The New Heaven and the New Earth are elated outside our dimensions of space and time to a certain extent, for they are no longer transient, perishable – death no longer exist – even though the element of ‘time’ does not appear to be missing. Does Paradise return, with its four rivers?1 Do these rivers have something to do with the river of the ‘water of life’?2 There is no sea, the sea, being the symbol, a representation of the rebellious ‘sea of nations’. Nor are these ‘rivers’ in the sense of the commotion and unrest of hostile nations.3 Neither is there a ‘sea’ in the sense of the Mediterranean Sea. Is it therefore a New Earth with a complete new landscape? These are all questions to which the Bible does not give answers. What is clear is the fact that Heaven comes down to earth. The Heavenly dimensions open up to the earthly dimensions. That has always been God’s intention. He had an open relationship with ‘man’ in Paradise, His Created human beings, devoid of shame.4
The Lord walked in the garden in the cool of the evening. The Lord God is named there as Jehovah (Yahweh) Elohim. This is God’s Name, the Eternal One, the Living One, in its plural form; this Name refers to the One who said: “Let Us make man in Our image,” and who later remarked: “The man has now become like one of Us, knowing good and evil.” It is also the One who said: “Let Us go down and confuse their language.” Elohim combined with Jehovah is the Name through which God reveals Himself in His grace and love, in His Covenant relationship with man. Jehovah is the revelation of Elohim to mankind. In Genesis 2 and 3 the Name is Jehovah Elohim, but Eve and the serpent, the ‘nachash’, leave the name ‘Jehovah’ out, and just speak about ‘Elohim’ – just ‘God as Creator’, not ‘God in His loving relationship’ with ‘man’, with human beings!
As ‘Elohim’, ‘God’ is recognized all over the world. People in general refer to ‘God’ when they express their vague faith in Him. ‘I believe in ‘God’, they sometimes say. ‘I believe there is a God’, they say. So in this sense He is known by the majority of mankind, but without them really knowing Him. “May the Force Be with You” is a famous quote said by numerous characters as an expression of good luck throughout the Star Wars film series. No personal relationship with such ‘a God’. This is the general belief in ‘God’, but as a far away, distant God. Israel was permitted to learn to know Him as ‘Jehovah’, in His Covenant relationship with them. In Christ we are allowed to know Him in a very intimate, a very close and personal relationship. The most intimate relationship the eternal God is able to have with people, through the Holy Spirit, is the New Covenant relationship, of which the signs are the broken body and the spilled blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Name YHWH (for both Jehovah and Yahweh are derived from this four letters of the ‘unspeakable’ Name of God) appears more than six thousand times in the Old Testament—no less than six hundred and eighty times in the Psalms alone, for the Psalms sing of the intimate relationship between God and man. YHWH is derived from the verb ‘to be’, the sound of which is very similar to that of the verb ‘to live’. In the beginning ‘was’ (existed) the Word and in the Word was ‘life’.5 Exodus 3:14–15 refers to YHWH, the ‘God of your fathers’, who appears to Moses, and He says in Exodus 6:3. “God also said to Moses, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My Name the Lord [Hebrew El-Shaddai] I did not make myself fully known to them” “And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the Name of God Almighty, but by My Name Jehovah was I not known to them.”6
John now sees the Holy City, the Heavenly Jerusalem as a New Jerusalem descending from Heaven. God is going to dwell among men once again, among a new mankind like a new ‘Temple’, for there is no longer a Temple in this New Jerusalem, because God and the Lamb (Elohim YHWH) are its Temple and it is lit by the Glory of God, and the Lamb is its lamp.7 John will shortly see that New Jerusalem in far greater detail.8 It is the Heavenly Jerusalem, the City of the living God, with the true Mount Zion, with its tens of thousands of angels, with the joyful assembly of the firstborn whose names are written down in Heaven, where they have their ‘civil rights’,9 where the ‘spirits of the righteous’ are, and Jesus.10 That comes down, dressed as a bride11 for the everlasting unity between of God and man.
• The separation between Heaven as God’s dwelling place and earth is removed here. There are no longer several, various, different dimensions, but all the dimensions are somehow intertwined and open to each other. The new mankind will nevertheless first have to learn and be comforted, and have to get used to this completely (re)new(ed) situation.12
• Just a thought. There was a ‘sign above the head of Jesus’ on the cross. It read in John 19:17-22 “Jesus the Nazaraean/Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews…and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and in Greek.”
• Could it have been in Aramaic/Hebrew: ‘Yeshua Hamashiach Wemelech Hajehudim’? Meaning: Jesus the Messiah and King of the Jews? If so, there would have been the four letters of the unspeakable Name of God: YHWH written above His head. Could that have incited the chief priests to go to Pontius Pilate saying that he should rephrase this? Because this would be the unspeakable Name of God upon a cross, above the head of a convicted criminal!
• Dying on a cross was the ultimate humiliation. God on a cross! No way! But in this case it was true. The Son of God and the Son of man, dying on a cross; God took upon Himself the ultimate penalty for sin.
• Another thought: could ‘the Nazarene’ ‘of Nazareth’ also be an unintentional reference to ‘the Nezer’, the ‘root’ as referred to in Isaiah 11:1 “Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.” Just as Jesus says in Revelation 22:16 NIV “I am the Root and the Offspring of David”. Or has ‘Nazarene’ to do with ‘a Nazirite’, compare Numbers 6 and for instance Judges 13:5, 7; 16:17; Amos 2:11-12; Acts 2:22, 3:6, 4:10, 6:14, 22:8, 24:5, 26:9? And with Paul in Acts 18:8 and 21:19- 26? Food for thought!
Bible References:
1.Genesis 2:10–14 2.Revelation 22:1 3.Isaiah 8:7, 57:20; Jeremiah 46:7–8 4.Genesis 3:8 5.John 1:1, 4 6.Exodus 6:2–3 NIV and KJV 7.Revelation 21:22–23 8.Revelation 21:9–27 9.Philippians 3:20 10.Hebrews 12:22–24 11.Revelation 21:4 12.Revelation 21:4
