The Christ in Prophecy Journal

The Mighty Angels of Revelation 21

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

The Eternally Good News Angel

Vic Batista: In our study of God’s mighty angels in the book of Revelation, we’re now looking at Revelation 21 and what life is like for the Bride, the Lamb’s “wife.”

I have been married over 20 years now. Nathan, what was it like when you first saw your bride on your wedding day all wonderfully adorned and prepared for you? Do you remember that?

Nathan Jones: Oh, indeed I do! I remember standing waiting up at the front of the church with the pastor. Heather and I were being married in an old church up in New York. The church was over 150 years old. Interestingly, we were the last service there because it was so old that the church had been condemned. We were the last wedding that would ever be held there.

I remember the old stained glass door opening and the sunlight shining down the isle. Her father was all dressed in his military uniform and my wife-to-be was all beautifully adorned. She looked like an angel coming out of the light, and the doors behind her looked like wings. I was like, “Oh, my word, I am marrying this woman?” I tell you what, I was anxious to have her come down the aisle and marry me.

Vic, I’m sure you had the same experience at your wedding with your wife?

Vic Batista: Very similar. We actually held our wedding at South Beach, a beautiful place to hold a wedding. The theme of Revelation 21 likewise is about a wedding in Heaven — the wedding of the Bride to the Lamb.

Nathan Jones: We have been going through Revelation from the point of the view of the angels and how the angels will be interacting with humanity on behalf of God. There are 72 different references to angels in Revelation according to the New King Version. We are seeing the spirit world interact with the human world. We have now gotten past all the destruction and death of the Tribulation and into the wonders that are coming during the Eternal State. We even passed the Millennial Kingdom, where Jesus rules and reigns for a thousand years on this earth.

Finally, we have gotten into the perfect, sinless, eternal state. Believers in Christ have long been waiting for Heaven to come down to earth where we’ll live for eternity. I’m so excited that we are finally studying Revelation 21!

Believers in #JesusChrist have long been waiting for #Heaven to come down to earth for eternity. Click To Tweet

Vic Batista: We are now entering with Revelation 21 into an entirely different phase in God’s plan for the ages. Life only gets better from here on out. Previously in Revelation, we covered so many doomsday judgments. It was great to see Satan finally sentenced to Hell along with the Great White Throne Judgment of the wicked.

Revelation 21:1-8 paints this wonderful picture of the wedding of a New Heaven and a New Earth.

Nathan Jones: Like you said, in the Revelation timeline we are now past the Millennial Kingdom. All the people who have rejected God throughout history have been resurrected and judged at the Great White Throne Judgment. All of God’s enemies have been sent to Hell along with Satan and his demons. All of evil has finally been defeated and judged. The world and the souls of men are now ready for the Eternal State. This is the culmination of what God’s end game has been all about — the redemption of mankind.

A remnant of mankind has been culled from throughout all of human history. Those who want to live with God forever like a harvest has been reaped. Revelation 21-22 is where we finally get to know what that forever will be like, for Revelation 21-22 gives us the most details of any chapter in the Bible about our eternal home.

#Revelation 21-22 gives us the most details of any chapter in the #Bible about our eternal home. Click To Tweet

“Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.'”

“Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ And He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are true and faithful.'”

“And He said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.'”

Vic Batista: Jesus said in John 14:1-3 states, “Do not let your heart be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would tell you. I go and prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

Then in Luke, in the closing of a parallel chapter, it says that Jesus ascended up and the disciples all looked at Him. So, this passage in Revelation 21 is what Jesus was talking about. This preparation is about the New Jerusalem, Heaven coming down to the New Earth.

Nathan Jones: Yes, since the Crucifixion, Jesus has been busy working on what is called the New Jerusalem. It’s a super city. It will literally be Heaven on Earth. This New Heaven on the New Earth will be called the New Jerusalem. It’s God’s city that will come down and unite Heaven and Earth as one abode.

The earth will also be revitalized. The Curse will be no more. There will be no more death or crying or pain, as we read. God will wipe away every tear from the people’s eyes, and there will be no more sorrow. The Eternal State is what humanity has been waiting for — perfection.

