John is about to see the bride, the Lamb’s wife. Does he see a ‘great multitude’, clothed in white robes made of fine linen, with palm branches in their hands?1 Does he witness a ‘crowd’ greeting the King, the Messiah, as He makes His entry,2 just as we wave banners or flags? No, he sees a city, the city, the Holy City, Jerusalem, which is descending from Heaven, from God. My Father’s house has many rooms, the Lord Jesus had said, using another image.3 John had already briefly seen that earlier.4 He now gets to see the spiritual details. To do so, he is first of all transported ‘in the spirit’ to a great and high mountain. He is then well able to see the City, and can look over the high wall into its environs. Ezekiel, after Gog’s battle against Israel and the destruction of his warring gangs and armies was allowed to see the glorious sequel: “The hand of the Lord was on me,” he wrote, “and He took me there. In visions of God He took me to the land of Israel and set me on a very high mountain, on whose south side were some buildings that looked like a city.” (Was it really a city? Yes, it indeed was.)5 And didn’t Moses have to climb the ‘high mountain’6 before he was allowed to see God’s Glory, where he was to receive the stone tablets, inscribed by the finger of God,7 with the Ten Commandments? There he was also allowed to look into the Heavenly Sanctuary so he would be able to have a good model on which to base the Tabernacle.8 The Heavenly Jerusalem, the ‘mother of us all’, is a spiritual fellowship of people who also live in a celestial City—imagery and reality are interwoven—just like members of a Church are living stones in a building, a spiritual house, a Temple.9 And the conquerors will be pillars and columns in God’s Temple.10 And the spiritual ‘house’ is also a holy priesthood, which offers spiritual sacrifices, and a holy ‘nation’, God’s special possession.11 In short, the images overlap each other, and yet, there is a City, with walls, foundations, gates, squares, houses and streets. For we know that if the earthly tent (an image of our earthly body) we live in is destroyed, we have a ‘building’ from God, an eternal ‘house’ in Heaven, not built by human hands.12 Paul also desires to be at ‘home’ with the Lord; this is another image of a ‘dwelling’.13 This is a ‘City that is the mother of us all’,14 which has brought us forth, because we are from above, from God, born-again from above, by the Holy Spirit and grafted into the New Covenant made with Israel.15 When the Heavenly Jerusalem descends, the Heavenly City is already full of people who are glorified and redeemed. This City, this ‘dwelling place of God in the Spirit’, is so real, that the ‘beast’, the ‘anti-Christ’, spits on it and blasphemes against God and His Name and His tent (Tabernacle) and those, who live in Heaven, in the Holy City, the Heavenly Jerusalem, the bride, the Lamb’s wife.16 As the ‘whore’ was associated with a city, Babylon, God’s people are associated with a City, the New Jerusalem. Babylon lies in a desert, Jerusalem on a mountain, and it is seen from a mountain, the Mount of Olives. This is why Ezekiel sees the Shekinah Glory at first leaving the Temple towards the east, and finally entering the final Temple in the Millennium the Lord’s City and Temple, coming from the east. “Then the cherubim, with the wheels beside them, spread their wings, and the Glory of the God of Israel was above them. The Glory of the Lord went up from within the city and stopped above the mountain east of it” [the Mount of Olives]…” Then the man brought me to the gate facing east, and I saw the Glory of the God of Israel coming from the east…The Glory of the Lord entered the Temple through the gate facing east”.17
The City is now descending to the New Earth. God will live among His people, in the midst of a cleansed and purified mankind glowing with everlasting life.
• What a difference between Mount Sinai, where God’s Law was proclaimed with thunder and lightning, and Mount Zion, the New Jerusalem, the City of Grace. There is no more anxiety and slavery there.
• The Law is typified by the ‘slave’ Hagar, Paul says,18 and Sarah is the type of the New Jerusalem, that is free, the ‘mother of us all’.
• Moses gave the Law (which was already a kind of grace, God’s directions to life!), Christ gave Grace and Truth. “Out of His fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”19
Bible References:
.Revelation 7:9 2.Matthew 21:6–9; Mark 11:8; Luke 19:35–38 3.John 14:2 4.Revelation 21:3 5.Ezekiel 40:1–2 6.Exodus 24:12–18 7.Exodus 31:18 8.Exodus 25:9 9.Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:4–6; 2 Corinthians 6:16 10.Revelation 3:12 11.1 Peter 2:7–10 12.2 Corinthians 5:1 13.2 Corinthians 5:8 14.Galatians 4:26; Psalm 87 15.Romans 11:17 16.Revelation 13:6 17.Ezekiel 11: 22-23; 43:1–12 18.Galatians 4:24–31; Hebrews 11:13–16 19.John 1:16–17
