A Bride Adorned for Her Husband

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.  Rev 21:1-2
“A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH”

​John saw a beautiful world; but he looked beyond, and saw a new heaven and a new earth. What a difference in the exiles of time! Napoleon on St. Helena, fretting and fuming with disappointment, sees no bright visions. No heavens of beauty, no earths of glory pass before his enraptured gaze. St. John in Patmos makes the island glow with celestial colors. He dwells no longer in a lonely and forbidding island; he lives in a new earth adjacent to a new heaven. Columbus, after a long voyage, rejoiced to see the land birds of beautiful plumage that told of a new world near at hand. John, without moving from his island, saw not only the birds of beautiful plumage which sing of a new world, but also the new world itself; he rejoiced to see a sight which men had never before witnessed. John’s vision is resplendent with material and moral beauty. The bright vision is not darkened by the sad shades of sin, pain, sorrow, death. He saw a new world of marvelous creation, of inexhaustible loveliness. The new world was to be one in which there would be day without night, land without sea, summer without winter, pleasure without pain, smiles without tears, health without sickness, joy without sorrow, life without death, love without any alloy, without any tendency to decay.
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The real question everywhere is whether the world, distracted and confused as everybody sees that it is, is going to be patched up and restored to what it used to be, or whether it is going forward into a quite new and different kind of life, whose exact nature nobody can pretend to foretell, but which is to be distinctly new, unlike the life of any age which the world has seen already.… It is impossible that the old conditions, so shaken and broken, can ever be repaired and stand just as they stood before. The time has come when something more than mere repair and restoration of the old is necessary. The old must die and a new must come forth out of its tomb.   (Phillips Brooks)

The New Jerusalem

​The scriptures both of the Old and New Testaments point to the destruction of the old earth when the Lord comes to judgment. See 2Pe_3:10. It is to undergo a purification and a renewal to fit it for the home of the saints in glory. The "old heavens and earth," which I understand to comprehend the old world and its order, so sadly out of joint, pass away at the time of the great judgment, and the old state of things shall be succeeded by a new order, both physical and moral.

And the sea is no more. Whether this is to be understood literally, or whether it means that there shall be no barriers between the peoples, such as the sea interposes, is not certain.

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem. The glorified and heavenly Church, pure and beautiful as a bride prepared for the bridegroom. This chapter presents a vision of the final condition of the redeemed and triumphant church. This vision points out the contrast between the beginning and the final condition of our race. The career of man began in a garden, the fitting home of a race few in numbers. It ends, as revealed by the prophet, in a city, the home where multitudes gather. Of this city Jerusalem was a type. The redeemed and holy Church, washed by the Savior's blood, and obedient to his will as a faithful bride to her husband, is the new Jerusalem.

Behold the tabernacle of God is with men. Of old the Shekinah, the emblem of God's presence, dwelt in the tabernacle between the Cherubim. In this glorious city of the future, God shall make his tabernacle and dwell with men. They shall recognize his presence, his protection, his fatherly and omnipotent care over them.

And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. No sorrow or travail of any kind shall ever enter within the walls of the city. The cry of anguish shall never be uttered, hearts shall never be broken, no tear shall ever dim the eye, and, most glorious of all, death shall be unknown. Death began his sway when man was expelled from Paradise; he ends it when the final judgment condemns Satan, death and hades to enter the lake of fire. The new Jerusalem will be painless, tearless, deathless, because it will be a sinless city. "The former things have passed away."  (B.W. Johnson)