Part 1: Looking Ahead

The last two chapters of the Book (Rev 21-22) begin with a wedding. The musicians sound the opening notes of the processional, the doors at the back of the sanctuary open, the mother of the bride rises to her feet, and all eyes turn to the bride. John writes,

¹ Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, ⁴ and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

This is an impressive event, marking the greatest change since Creation. Several things to notice about it.

Replacement

The old is done away with (Re 21.1). Everything physical that you know—the earth and everything in it, the universe, all of it—is gone. Like a ratty old coat, it’s tossed aside and replaced.

At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I suppose it’s a little like junking an old car. You liked that car; maybe you even had a name for it. It took you lots of places, and you have lots of memories of good times with friends and family. It wasn’t perfect, but it was yours, and you have had something of a relationship, as odd as that sounds.

But the mechanic has given you the talk. There’s a lot wrong with the old car, and fixing it would cost more than it’s worth. Cheaper to buy a new one.

Junk it.

And so, with regrets, you do.

I’m a happy guy. For all the old world’s flaws—and they are many, and deep-seated—she’s a beautiful place, with Rocky Mountains and river rapids and birdsong and thunderstorms and honeysuckle. God has been exceedingly good to us in placing us here, at the bottom of an ocean of all the air we can breathe, and giving us the abilities to sense all of these graces in multiple ways.

But this world is indeed broken, physically and socially and politically and in a thousand other ways, and we were designed, in God’s image, for a much better place than this—one without all the disappointments and frustration and pain and death.

A new universe. A new earth.

New constellations. New glories. New delights.

The old will be replaced, and the new will come.

God will bring history full circle, making new again all that has been damaged, replacing the broken and worn with the new and shiny and perfect and completely functional.

As in the beginning.

There’s more.

Moving In

God himself, the Creator, moves right into the neighborhood (Re 21.2-3).

That has always been his plan, that we would be neighbors—no, family members, living on the same land and enjoying unbroken fellowship forever. In Eden, he walked with Adam and Eve. In the Sinai, he gave Moses instructions for a tent where his light would shine perpetually and guide his people. Eventually David made plans for a permanent structure. And then—remarkably—the Son took on flesh and tabernacled among us (Jn 1.14).

But now it all comes to perfection. God lives on our street, and we live on his.

Healing

Why do away with the beautiful, old earth if you’re not going to get rid of what’s wrong with it?

Miraculously, magnificently, God destroys evil at its source. All the violence, all the injustice, all the deprivation. And with it go its effects: the suffering, the tears, the death (Re 21.4). Sin will die, while God’s people will live as they’ve never lived before (Re 21.6-8).

And this is just the beginning.

Next time, life in the big city.

Part 3: The Look of the Big City | Part 4: Life in the Big City | Part 5: On Track

Photo by Béatrice Natale on Unsplash

Crazy days, no?

The pace of social change is increasing, and with it the uncertainty. A lot of people are really, really angry. A great many are scared. And there’s a pretty good-sized chunk of folks who are just tired of the whole thing.

Unsurprisingly, there seems to be a lot of discontent with the way things are going—a sense of “we can do better than this.” I’ve seen a few of my Christian friends express longing for the passing of this broken world and the coming of the next—“this world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through” and all that. And within Christianity there’s always a subgroup of folks who are shouting that every headline is proof that The End Is Near.

As a personal note, I’ll observe that I too hope the end is near, though I’m not much for “proving” it from this or that headline. Jesus said that he would come “in such an hour as ye think not” (Mt 24.44), after all. (So are they wrong, or am I? :-) ) Both Jesus and Paul tell us to “watch,” and that we can certainly agree on.

With that in mind, I’d like to consider The End for a bit.

I’ve called this series “The Mark.” Maybe you think that’s short for “the mark of the beast,” which is indisputably a chip that they’re going to sneak into us when Bill Gates forces us all to get vaccinated.

Not gonna go there, for now, at least.

I’m referring to a different Mark. Paul writes,

One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Php 3.13-14).

In the King James Version, which is where most of my Bible memorization has happened, the word goal is rendered “mark.” It’s the tape, the end of the race. It’s where we’re headed. Where the exertion ends and the celebration begins.

That mark.

I’d like to spend a few posts thinking about the end of the book, the denouement.

The bulk of the book, the storyline, the arc of the narrative is reasonably well known—

• God creates a perfect world as a place where He can fellowship with creatures in His image. (That’s us.)
• We reject His offer of fellowship and break the perfection of the world.
  • Sin brings injustice, suffering, and pain to life. 
  • Life always ends in death, for animals and humans. 
• God graciously works to undo the damage we have done.
  • In the midst of judgment, He provides for us to flourish.
    • Adam can still wrest food from the earth, though by the sweat of his brow. 
    • Eve can bear children—though only through pain—so humanity can grow and prosper. 
  • He raises up a people in Abraham—
    • To provide a vehicle for the Law and prophets and thus the Scripture. 
    • To provide a royal line for the birth of Messiah, the incarnation of the God-Man. 
  • The Son steps into human form, obeys the Law perfectly, and dies to pay the penalty for our sin. 
  • In the person of the Spirit, God restores spiritual life to His people and dwells in them to conform them to the image of His Son, so badly marred by their sin. 

That’s quite a plot.

But like any plot, it’s going somewhere; it’s working toward a conclusion, a resolution.

He’s going to restore Creation to where it was in the beginning, before we damaged it.

We read about that at the very end of the book.

Many Christians are surprised to learn that we don’t find very much about heaven in the Bible. We read a lot about the kingdom, the Millennium, but very little about what happens after that. The latter, the new heaven and the new earth, is pretty much limited to the last two chapters. 

We’ll spend the next few posts there.

Part 2: Down the Aisle | Part 3: The Look of the Big City | Part 4: Life in the Big City | Part 5: On Track

Photo by Béatrice Natale on Unsplash