Revelation 21-22:6

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks from Revelation 21-22 in his series called Missions as the Triumph of the Lamb.

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“One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls.

The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits thick, by man’s measurement, which the angel was using. The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone.

The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass. I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. The angel said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show his servants the things that must soon take place.’ ”

This is the Word of the Lord.

If, then, in the first verses of chapter 21 we find what is new, I have called this next section, 21:9–21, what is symbolic. In some ways this is misleading. After all, most of the description in chapter 21, verses 1–8, is already symbolic at some deep level. Yet there is a peculiar focus on elements of symbolism that are rather different from the rest of these two chapters, and it’s worth taking our time to work through some of them.

I can’t go through all of them. It would take too much time to unpack them. Yet it is clear that in what follows, the interpreting angel in the vision goes to great lengths to make John reflect on peculiar elements of the symbolism, and this is for our learning. In verses 9–10, the identity of the city with the bride becomes explicit. The new detail here in verses 9–10 is the identification of the bride’s husband. It’s no surprise to anyone who knows the New Testament, but now it’s made explicit.

“One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me …” Another interpreting angel, standard in apocalyptic. “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” Thus, this “marriage supper of the Lamb” theme, which is found throughout Old and New Testament literature in one fashion or another, comes to its culmination. “And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”

Once again, you have to remember the nature of mixed metaphor. If you are a man and are married, I guarantee that at your wedding, after you watched with captivating fascination your bride coming down the aisle, brought there by her father or uncle or someone and then transferred to your arm.… I guarantee you did not turn to her and say, “Oh, you remind me of a city.” It might have been a very short marriage if you did.

But that is the sort of clash of symbols that you get in apocalyptic all the time. I don’t think anybody in the ancient world described his wife that way either, but Holy Scripture does, in this case precisely because it takes the mixing of metaphors to capture all that God wants to say. The marriage supper of the Lamb is a great theme in Scripture, and it’s rooted, in some ways, in marriage itself, which is then unpacked in typological structures.

In the Old Testament, there is the marriage between Yahweh and his covenant people, and then Paul says he has betrothed the church as a pure virgin to Christ, who is the ultimate husband. The connection between marriage on the one hand and Christ and the church on the other is unpacked in great detail in Ephesians 5 and alluded to in many, many other passages. Now you have the consummation.

What are you to learn from that? On the one hand, of course, this is saying something about marriage. On the other hand, you can begin from our small finite perspective and think about marriage in the light of Scripture and extrapolate into what the consummation will be. The most intimate, wholeness-making, joyful, cathartic, pleasurable, unifying experience that human beings can have is intimacy within a really healthy marriage. That’s the truth.

It’s a very tiny anticipation of the wholeness and intimacy and pleasure when we are united corporately, as the church of Christ, with the Lamb. You reflect on that for a while and then flip it over and look at it the other way. Doesn’t adultery now look shoddy? Yet through the prophet Hosea, God actually presents himself as the almighty cuckold, the betrayed husband. But no sooner has John introduced the theme, then he switches over to the city. We’re told this city shines with the glory of God.

The language, again, is drawn from the Old Testament. Isaiah 60, for example. “Arise, shine …” This is addressed to Zion, Jerusalem. “… for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.”

In other words, the presence of the glory of the Lord means the presence of the Lord himself in unshielded radiance. All of our experience of the glory of God is, before the consummation, in some sense mediated. Even those who witnessed the incarnate Lord himself understood that he was veiled in flesh. It is in his vision that John sees the face of the exalted, risen, ascended Christ, with his face shining with the brightness of the noonday sun, in the first chapter of this book.

Ezekiel 43 promises, “Then the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.” What’s it like? The author is reaching for symbols again. “Jasper, clear as crystal.” Again, the same translational problem. It doesn’t mean clear or transparent or the like; rather, glistening, sparkling like crystal. The idea is of shimmering glory.

