What do you think of when you think of heaven? Pearly gates? Streets of gold? I'm sorry to inform you but this is NOT heaven.
"What? What is that you say Michael? All my life I have heard heaven has streets of gold. All my life I heard I was going to arrive at the pearly gates."
Yep, I know. Me too. All our lives we have been wrong.
"And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of Heaven from God" (Revelation 21:10)
See that word descending? Keep it in mind.
"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" (Revelation 21:1-2)
Let's take these verses apart now. John saw a NEW heaven and a NEW earth. Ours had passed away. On the NEW earth "John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven".
Notice that the new Jerusalem was coming down OUT of heaven. It is the new Jerusalem that we get our ideas of streets of gold and pearly gates. The city has these things. Heaven does not.
The original Greek word used for descending in Rev. 21:1o and for coming down in Rev. 21:2 is
katabainō. It means, "to descend (literally or figuratively)".
"So maybe it's just figuratively descending then Michael".
Nope. Let's check it out.
The word katabainō is used 80 times in the New Testament. Everytime it means exactly what it means in these two verses.
In John 6:51, "I am the living bread which CAME DOWN from heaven".
In Mark 15:30, "Save thyself, and COME DOWN from the cross".
Did Jesus figuratively come down from heaven? Were the people challenging Him to figuratively come down from the cross?
Luke 22:44, "And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood FALLING DOWN to the ground".
80 times in 80 verses. ALWAYS THE SAME!
Heaven is NOT the new Jerusalem. The new Jerusalem descends from heaven to the new earth. It does not matter if the heaven spoken of is our atmosphere or the heaven God is in. The point is that it descends and it is a city, not heaven. Personally I think it descends from Heaven where God is. I suppose it goes through our atmosphere "new heavens" but I'm pretty sure it's coming down straight from God. The verses imply that John after being taken to the great mountain saw the city descending from where he just was, which was Heaven.
In my next post we will look at what exactly heaven is.
4 comments:
Very interesting,
I'm looking forard you expanding and explaining you ideas. I can't wait to sink my teeth into the next instalment.
This was such a teaser!
Michael, I like where you have gone with this to this point. To often we let songs instead of the Bible determine our belief about Heaven.
It will be interesting to see where you go with this.
Michael, Thanks for your thoughts of Heaven.
The most important "Thing" we will see is Jesus.
I, too, look forward to reading your next posts..
THANKS GUYS! =)
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