And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: on the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is of the angel. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.—Rev. xxi.
Before the vision of the great white throne and Him that sat upon it, heaven as much as earth had fled away. In that perfect light, there seemed for a while no place for the spiritual more than the material world. But soon that glory, which had thrown all into shade, brought each thing into full manifestation. The dead, small and great, stood forth; the sea gave up her dead; the thoughts of every man’s heart came into judgment. He knew what he was. Death and life stood out in dreadful contrast. And death and hell “were cast into the lake of fire; this is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”
Those last words strike one as a very terrible conclusion to the vision. I believe they are very terrible; and yet, taken in connection with those which precede, they contain, it seems to me, an infinite comfort. Death and hell import a separation from God, a denial and contradiction of God. The bottomless pit is Atheism; the state of being without God. Here we are told that these are conquered by Him; they are cast into the lake of fire. That lake of fire is regarded no longer as out of His dominion, beyond the circle of His grace and love. It is His, to be used for His Divine purposes. What those are we have been hearing throughout this book—throughout the Bible, of which it is the climax. Our first thought is that whosoever is not found written in the book of life—whosoever has chosen death instead of life—must continue for ever in that condition. Reasoning upon the nature of a spirit, arguing about its immortality, I can find no escape from that conclusion, though I feel that it withers my energies as well as my hope. The revelation of God gives me that which all my speculations cannot give. I know that He can act upon spirits; I know that He can and does raise them out of death. I know that the process of rising out of death into the consciousness of life, is and must be an agonising one. I know that when a prodigal is coming to himself, his conscience passes through a fire of which none but God knows the intensity, though he knows something of it. If I am told that whosoever hath not life is not left in that utter wretchedness, but is cast into a lake of fire—if I am told that death, hell, and whatever divides us from God is cast into the same lake—may I not accept that as a message from above, which meets all the wants, fears, longings of my heart? Must I set up the miserable measure of my own intellect against the word of God, merely because it brings me, as it always does, the divinest consolation, in the midst of the divinest warnings?
The argument that such hope gives a dangerous encouragement to wrong-doers, I am not careful to answer. The same charge has been urged in all days against the doctrine that man is justified by faith, and not by his own deeds or deservings—truly urged if the faith is not in a living God, who delivers the conscience from the guilt, and burden, and power of sin—if it is in a God, who merely remits the just and merciful punishment of sin. God can take care of His own cause; we take very ill care of it. Left to ourselves, we should always cheat men of a Gospel, lest it should make them careless of the Law. And we receive the due reward of our dishonesty. They are not able to keep the Law. The terror of it has no power to make them obey it, only to make them hate it. They begin to keep the commandment when they trust Him who has given it, when they own that He is working in them to will and to do of His good pleasure. Diminish that trust in any wise; lead men to think that God is not the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; that a time will come when He will change as we change; and just so far you are doing the devil’s work. Your clever, worldly calculations do not make us better, but more indifferent, more desperate.