The high wall with twelve gates and an angel at each gate (verses 12–13). Not only abundant entrance, but especially picking up the old people of God with the twelve tribes of Israel, and then the twelve apostles also mentioned; that is, together symbolizing the completeness of the number of the people of God under the old covenant and the completeness of the number of the people of God under the new.

May I say something in passing that has very little to do with this, but I’ll still say it in any case. Precisely because we live in an age where there is rising biblical illiteracy, we find more biblical illiteracy even within the church. People resent having to learn facts. There was another generation not that long ago that learned all of the kings of Israel, for example, as a matter of course.

When I was 4, we sang in choruses in our home, “These are the names of Jacob’s sons: Gad and Asher and Simeon, Reuben, Issachar, Levi, Judah, Dan, and Naphtali—twelve in all but never a twin—Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin.” Thus I learned, at the age of 4, the twelve tribes of Israel. I had another one for the twelve apostles. “There were twelve disciples Jesus called to help him: Simon, Peter, Andrew, James’ brother John,” and so on. Learn these things. They’re just details and facts, but they’re part of the very fabric and matrix on which the entire biblical story hangs.

If you learn the great sweep of biblical theology and can’t even figure out whose brother Simon is, then you’re missing something. There’s a sense in which you have the whole color and you don’t have the structure anymore. I feel so much better after having said this. It is an important lesson to learn in a generation that rather despises facts and details. After all, what you discover throughout these two chapters is the amazing number of Old Testament details that are now picked up in antitype.

Now I’ll come back to this twelve in a few moments. The twelve angels who are gatekeepers probably reflect the practice seen in Isaiah 62:6 of watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem, but the wall now does not signify a defensive posture against attacking hordes, nor does it even mean that the people are set apart; rather, it’s part of the picture of an ancient city, not only majestic but, above all, secure, stable.

The twelve foundations here are the apostles, for historically speaking, the church does rest on the apostles. Ephesians 2 tells us this. But there is a bigger issue yet that we sometimes forget. The biblical revelation is a profoundly historical revelation. Let me give a further explanation of this point, for it is crucial in our day of religious pluralism.

If you could somehow prove that, historically speaking, Gautama the Buddha never lived.… I don’t know how you would prove it, but supposing you could prove that Gautama the Buddha never lived, you would not destroy Buddhism, for Buddhism depends, at the end of the day, on its internal coherence, its attractiveness as a kind of quasi-religious philosophical system. It does not depend on any historical claim.

Now travel to India. Supposing you could prove (I don’t know how) that Krishna never lived. Would you destroy Hinduism? No, of course not. In Hinduism there is one sweeping truth that underlies everything, and this sweeping truth manifests itself in all of reality, including in millions and millions of gods. If you bump off one of them, well, go down the street to a Shiva temple instead.

Come to Islam. Supposing you visit your friendly neighborhood imam and ask this question. What will he say? “Sir, could you imagine that Allah, blessed be he, might have given his final revelation to somebody other than Muhammad?” Now probably he will begin by misunderstanding your question, and he will say, “We believe that although Allah did reveal himself to Abraham, and although Moses was his prophet and Jesus was his prophet, the final revelation came to us in the final prophet, namely Muhammad.”

You reply, “Sir, I’m a Christian. You understand I don’t hold that, but that’s not what I’m disputing at the moment. I’m just asking a question. Do you think that had Allah, in all of his sovereignty, chosen to give his revelation, his final revelation as you understand it, to someone other than Muhammad he could have done so?” The imam will say, “Well, of course. Allah is Allah. He does what he pleases. He could have given it to anybody at all, but we hold that he gave it to Muhammad.”

Now come to Christianity. Ask the same question there. “Could Jehovah have given the revelation to somebody other than Jesus Christ?” The question doesn’t even make sense. The revelation is Jesus Christ, and it is bound up with space/time witness. If you could somehow prove that Jesus never lived, you’ve destroyed Christianity utterly. It’s a historical claim. Not only so, if you could prove somehow that Jesus did not rise from the dead, according to 1 Corinthians 15 there are some entailments.