Vic Batista: For sure, there is a lot of sorrow and a lot of pain right now. How encouraging that the time will come when our hopes are fulfilled and there will be no more tears. Sometimes to me such a reality seems only like a dream, because there is just so much suffering in the world. Just think of a place where there’s no more death and no more sorrow, but that is exactly what the Bible promises and describes.

Nathan Jones: What good news! Another angel arrives on the scene with this good news, and in a voice as verse 3 states, “I heard a loud voice from Heaven saying…” Is this God Himself? Probably not, for the owner of this loud voice is more than likely an angel because later in verse 5 God is particularly referenced. Here, just like all throughout Revelation, the angels have been serving as messengers for God to provide us with hope.

What the Eternally Good News Angel tells us is that the tabernacle of God, in other words the place where God lives, His Holy Temple, now abides with men. We are back to Genesis 1-2 again when God walked and talked and lived and had fellowship with Adam and Eve. When Adam Eve sinned and rebelled against Him, the purity of God could no longer dwell with the impurity of man, so there was separation. All of human history has been about getting God and Man to this point in Revelation 21 where God will fully tabernacle with mankind once again. We will see God face to face and we will talk to Him and fellowship with Him. We will worship the Father in person.

Restoring that holy and personal relationship with God and Man is what God has been working towards all throughout the thousands of years of human history. God has been getting us back to a right and personal relationship with Him, just like Adam and Eve had back in the Garden of Eden.

Vic Batista: Sin breaks fellowship with God. But, when we repent and turn back to Him and we confess our sins and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, that relationship is made right. The ultimate restoration comes when everything is made perfect in the Eternal State.

Nathan Jones: When we read about the Millennial Kingdom in Revelation 20, the world was already pretty awesome to behold. The Curse was partially lifted. Animal kind and mankind got well enough along. Jesus ruled and reigned the world from Jerusalem. The nations were flooded with peace, righteousness, and justice. God’s Law was the only law. The Millennial Kingdom will truly be a wonderful place.

And yet, even in that utopian society, those children born from those who survived the Tribulation and had accepted Jesus as Savior and lived on into the Millennial Kingdom, their children still had to choose Jesus or not. And we read in Revelation 20, by the end of the thousand years, many of those children decided that they wanted to rebel against Jesus. Sin nature was still alive and well in the flesh during the Millennial Kingdom. Rebellion against God remained so that even the Kingdom of Christ was not a perfect society. But, in Revelation 21 during the Eternal State, this is when we finally get that perfected society.

Vic Batista: While mankind still resides in our sinful earthly bodies, we are still going to experience trouble and sorrow, but there is always the hope of our resurrected, glorified bodies living in the Eternal State. No matter how messed up we have been in the past, once saved and resurrected into our glorified bodies, He who sat on the throne states in Revelation 21:5, “Behold I made all things new.” All things new. Not half done, not used, but brand new!

Nathan Jones: What the Father states in verse 5 is exactly what Jesus meant on His way to the cross. Jesus had come to sacrifice Himself in order to make all things new. His sacrifice, His death on the cross, the perfect dying for the imperfect, provided salvation for mankind so that our sins could be forgiven and the judgment of God would no longer condemn us. Once saved, we can stand before the Father face to face.

I frequently hear from people who claim they’re really struggling with believing in God because they think that God must be angry all the time, and surprisingly even make the claim that God must be evil because He sentences people and nations to death. “God just isn’t loving.” Wait a minute here! God gave up His one and only perfect Son in order to die a horribly torturous death on the cross, to become sin incarnate when He is totally perfect and holy, so that the wrath of God would fall on His own Son and not on us. That is a loving God! This is the God who through His Son’s sacrifice now restores God’s fellowship with humanity. We are the ones who first broke that fellowship, but God restored it by His Son’s death, and so we are united back with our Creator, forever dwelling in the perfect society.

Vic Batista: People are always trying to blame God for all the bad things that happen in the world. They forget that Satan is the one behind out troubles. And then Revelation 20 reveals that the Devil will be bound and finally put away forever in Hell. From then on we will see the justice and the righteousness of God as we spend all of eternity with Him. God is good all the time!

In the seventy-first segment of our series “The Mighty Angels of Revelation,” we will rejoice in our adoption as the sons and daughters of God!

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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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