenant, the same language is used, ratcheted up one. Jeremiah 31 says, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Now the whole emphasis is on the interiority of the whole thing. It’s not just the God is in Jerusalem, but “I will put my law on their hearts.”

Or to use the language of Joel, “He will come by his spirit: men, women, young, old. He will indwell them; he will be in them. He will be their God and they will be his people.” The same language but ratcheted up in terms of the new covenant. Thus Ezekiel 37:27, “My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Now it’s ratcheted up again. Now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them; they will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God.

So the whole history of redemption, you see, has been, since the fall, God pursuing the people that are his own. In the different epochs of redemption, dispensations if you like, he’s moving this direction toward the consummation when he is with them and in them and enjoying them, and they him, in the fullest possible manner, now without any hesitation or contesting or any shade or sin or the like.

That which is at stake is made clear then by the next verse. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” In other words, so perfect is this dwelling place of God with his people, so consummate this relationship at this juncture, that no sin or evil, or the results of any sin or evil … death, sin, tears … could possibly tarnish it. That’s the point of verse 4.

Now admittedly, eternal blessedness here in couched in negative terms. There will be no tears, no death, none of all these things. But that’s partly because it’s easier for us to understand what it’s not in some ways than to understand what it is. We think of all the things we don’t enjoy here and the first things the Scripture writer says is, “It’s not that. Anything you don’t enjoy, anything that smacks of death and decay and sin and greed.… It’s not that. Whatever else it, it’s not that.” Which is already giving us some insight into what it is.

This too, was the language of the prophets. Isaiah 35:10 says, “The ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with thanksgiving and everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sighing and sorrow will flee away.” Thus they were already depicting that the return to Jerusalem was a kind of type of the ultimate return to the New Jerusalem, if you will.

From time to time in the book of Revelation, this sort of theme has already been introduced, but now in spectacular array. We saw in chapter 7, verses 16 and following: “Never again will they hunger, never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

You see, there have been images of this that have been accumulating in the book in anticipation, and now it’s all dropped in. This is the consummation. Not least important here in the abolition of death. No more death. One remembers Isaiah 25:8, “God will swallow up death forever.” Now in this connection, then, it’s bound up in the knowledge of God, and in this connection, one needs to think through this bride imagery a bit more. This too, is steeped in Old Testament background. I’ve hinted already at some of the connections.

On the one hand, Yahweh is seen in the Old Testament as the groom of Israel and Israel as the bride. Then when Israel sins, Israel is apostate; she’s committed adultery. Likewise in the church, Jesus is the groom and the church is the bride. Paul can say, “I’ve betrothed you to one husband.” In fact, the whole relationship between husband and wife is in some ways bound up with a parallel in Ephesians 5 between Christ and the church. Why that particular imagery? What does it have to say? What does it have to add?

The new heaven and new earth I can understand; it’s bound up with a complete renovation of everything here. The New Jerusalem you can understand; the antitype of the old Jerusalem. What’s the husband and wife thing doing? I suspect that what it’s doing is this: in human relationships, the consummation of the union between a man and a women in marriage … who really do love each other and care for each other and vow before God to live as God wants … is the closest, most delightful intimacy that human beings can know this side of knowing God.

Now like everything else, we can turn it into a living hell, but forget that for the moment. It is, nevertheless, in principle and in practice, the most glorious intimacy that human beings can know. That is the way we are to think of God and our intimacy with him.

Obviously it’s not a sexual intimacy, but the point is if you’re looking for an intimacy analog, it’s the best one you can find. It’s warm, it’s pleasurable, it’s delightful, it is predicated on good communication, it is give-and-take, it is enduring, it is something with wonderful memories and that you look forward to.… Put as many positive things as you can to it. Only now this is with God.

Anybody who has walked with God at all has known some experiences of intimacy with the living God on occasion. Perhaps when you’re having your devotions or hearing the Word powerfully preached and you know the Spirit of God has been powerfully present, and then the little thought clicks in the back of your mind and says, “What will the unshielded glory of the presence of the Master be forever?”

The best kind of analogy you can find in that kind of context is this kind of intimacy: the consummation of the bride and the groom. So not only, therefore, is it fulfilling a great set of typologies that have tracked down through the Scriptures, it is intrinsically an extremely important image. Just as the city is an important image of the social, so this is an important image of intimacy with God that must not be overlooked.

And now God himself speaks, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’ ” And then for our further confidence, he tells John, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” It’s wonderful. All along it’s an angel who speaks, or sometimes it’s Christ who speaks, but now the One who sits on the throne himself speaks, almost as if you’ve come to the whole climax. You must understand now that this has been God’s plan all along.

God is doing this. God speaks directly. Here you are to have the confidence of the Sovereign himself: “Write this down. It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” Only he can guarantee that the end will turn out that way. “To him who is thirsty, I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” This too is language taken from the Old Testament. Isaiah 55, for example: “Come, you who are thirsty. Come buy water without cost from the spring of the water of life.”

“He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” This language again is taken from old covenant language. Remember how Israel in Exodus 4 is already called “my son”? “Let my son go that he may worship me”? Now the new humanity is called God’s son.

On the other hand, there is probably something here of character that is at stake. Sonship was so often bound up with the repetition of what the father did. I’ve mentioned this before in these courses, but it’s worth thinking about it again. Most of us do not do what our parents did; in other words, we do not follow our parents in their vocations.

But in a pre-industrial world like this one, almost every son ends up doing what his father did, and almost every daughter ends up doing what her mother did. That’s the way things get passed one. If your father’s a farmer, you’re a farmer. Jesus’ human father, by all perception, was a carpenter, so Jesus became a carpenter. It was inevitable; it was the way that society worked. It’s because of that kind of language that some of the son language is functional.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” That is to say, insofar as we engage in peacemaking, we’re reflecting God’s character and thus showing ourselves to be sons of God. If we have Abraham’s faith, then we’re sons of Abraham. That’s the language of that sort of Semitic cast. That’s not meant to be sexist or to exclude women. It is a kind of generic family-orientated thing; that’s what’s meant.

So in this sense, then, these people are all called sons of God over and against the people described in the next verse. That is, they have the character of God, over and against the people who are described as “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars.” Again, the bifurcation you see between the one and the other. They have become as detestable as the things they loved, whereas the redeemed have become in character like God.