First, the apostles are liars. You see, when there is historical witness, the way we have access to events in history is precisely by witness. Whether personal or literary or archaeological, it’s by witness. It’s by what others saw and experienced and knew. We have access to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the first instance, not by some internal revelation given to us privately, but by the apostles and other witnesses … up to 500 of them, according to Paul, writing a bare 20 years later to the Corinthians.

So in the first place, if Christ did not rise from the dead, the apostles are liars. In the second place, you’re still in your trespasses and sins. That is, granted the truthfulness of the rest of the Bible, that we are sinners by nature and by choice and we are lost apart from some sacrifice that finally pays for our sins, then we’re lost. Not only so, but our faith is in vain. Do you hear that?

In the streets of Jackson today, let alone the streets of New York, faith, for most people, means something like personal religious choice. “You have your faith; I have my faith.” It has nothing to do with facts. It has to do with religious commitment. “You have your faith; I have my faith.” Although faith, as a word, is used in several different ways in the New Testament, it is never once used that way. Not once.

In 1 Corinthians 15, the validity of faith depends absolutely on the truthfulness of its object. If Christ has not risen, he says, your faith is in vain. Not only so, but in the fourth place, you are of all people most to be pitied, because you’re believing something that isn’t true. So faith is strengthened in the New Testament by establishing truth. There are other ways of strengthening faith. I acknowledge that.

There are moral dimensions to faith and all the rest. Yet at the end of the day, the validity of the faith turns in the first instance on the truthfulness of its object. In this case, because it is a historical witness, it turns on historical witnesses. That is the sense in which the church has as its foundation the apostles. That has to be explained and re-explained and re-explained today, where faith has come to mean nothing more than subjective religious experience.

If you exhort people today to trust Christ, to believe in Christ, to have faith in Christ, without explaining any of these things, then they are hearing you, in all probability (unless they come from a very churchy background), to say, “Make a kind of subjective choice, and walk the Christian way for a bit, and see how it works out. It has nothing to do with a truth claim. Just try it on.” No, no, no. The church is built on the foundation of the apostles.

Then in verses 15–17, an angel measures the city using a golden measuring rod. The reed was just over 10 feet long, about 3 meters. The point here is enormous size, room for all: 2,200 kilometers, 1,400 miles. Most important of all, perfect symmetry. It is a city shaped like a cube. There is only one cube in the Old Testament. Just one. It is the Most Holy Place. So now we have a city of vast dimensions, the whole thing being the Most Holy Place, and all of God’s people are in it.

It’s a way of saying that there is ample room for all of God’s people in the immediate, unshielded glory of the presence of God without mediation, without some Levitical priest going in there once a year with blood of bull and goat. No. All of us forever in the presence of the Lord. Moreover, the 12 edges, with the number 12,000. Twelve times 12,000 is 144,000, another way of symbolizing all of the people of God, all of God’s elect.

In any case, as one writer has put it, John is struggling to express by symbols the vastness, the perfect symmetry, the splendor of the New Jerusalem, and I would say also the fact that we are now, all of us, in the unmediated presence of God. I wish I had time to unpack something of the building materials that are used, the pure gold and the like. I’m going to skip all of that.

I’ll just mention in passing that some have argued, I think convincingly, that the placement of the stones here in a square is really quite interesting, given in verse 13, “east, north, south, west.” That’s a strange sequence. It’s strange to our ears and in the first century. We say today, “north, south, east, and west,” don’t we? We don’t say, “east, north, south, and west,” but they didn’t in the first century either. So you start asking, “Why this awkward way of saying things?”

You put the stones around them and compare them with the 12 signs of the zodiac, and the order is the exact reverse of the path of the sun through the 12 signs. Astrology was very important in the ancient world, and there are many hints that the book of Revelation is a profoundly anti-paganism book.

So whatever this symbolism is, it has to be anti-astrology. It has to be anti-zodiac. “I’m not talking about any of that kind of stuff,” John says, and reverses the imagery. In other words, he does not want to put things out in any way that leaves any excuse for an interpretation that has to do with pagan speculations about the city of the gods. No, no, no. In this vision, God reverses all human judgment.

