This post will appear during Passion Week, 2018. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Sunday and gave the Olivet Discourse on Tuesday. He died on the cross on Friday1 and rose from the dead on Sunday. His resurrection established the “new heavens and earth” (Rev. 21:1) of Revelation’s seventh vision.2
We have seen this new order is not the eternal state. It contains death, child-bearing, sinners, unhealed nations, conversion, and warnings against apostasy.3 These will not exist in eternity. The “new heavens and earth” is imagery that represents the Messianic Age. Several elements in John’s seventh vision show this is true.
We mentioned two such elements in our last post.4 First, the old “heavens and earth” stand for Israel’s covenant-relationship with God during the Mosaic Age. They passed away when that age ended with the Temple’s fall in AD 70. Second, the “new heavens and earth” contain the new Jerusalem. This city is the bride of Christ, his church. People enter this city during the Messianic Age, not in eternity.
This post will provide two more reasons for this understanding of John’s last vision.
God Dwelling With Men
John learns that God will dwell with men in a special way in the new heavens and earth. He says, “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” (Rev. 21:3).
The Old Testament prophets used such language to describe the Messianic Age. Ezekiel, for example, does so in his vision of “the valley which was full of bones” (Ezek 37:1). In this vision God says,
Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore. (Ezek. 37:26–28; emphasis added)
All commentators of which I am aware apply this prediction to the Messianic Age.5 As a rule, the prophets do not apply such language to the eternal state.
The following chart compares the two prophecies. Ezekiel spoke of the Messianic-Age. John described the new heavens and earth.
| Ezek. 37: 26–28—The Messianic Age | Rev. 21:3—The New Heavens and Earth |
| My tabernacle also shall be with them | The tabernacle of God is with men |
| I will be their God | God himself shall . . . be their God |
| they shall be my people | they shall be his people |
| my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them | he will dwell with them . . . God himself shall be with them |
This suggests the Messianic Age is the same as the new heavens and earth.
This close relationship between God and his people required a change of covenants. God told Jeremiah he would one day replace the Mosaic-Age covenant.
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer. 31:31–34; emphasis added)
This covenant transition occurred during the “last days” (Heb. 1:2) of the Mosaic Age. The Apostle Paul said God was establishing the new covenant in his generation (Heb. 8:6–12). He adds an important observation: “In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13, NKJV).
This “vanishing away” of the old Messianic-Age covenant matches John’s “passing away” of the old heaven and earth (Rev. 21:1). Both were “ready to vanish away” in John’s near future. The new covenant and the “new heavens and earth” of the Messianic Age were taking their place. This was necessary for God to dwell with his people in this special way.
John also mentioned this dwelling of God with his people in his second vision. He said,
And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 7:13–17; emphasis added)
Christ ascended to his throne in AD 306 (Acts 2:30–31). The “great tribulation” occurred in that generation and ended with the Temple’s fall in AD 70 (Matt. 24:21, 34). Therefore, this dwelling of God with his people occurs in Christ’s Messianic-Age reign. Christ leads them to “living fountains of waters” that only flow in the new heavens and earth (Rev. 21:6). The Messianic Age and the new heavens and earth are identical.
No More Death
John says, “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” (Rev. 21:4). No death is one of the leading features of the new heavens and earth. Does this contradict Isaiah’s account that places death there (Isa. 65:20)?
No. Scripture does not violate the law of noncontradiction. “This law states that ‘A cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same relationship.’”7 The new heavens and earth cannot be a place of death and no death at the same time and in the same relationship.
The resolution is simple. Isaiah described the new heavens and earth as a place of physical death. John sees it as a place where spiritual death does not exist.
This is not a contrived solution. Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” (John 11:25–26).
Christians are people alive from spiritual death (Rom. 6:13). They will never die in this sense. John Gill describes this situation in his comment on John 11:26:
Living believers in Christ shall never die more a spiritual death; they are passed from death to life, and shall never return to death more; their spiritual life cannot be lost; grace in them is an immortal seed, a well of living water springing up into everlasting life . . . the principle of life will never be extinct in them; nor shall they die the second death.8
In the new heavens and earth, physical death and spiritual non-death exist together. This is also true in the Messianic Age, but not in eternity. The new heavens and earth are the Messianic Age.
Conclusion
During the age in which we now live—the Messianic Age—the new Jerusalem is open to sinners. Anyone who feels the weight of their sins, and hears the Spirit and Bride say “come” may enter it. They may drink the water of life freely (Rev. 22:17). What a glorious privilege!
And, this is the age during which God dwells with his people. The Old Testament saints knew of God’s Shekinah glory in the Tabernacle and Temple. The Presence (Gk. parousia) of Christ with his people during the Messianic Age far surpasses it. In Paul’s generation, the Shekinah was ending and the Presence beginning. He said, “If what is passing away was glorious, what remains is much more glorious” (2 Cor. 3:11, NKJV; emphasis added).
“The first heaven and the first earth” have passed away” (Rev. 21:1). The “new heaven and a new earth” have now appeared. Those who live in them may experience physical death. But, they will never die in the most important sense of that word.
When Jesus’s death drew near, he gave his disciples a glorious promise. He said, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:18–19; emphasis added).
Let us glorify God for the coming of the new heavens and earth of the Messianic Age. Because Christ lives, so do we.
The Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed!
Footnotes
- This is the traditional day for Jesus’s death. Some writers make the case for an earlier day.
- For our outline of Revelation, see Mapping God’s Highway In Revelation.
- See Death In Heaven?
- See The Messianic Age as the New Heaven and Earth — Part 1.
- How they do so depends on their prophetic framework.
- A. T. Robertson, A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life of Christ (New York: Harper, 1922), 152.
- “Law of Noncontradiction.” Accessed March 25, 2018, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/law-noncontradiction/.
- John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 8:26.