There is another assertion of far greater force, if taken rightly. We are often told that we must apply the same measures to the blessedness of the righteous, which we apply to the misery of the wicked. Yes, and not only to the degrees of blessedness and misery, but to the kind and quality of each. If we suppose the misery to be merely material, we shall suppose the blessedness to be merely material. If we suppose the misery to be spiritual, we shall suppose the blessedness to be spiritual. If we do not exactly tell ourselves what we mean in the one case, we shall fall into the same vagueness respecting the other. If we suppose all material misery to be an instrument in God’s hand for the deliverance of men out of the greater and more terrible spiritual misery, we shall suppose all material blessedness to be the result of spiritual blessedness. And so we shall be able to enter upon this twenty-first chapter, respecting the new heaven and the new earth. For we shall understand the old heaven to be that which we conceive when our meridian is on earth. And we shall understand the new heaven and the new earth to be both seen as they are seen in the light of God; the heavenly or spiritual as the substance, the earthly as the form or body which has been redeemed to its true subjection, which is able to manifest the glory that it once concealed. Think how the earth presented itself to a heathen of the old world. His own land was the one dear cherished spot in the midst of it—all were contemplated in reference to that. The earth was composed of a number of different countries, each with a different soil, different customs, different laws, a different language, and different worship. Then think of the heaven! There dwelt the objects of those worships, the beings to whom the soil owed its richness or its barrenness, who were the sources of the diversities of customs, laws, languages. And this is the natural way of judging about Heaven and Earth. Do not call it heathenish; it is yours and mine. We start from what is nearest to us. What lies beyond we judge and measure by that standard. But we are driven to own something which we cannot see, and yet which has dominion over us, which affects us in a thousand ways. What it is we must guess of. The things we see, especially those objects over our heads which influence all we do in such marvellous ways, give a form to our guesses. The heaven is felt to be before the earth; yet the earth appears to be before the heaven. How can we descend from the unknown to the known, merely because the unknown appears to be the original? Must we not ascend from the known to the unknown?
The Jew was taught that he could not judge of the infinite by the finite, of the original by the image. The unseen God spoke to Abraham; the I AM unveiled Himself to Moses. The care of the land, the laws, customs, sacrifices of the chosen people were grounded on that revelation. Heaven in all things claimed precedence of the earth, the government of the earth. But could man be satisfied with this discovery of a Name, even of a Government? If he was the image of Him who bore that Name, who exercised that Government, must he not behold his Original, must he not meet with Him? The revelation which Apostles declared to be the necessary sequel to, and fulfilment of, that to the family of Abraham—which the Jewish rulers and priests rejected—purported to be this. It purported to meet the demands of the Gentiles, whose thoughts had risen from earth towards heaven, in search of their Ruler, no less than of the Jew, who had confessed that the Ruler of heaven was making Himself known to earth. If that were so—if it were true that the Son of Man, who came down from heaven, ascended up to heaven, and even when upon earth was in heaven—there was in very deed a new Heaven and a new Earth; and the Spirit of God might enable the purified eye of man’s spirit to behold them.
Such a vision was vouchsafed to the last Apostle, for his own sake and for ours. It was the result and reward of all those visions of conflict which had preceded. That divided heaven of the old world had passed away. The narrow heaven of the Jew, which was still mixed with earth, and yet separate from earth, had passed away. It was the Heaven of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—of God dwelling in His own perfect light—manifesting Himself to all in the Divine Word; quickening with His own Spirit. Perfect distinctness; perfect unity. Every Apostle was appointed to bring out some aspect of the mystery. St. Paul, when he was carried to the third heaven, could but wonder and adore, not utter, what he had seen. But it came forth to sustain him in his own weakness; he could speak it in broken words, when he cried, “Of him, and to him, and through him are all things, to whom be glory for ever;” when he preached at Athens “of him whom they were feeling after, of haply they might feel after him and find him, though he was not far from any one of them, since in him they lived, and moved, and had their being;” more clearly when he “bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the family of heaven and earth is named,” asking “that he would grant to the Ephesians that they might be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith; that they might be rooted and grounded in love; that they might know with all saints what is the height, and length, and breadth, and might know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge;” and when, having made this wonderful petition on their behalf, he committed them to Him who could do “exceedingly abundantly for them above all that they could ask or think.” You see how, in this act of adoration, heaven and earth inevitably met together; how impossible it was for St. Paul to enter into the glory of the higher, without seeing anew glory resting upon the lower. And it was an earth, in which there was no more sea; NO more necessary separation of kindreds, and tribes, and tongues; yet no confused intermingling of them in a huge Babel despotism. Pentecost had established that fellowship which Babel had counterfeited. All were one in the true Head of the body. One Spirit broke down the barriers of language, so far as they destroyed the intercourse of spiritual beings, and upheld the variety of tongues, so far as they were witnesses for distinct gifts and vocations, for distinct apprehensions of the one Truth, for the different culture which God had assigned to different portions of His Vineyard. And now, therefore, at length:
I. “I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and shall be their God.” John had seen the old Jerusalem—the dear city of his fathers, the witness for the living God to men—vanish in flame and smoke. Behind it and within it was this other Jerusalem; the old walls and battlements had fallen down, that it might be revealed. Not a material city standing upon earth; yet associated with the earth as that had never been; because descending from God out of Heaven; because in very deed the city of God; because representing humanity in its true redeemed, bridal condition; united to its everlasting Husband: shining with His brightness. The name Emmanuel, which was pronounced in the cradle of the Child that was King of the Jews, was fulfilled. God was indeed with men. The New Covenant is a reality, and not a dream. God has truly said to man in His Son, “I will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters. And your sins and iniquities will I remember no more.”
II. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are faithful and true. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”
We are all too ready to separate the different portions of this passage from each other. The thought of deliverance from pain, and sorrow, and death, is very delightful. Without having felt any intense pain, without having seen death very close to ourselves, we yet think that if we could be rid of them we should have the blessedness we are seeking for. Those who have endured intense pain, who have realised a little of the horror of death, want something more. Why has the pain been sent them? Why has death been permitted? They feel that pain is intolerable if it is not a discipline; if it is not designed to make them conscious of their own spiritual existence, to make them covet treasures which eye hath not seen nor ear heard. The words about pain, and sorrow, and death, derive their force for them from this assurance that God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. They shall behold an everlasting Friend and Deliverer. HE shall comfort them. This is the great change which they look for. Freedom from pain because it has done its work and led them to the source and centre of joy. Freedom from death because they are brought into fellowship with Him in whom is eternal life. In His presence, all things become new; for by His presence all things are restored to their true state; all things are beheld not marred, distorted, divided, but healthy, perfect, harmonious in their Divine Head. I am Alpha and Omega is the first note of the Revelation; I am Alpha and Omega must be the closing note of it. The loss of the Son as the ground of all things, the loss of the Son as the goal and consummation of all things, has brought the earth into darkness, confusion, death. Those who see Him to be the head and end of creation see it as God sees it—see it without sorrow, or pain, or death. They have given up their independence; that is death. They receive continually fresh streams from God; there is the fountain of life. They have overcome their desire to be anything in themselves; anything apart from God; they are content to receive all from God, and to find all in God; so they inherit all things. But they can never rise to a higher blessedness than that which was accorded to them when the Gospel was first preached to them, than that which was assured to them in their baptism—“I will be their God, and they shall be my sons.” This state of filial adoption by Him that sits on the throne is the highest state which human beings can reach. Christ died, and rose, and ascended, that it might be ours; when we fully enter into it, we receive the highest bliss of heaven. But this is also the highest bliss of earth. It is taken out of the hands of its murderer. It becomes what its Creator intended it to be.
III. “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”
All blessedness—oh! when shall we understand this?—consists in the acknowledgment of that which is; all misery and damnation in the denial of it. That men disbelieved the good and gracious God to be their Father that they count Him not their Father, but their enemy this makes them cowards; this makes them traffickers with impure and evil spirits; this makes them corrupters and destroyers of each other’s purity; this makes them trifle with each other’s life; this makes them worshippers of visible things; this is the lie of which all other lies are the offspring. Those spirits which reject truth, which feed on a lie and live in a lie, are in the lake of fire. There is no way of describing their condition but that. A fire is burning in them which nothing can quench. As I said before, if we look at this fire merely as reason, without Revelation, looks at it, we could find in it only despair. When God enters, despair ceases. He is called in Scripture the God of Hope. That which we think of as His must give us hope.