The gates made of great pearl. That’s not an image drawn from the Old Testament. I suspect it’s drawn from one of the parables of Jesus himself: the pearl of great price. I can’t quite be sure and can’t prove it, but that’s what I suggest. To walk on streets of gold, again with appropriate warnings about it’s not transparency that is at issue. It sort of is the culmination of priests in the Old Testament, in their temple work, walking on gold, as it were (1 Kings 6:30). So here is some of the symbolism.

Now let me turn to what is missing. The first thing John says is missing is the temple. Verse 22: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” There is such a trajectory of glorious revelation here. In the Old Testament, under the Mosaic covenant, God himself had designed the tabernacle.

More than 30 times in the book of Exodus alone, you find some variation on this clause: “See that you build it according to the pattern showed you on the mount.” Moses constructed everything according to the pattern showed him on the mount. Bezalel and Oholiab designed it according to the pattern given them by Moses, who was shown it on the mount. That sort of phrase is repeated again and again and again.

Then when the thing was built, the glory of God came down upon the tabernacle, which great glory was repeated in its descent at the time of the temple. Do you recall when the glory came down upon the temple? All of the priests had to leave because the glory was so spectacular that they were crushed by it. They just left. Then the great prayer of dedication by Solomon.

Once a year, the people enter symbolically in a mediated way through the high priest. Then in the devastating vision of Ezekiel 8–11, Ezekiel is transported in a vision 700 miles back to Jerusalem. He sees all the sin, the shame of the whole place, and the glory of God rises from the temple and moves to the mobile throne already depicted in Ezekiel 1, and then abandons the city, crosses the Kidron Valley, and parks on the Mount of Olives.

What’s this saying? It’s saying that God has abandoned the temple. God has abandoned Jerusalem. So when Nebuchadnezzar and his hordes come through, it’s not because God wasn’t strong enough to handle them, but because God is using them precisely to effect his judgment. When the temple is rebuilt, there is no mention anywhere of the glory returning, but one day in the streets of Jerusalem there was heard a voice that said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again.”

His enemies didn’t understand what he meant, and his friends didn’t understand what he meant, but after Jesus rose from the dead, then they did. Here was the true meeting place between God and human beings. The temple was not an end in itself. It was one more pointer, like the sacrifices, like the priests, like the lamb, like the bull, like the goat … one more pointer toward him who would fulfill all of these patterns in himself.

In a derivative way, we, the church of Jesus Christ, are the temple, and in a still further derivative way, the individual Christian is the temple of God, that is, the place where God takes up his residence by his Spirit. Now we come to another mixed metaphor. We come to the New Jerusalem, and the whole city is built like the Most Holy Place. That indicates that we are all now in the presence of God.

Or to change the whole thing again and look at it a different way, there is no temple at all, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. There’s no need for mediation. All of the mediation has been done. There’s no sun, no moon, we’re told, for the glory of God fills this entire universe, and there is no more night. This is not talking any more about the astronomical principles of the new heaven and the new earth than the lack of water is talking about the hydrological principles of the new heaven and the new earth.

The point is in the ancient world, without electricity, without all of the light we just assume everywhere around us, the night was a dangerous place. The night was a threatening place. The night was the symbol of sin and rebellion and darkness. The night was when you couldn’t see. The night was when you shut the city gates because you had to keep out what could otherwise creep in and destroy and rob and brutalize and rape.

Now there’s no night, no sun, no moon. The glory of God provides perfect light all the time. There’s no darkness. Do you remember what is said of God? “In him is no darkness at all.” There’s no place for shadows now, no place for shades. Then it’s unpacked for us. There is no impurity, we’re told. None. Verse 27: “Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

Have you ever daydreamed sometimes in your meditation what it would be like never, ever, ever to have told a lie; never, ever, ever to have thought of yourself as better than somebody else; never, ever, ever to have lusted; never, ever, ever to have hated; never, ever, ever to have blasphemed; never, ever, ever to have been irresponsible or lazy; never, ever, ever to have been greedy; never, ever, ever to have nurtured bitterness?

