The Christ in Prophecy Journal

The Mighty Angels of Revelation 21 and the New Jerusalem

MP3: The Mighty Angels of Revelation 21 Continued
Hosts: Nathan Jones & Vic Batista

The New Jerusalem

He whom we’re dubbing the Realtor Angel goes on in Revelation 21 to describe in some detail about how beautiful the New Jerusalem will be.

Sometimes when I walk through Miami I think about how my city looks really nice. I grew up in New York City, but now I live in Florida. The Big Apple was exciting even though there was trash everywhere.

Nathan Jones: I’ve been to New York City a number of times and it still catches my breath over how overwhelmingly huge, congested, and busy it is. New York City is certainly a great city, but it’s nothing compared to the New Jerusalem.

For instance, the glory of God is obviously the crowning achievement of the New Jerusalem. God Himself is the light that lights it all up.

The whole city is made out of precious stones. It has 12 gates, meaning that people can come in and out of the city. We are not locked in the capital city forever, but free to go in and out into the expanses of the universe. There is an angel standing at each gate. Etched into each gate is a name from the 12 tribes of Israel.

Vic Batista: It’s so exciting that this is what awaits those who have put their trust in Jesus Christ!

Nathan Jones: Revelation 21:14-21 continues to describe the wonder that is the New Jerusalem, Heaven on earth.

“Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal. Then he measured its wall: one hundred and forty-four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. The construction of its wall was of jasper; and the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones: the first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, 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 individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.”

Vic Batista: What an amazingly incredible, beautiful city! These measurements are astounding because you could literally fit everyone in history into this city.

Nathan Jones: We’ve got to remember that the Realtor Angel is using a unit of measurement — the furlongs — found back in the Bible times. Twelve thousand furlongs, also called cubits, when translated into modern-day measurements is actually 1,500 miles. So, the New Jerusalem is 1,500 miles wide, and long, and even high!

The #NewJerusalem is 1,500 miles wide, and long, and even high! Click To Tweet

Whether that means that the city is pyramid shaped or cubed shape, we don’t know from the description, but it is 1,500 miles cubed. That means then if the New Jerusalem was on the earth right now, it would stretch from Canada to Mexico and from the Atlantic Ocean to Colorado. It’s that big!

To be that big means that the earth in its present size could not hold the New Jerusalem. The earth would wobble terribly from all that weight loaded on one side of the planet. And so, it is believed that the New Earth must be massively bigger than the current Earth. Actually, it would have to be the size of Jupiter in order to hold a city of that magnitude without causing the rotation of the earth to become lopsided.

Vic Batista: The present state of the world that we are living on hasn’t seen a change this dramatic since the time of the Flood. The Lord is indeed going to have to make all things new in order for the world to be able to sustain the New Jerusalem.

Nathan Jones: In order to create the New Earth, God had to purge all the stains of sin and the destruction caused by the devastation from Revelation 19’s Second Gog-Magog Battle. That last battle Satan caused at the end of the Millennial Kingdom in his obsession with destroying Jerusalem led to much destruction across the earth. Jesus defeated that army with fire, which caused even more damage.

Now Jesus uses a refining fire to rebuild the earth into a world that is free from the ravages of sin. The earth is no longer afflicted under the Curse, and God’s elect have received by this point our glorified bodies and so we no longer have a sin nature. Therefore, no sin enters the New Earth and into the Eternal State.

When mentioning the size of the city and all the people that it could hold, I once heard Pastor Joe Focht of Calvary Chapel Philadelphia say that it has been calculated that if you were going to have a city that is 1,500 miles cubed, and let’s say there are 20 billion people living there, including the angels, wouldn’t we be cramped like sardines in a can? No, he calculated, for each person would have 70 acres cubed. Some 20 billion people could have 70 acres cubed all to themselves. The city is that big!

Vic Batista: When we buy just a few thousand square feet of property, we think that we are getting a lot of land here, right? We can become so satisfied by the little things in this life. We imagine that we are kings, even if it’s over a very little piece of property that doesn’t really belong to us in the long run anyway. How much more has the Lord have in store for His people?

In the seventy-fourth segment of our series “The Mighty Angels of Revelation,” we’ll grab a Kart and ride down the Rainbow Road!

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Dr. Nathan E. Jones

As the Internet Evangelist at Lamb & Lion Ministries, Nathan reaches out to the over 4.5 billion people accessible over the Internet with the Good News of Jesus Christ. He also co-hosts the ministry's television program Christ in Prophecy and podcast The Truth Will Set You Free.

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