All Things New

Read it: Revelation 21–22

The last book of the Bible was written by a man named John, who describes himself as “your brother and partner in the tribulation” and says he “was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and my testimony about Jesus” (Revelation 1:9). Patmos is a small rocky island off the coast of what is now Turkey. John had been sent there for being a Christian. He wrote to seven churches on the mainland, small groups of believers living under the shadow of Rome, some of them suffering, some of them tempted to fit in and keep quiet.

A different kind of book

Revelation doesn’t read like the Gospels. It is full of visions: a slain Lamb on a throne, a dragon, beasts rising from the sea, a city made of gold. This style is sometimes called “apocalyptic,” from a Greek word meaning “unveiling.” It pulls back the curtain so that suffering Christians can see what is really going on behind the headlines: that Jesus, not Caesar, is on the throne, and that evil, however strong it looks, will not have the last word. Its pictures are meant to be seen and felt, not just decoded.

Christians read Revelation’s timeline in different ways. Some think much of it describes events in the early centuries of the church; some read it as a symbolic picture of the whole time between Jesus’ first and second comings; some think most of it describes events still to come. They also understand the “thousand years” of chapter 20 differently. Faithful, Bible-loving Christians hold each of these views. What they all agree on matters far more: Jesus will return in person, He will judge the world justly, evil will be destroyed, and God will make everything new. That is where the Bible’s story ends.

A new heaven and a new earth

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (Revelation 21:1). In the Bible the sea often stands for chaos and danger. For John, it was also the water that cut him off from the people he loved. In the new creation there is nothing left to fear and nothing to separate.

Then John sees “the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2). Notice the direction. The Bible’s ending isn’t about souls floating up to the clouds forever. It is about heaven coming down to earth, and God renewing the world He made.

A voice from the throne explains what it all means: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3). This is where the whole story has been heading. God walked with people in the garden. He lived in a tent in the wilderness, then in the temple. He came as Jesus and pitched His tent among us. He poured out His Spirit to live in His people. Now, at last, He lives with His people openly and forever.

And then the tenderest line in the Bible: “‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). Every grief in this story, from Abel’s murder to the exile to the cross, every grief in your story too, is answered here.

The One on the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). Not “I make all new things.” He doesn’t throw the old world away. He makes it new. Then He says, “It is done!” (Revelation 21:6), the same note Jesus sounded on the cross.

A city with no temple

The city is shaped like a perfect cube: “all its dimensions were equal” (Revelation 21:16). There was only one other cube-shaped room in the Bible: the Most Holy Place in the temple, where God’s presence dwelt and only the high priest could go once a year. Now the whole city is the Most Holy Place. That’s why John says, “But I saw no temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Revelation 21:22). The nations walk in its light and bring their glory into it. The gates are never shut. Abraham’s promise, blessing for all the families of the earth, is fully kept.

Revelation is honest that this is a holy city: “nothing unclean will ever enter it” (Revelation 21:27), only “those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

Back to the garden

In the last chapter the city becomes a garden. A river flows from God’s throne, and beside it stands “a tree of life” whose leaves “are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). In Genesis 3, after the fall, the way to the tree of life was guarded by cherubim with a flaming sword. Now it stands open. “No longer will there be any curse” (Revelation 22:3). The story that broke in a garden is mended in a garden-city. And the best line of all: “They will see His face” (Revelation 22:4).

The Bible ends with an invitation. The Spirit and the bride say “Come!”, and “let the one who is thirsty come, and the one who desires the water of life drink freely” (Revelation 22:17). Then a promise and a prayer. Jesus says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” And the church answers, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20).

Where Jesus is in this

At the centre of the new creation is the Lamb. Earlier in Revelation John saw “a Lamb who appeared to have been slain, standing in the center of the throne” (Revelation 5:6), and heard heaven sing, “You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). The lamb thread that ran from Isaac on Moriah through Passover and Isaiah 53 to the cross ends here, on the throne. In the city, “the Lamb is its lamp” (Revelation 21:23).

The story began, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and John’s Gospel began, “In the beginning was the Word.” Now Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13). Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. The whole story, from first word to last, is His.

Think about it: The Bible’s ending is not escape from the world but God making the world new and living in it with His people. How does that change the way you think about your body, the earth and the things you do today?

Go deeper: The Key Teachings of Dwight L. Moody — Moody spoke of heaven the way a traveller speaks of home, and insisted that what makes it attractive is not golden streets but seeing Christ, telling of a little girl who found her house was no longer home once her mother was gone. Start with chapter 18, “Heaven, Our Home”.