That’s only the negative side of things. What would it be like always to have loved God with heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself? Someday that’s what we’ll be like, for there will be no impurity there. None.

Finally, let me say just a word or two about what is central. In chapter 22, verses 1–5, there are two main thrusts about what is central. First, the water of life springs from the throne of God and the Lamb in chapter 22, verses 1–3. The language is drawn in part from Eden. It’s drawn in part from the entire vision right through the entire book of Revelation. It is a way of saying that the sustaining principle of eternal life and perfect purity is forever vested in God himself and the Lamb.

There’s no mediation anymore perhaps; nevertheless, this does not mean we become independent beings. We are supremely and completely and satisfyingly and forever dependent on the water that flows from the throne of God. That’s what’s central. Verses 4–5 give us what some theologians have called the beatific vision, seeing God himself. “They will see his face. His name will be on their foreheads.”

Face to face with Christ my Savior,

Face to face—what will it be,

When with rapture I behold him,

Jesus Christ who died for me?

Only faintly now I see him,

With a darkening veil between,

But a better day is coming

When his glory will be seen.

I travel quite a bit. Usually it’s by air, but sometimes I take the car if it’s not too far away. It’s an old car. It doesn’t have a CD player. I usually put in tapes. Then I have a CD player that I can plug into the tape so I can play CDs. My musical tastes, I confess, are very varied. I’m a complete disgrace to anybody who’s loyal to only one tradition.

One day, not too long ago, I was listening, if you please, to the folk music of Roger Whittaker. That already dates me. Roger Whittaker was a kind of folk singer, originally New Zealand, I think, but singing songs from all around the world, folk music of Scotland and America and Ireland and so forth, and some folk music of Canada. He was singing at this point a song of Cape Breton. As a Canadian, I can appreciate that. The last verse of this song of Cape Breton runs:

If my time could end perfectly

I know how I’d want it to be

God’s gift of heaven would be made up of three

My love, Cape Breton, and me.

I thought to myself, “My dear Roger, you have just about defined hell.” And I speak as a loyal Canadian. For Roger and his true love on Cape Breton would doubtless breed like rabbits, and the whole mess would start all over again. You see, at the end of the day, heaven is not primarily about streets of gold, except in their metaphorical significance. It’s not primarily about visiting your great-aunt Maude who has gone on before.

As you read through these chapters, what you discover above all is forever in the presence of the great God, awash in joy, awash in holiness, always sustained in eternal resurrection life in the water that comes from the throne of God. Now it is at this point that John writes, quoting the words of Jesus (verse 7), “Behold, I am coming soon!” Verse 12: “Behold, I am coming soon!”

Verse 14: “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”

Verse 17: “The Spirit and the bride …” That’s us, brothers and sisters. “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ ” Notice, “… him who hears say, ‘Come!’ ” You hear this message and are transformed by it, and now you become one of those who cry, “Come!” “Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Oh, I know that 40 years ago in this country there was an awful lot of eschatological debate, and nasty people were making sure you got down the details of your eschatology or else you were excluded from this group or that group. Every once in a while, this comes back in a new round of books or videos or something or other.

But there is an alternative danger: sitting around in smug superiority about their exegetical stupidity and not caring a rip that the Lord is coming back. Because he is. And the Spirit and the bride, in the light of this glorious vision, which draws their heart because it is their treasure, cry, “Come!” I doubt that a biblical view of mission can long be sustained without a homesickness for heaven. Let us pray.

Forbid, Lord God, that our whole anticipation should be constrained by the genuine and worthy desires and goals of this world, but enable us with the eyes of faith to see him who is invisible, to lay up treasures in heaven, to be homesick for heaven, to cry with the church in every century, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus,” and with this framework firmly causing us to pant in anticipation, extend our welcome, our exhortation, our evangelism, our command, “Come!” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let him who is thirsty, come, and drink of the water of life. For Jesus’ sake, amen.