IV. For see. “There came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying”—What new doom is this angel about to speak of? His office has been to scatter plagues. What is to be the consummation of them?—“Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” Here is the consummation of the plagues. To this result have they all been tending. By them the bride has been disciplined and prepared for her Lord; by them have her seducers been tormented and cast down.
V. What this bride is we have heard already. “And he carried me away to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the new Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.”
Brethren, I believe that we read these words and those which follow them in our childhood; that then they make a profound impression upon us; that it seems to disappear; that we begin to regard them as Oriental poetry, which has nothing to do with the business of life; that holding that opinion, we dismiss them angrily, as if they were setting before us a phantom world which can never kindle our longings or affect our lives; but that, nevertheless, unknown to ourselves, these early impressions do come back to us in the midst of crowded cities and the hum of earthly voices. When we contrast them for a moment with what we see about us, we begin to suspect that that is the phantom world, that they may testify of the real; that that is of to-day, that this is the permanent and unchangeable; that that addresses itself to our eyes and ears; that this reveals to us the proper home of us to whom those eyes and ears belong—the home in which we are created to dwell—towards which the hearts within us are striving, away from which we must be weary and restless. Oh! that God would give us grace so to think of that city which the Apostle saw descending out of heaven from God! And I believe that He will. I believe that the more we read the history of the world, and see what polities men have tried to form for themselves, and what promise of good—what real good—there has been in them, and what disappointment; how each one has recognised some Divine power as at work for its origin and its preservation, how each has asked that power to sustain the truth of its members and the unity of the whole society, and yet what falsehoods have been propagated in the attempt to make these invisible influences bear upon the visible doings of men; how old societies have fallen through weakness, and those which have risen up in their places have been obliged to ask help from the traditions which they had cast aside; how great experiments for freedom have terminated in cruel tyrannies; how men have talked of great ideals and held to them with earnest faith, and then sighed because the ideal was not real; how the nations of the earth and the Church of God are alike split into factions, each faction envying and hating the other; how yet the attempts at unity appear to be worse than the sect animosities which they would extinguish; the more, I say, we dwell on these spectacles, the more will this vision of an eternal city, grounded upon the union of God with man, dawn upon us through the mists of the past, through the confusions of the present, through our faint flickering expectations of what may be in the future; the more shall we be sure that God has revealed to us that which has been, and is, and must be—that which reconciles all ideals—that which binds the ideal to the actual—that which the world, and the flesh, and the devil are ever trying to shut out from us—that which they never have been able to shut out from us; because He who is for us, He with whose name we are sealed, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, He the God blessed for ever, is stronger than those who are against us.
Yes, dear friends, our baptism was in very deed the witness to us that we are one and all citizens of this new Jerusalem. And we may continually ask the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He would give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, that we may know what is the hope of our calling, what is the greatness of our inheritance. And this illumination will come to us through all the turmoils and trials which make us feel the want of it. In hours of unutterable darkness, we shall remember that there is a “light like unto a jasper stone, clear as crystal;” that this light dwells in God Himself, and is able to fill the hearts and spirits of men. When we are meditating on the weakness and insecurity of all material barriers and protections, the thought of that wall, great and high, which surrounds the Divine City, will scatter all cowardly fears, will assure us that that can be in no peril. When in the poverty and helplessness of those who appear to be the champions of Christ upon earth, we cry for invisible friends and helpers, the twelve gates with the twelve angels will rise before us, as no imaginary, but a most real revelation. When we feel that it is very grievous to be separated from the past, to have left its living treasures far behind us, we are reminded that “on these gates are names written, which are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.” When we ask if then we are to be brought once more to the narrowness of the old Jewish polity, which only met men on one side of their lives, which is national, not universal, we are told that in the new Jerusalem “there are on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, on the west three gates.” When we fancy that the Church of the elder days, the Church which we read of in the New Testament, is hopelessly divided from the Church of our own day, this cheering message comes to us,—“And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.”
Everywhere we find divines going about with measuring reeds to ascertain how far the city of God reaches. Each school and sect has its own reed; each makes the limits narrower. It is some satisfaction to know that this task is superfluous; that it was undertaken long ago, by competent hands; that this was the result of it.
VI. “And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.” That measure of a man, which is not derived from his fallen nature, but from his angelic nature, is God’s measure. The city which lieth foursquare is His city. He knows the measure of it. Perhaps we shall be wiser and safer if we do not make much use of our reeds.
But it is when we think of the materials of which our human fellowship is composed that we are likely to feel most despair. We see the corrupt doings of other men; we find a deep root of corruption in ourselves. In stones which we dug up from the quarries of earth, what can we expect but continual mouldering and decay? Nothing else, if they are only dug out of the quarries of the earth. But men are not children of the earth, they are children of the light; children of God. When they know that, when they turn to the light, when they receive His brightness and show it forth, then this is the description of them, and of the society which they form.
VII. “And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, a beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates were of twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl, and the street of the city was of pure gold, as it were transparent glass.”
We hear sometimes of the wealth and prodigality of Nature; of her innumerable forms; of her beauties of colour and light, which seem as if they had no eye to look upon them. That wealth and prodigality can cause us no mourning. They can only encourage us to meditate on the infinite love which has produced this variety of life. But have you never groaned over the wealth and prodigality of human gifts, which seem truly to be cast away? Religious men have seen the waste, and have tried to reduce all things to a safe dulness and uniformity. All beautiful talents are abused and perish; why not hide them in the earth? Is not that the way to keep them safe for the hard Master? Oh! think of God’s City! Each human character, each human talent is a distinct pearl, of which He would build it, with which He would adorn it. Nothing that He has given can be lost: all is for use, and grace, and delight. All is meant to reflect a portion of His glory. Only remember that we are nothing in ourselves; that we are created in His image, and then you will know how each precious stone shall contribute to the glory of the whole; how the purest human gold shall be like transparent glass, through which the Divine beauty discovers itself.
VIII. But what has succeeded to that temple in the old Jerusalem, the destruction of which was the sign that the age was ended? This has been the question of Christendom in every century since its fall. Can we not have some temple in some city of the earth which shall be like that, or which is the same essentially? Cannot we have some earthly city which shall be like the Divine City—the capital of the new world as that was of the old?
This was the question of the early ages, of the middle ages: it is the question which must be settled in ours. The miseries of division are patent; it is obvious to most thoughtful men that none of the little sect cities which men have built is the city which lieth foursquare, the city whose length is as large as the breadth—that all these compounded into one can never make such a city. They therefore ask, “Has there not been a Christian polity in this earth which had a centre? Shall we not attach ourselves to that?” And I know no answer but this,—“Oh! yes; in God’s name let us attach ourselves to that polity which has a Centre. Or rather let us believe that we are attached to it already. For this is the Divine description of it: ‘And I saw no temple there, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.’” These are the centres of the society; from them its worship and sacrifices begin; in them they terminate. Whensoever we inwardly understand this to be so—when we confess that it has always been so, only that men have denied it, and put their own notions and fancies between them and heaven, and tried to separate heaven and earth which God has made one—then will the remaining words of the chapter also be accepted in their fulness. “And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the Lord God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” Just as truly as the sun and moon give light to the visible earth, just as truly in the Lord God and the Lamb is the light of Man the appointed lord of that earth. The Church has existed, and does exist, to bear witness of that truth; to declare that God is light, that in Him there is no darkness at all; to declare that Christ is the Light of the world, that “His life is the light of men.” Because she has borne that witness so imperfectly, because she has denied that God is light, and has intercepted His light, and has made herself the sun instead of Him, the nations of the earth which have been within the range of her influence, have been cold and dark when they might have been dwelling in the full blaze of truth and love. But the words are still true, and shall one day prove themselves true: “And the nations of the earth which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honour into it.” And this because “the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall be no night there.” And this because “there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”