Home	Our Hope
Bible Study		August 14, 2011
7

Introduction

In the Bible, numbers have meaning, for example the number 7 means perfection, completion or completed with perfection. One book in the Bible is written through with the number 7, the book of Revelation. It is also the book that deals with the completion of God's plan to have a people for himself, a bride and wife if you will.

In the book of Revelation many of the nouns appear in groups of 7, for example 7 seals, and 7 trumpets. But also many of the key words and key phrases appear in multiples of 7¹, for example the word "prophecy" occurs 7 times and the phrase "the one who sits on the throne" occurs 7 times. The name "Jesus" appears 14 times (7 x 2), 4 of those appearances occur in the first chapter and 3 in the last chapter.

But the book of Revelation is primarily concerned with the end, the events that lead to the perfect completion of God's plan. That's where this lesson begins.

Lesson (Revelation 21:1-27)

As chapter 21 opens, John, the author of Revelation, is seeing a revelation of a time far in our future. From the perspective of that time, the tribulation period and the rapture were completed 1000 years ago. Since then the world has been running perfectly under God's control … except for the recent past when Satan was released and immediately assembled the leaders of the earth into an attack on God. That attack was crushed.

After that came the Great White Throne judgment; everyone who was not found in the Messiah's Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire. All that remains are God, his angels, and his people.

¹ And I saw new Heavens and a new Earth, for the former Heavens and the former Earth had departed, and the Sea was no more. ² And I saw The Holy City, New Jerusalem, descending from Heaven from beside God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.

To understand this verse we need to understand Revelation 1:1 "[This is] the Revelation of Yeshua The Messiah, which God gave to him, to show his Servants what had been given to soon occur, and he symbolized it when he sent by his Angel to his Servant Yohannan." The Revelation to John was symbolized by Jesus, which means that real events have been converted to symbolic descriptions. People commonly take the descriptions in Revelation too literally.

Two of those symbols are Heavens and Earth. The word "Heavens" symbolizes all angelic beings; "Earth" symbolizes all of faithful mankind². Both of these groups took off just before the Great White Throne Judgement as it says in the previous chapter, Revelation 20:11 "And I saw a Great White Throne and him sitting at the top of it, from whose face Earth and Heaven fled away, and no place was found for them."

Judgement day will be a horrible day for God as well and he doesn’t want his people to see him that way. Recognize that God has loved these trillions of people from before they were born and he has loved them with a love deeper than we can understand. He will turn his wrathful face toward them and suffer in sorrow as he judges them and sends them to the Lake of Fire and thus separates them permanently from him for eternity. A horrible loss.

I wouldn't suggest these groups are gone for the Great White Throne judgement without Biblical support. In this case that comes from Isaiah 26:20-21 "Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. ²¹ See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed on it; the earth will conceal its slain no longer.

Going back to the verse from Revelation we see the Earth and the Heavens (faithful mankind and angelic beings) returning after the judgement. Notice, though that they are new in some way. We'll come back to that.

The Bible promises us that from this time on there will be no more sorrow, tears or grieving. How can that be possible if we still remember our loved ones who are now in the Lake of Fire? How can we be happy knowing the vast number of people suffering? The same goes for the angelic beings. Many of their number are also there. The answer comes in the way the angelic beings and faithful mankind are made new.

Again this requires scriptural backup. Isaiah 65:17 says “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind." This means all memory of our past lives (and past sins) will be removed from the universe. As a side note, it's interesting to see Isaiah using the symbolism from Revelation. This is not at all the only place where the Old Testament does this. For example, Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is probably using it as a second and hidden meaning.

But there is an interesting statement here, "the Sea is no more". The Sea is also a symbolic reference. It symbolizes unfaithful mankind³ Therefore, when de-symbolized, the message is that unfaithful mankind are gone when the faithful return.

After that John sees a new holy city descending out of God's Heaven. From other verses from other books of the Bible we believe that Jesus has been preparing this place for us since he ascended to be with the Father.

³ And I heard a great voice from Heaven that said, "Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with the children of men, and he dwells with them and they shall be his people and the same God is with them and shall be their God. ⁴ And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and from now on there shall not be death, neither grieving, nor clamor, neither shall there be disease again, for His sake.

To understand these verses it is important to understand the meaning of tabernacle in both the Old and New Testament. We think of a tabernacle as a building. But a better Biblical understanding is that it is a container for something - and that container may be something other than an immobile building. Thus we understand the saying that the Son of God tabernacled with man in the form of Jesus. Jesus was the form, or body or tabernacle for the Son of God.

This view is also consistent with the word "dwell" used here. If you have heard of a house having been referred to as a dwelling in legal documents, then that presents the right picture.

So these verses are saying that in some body - we know not what - God will live with mankind who will be living in some body - we know not what.

Then comes the triple promise:

• They shall be his people
• He will be with them
• He will be their God

And the results of that triple promise:

• No tears
• No death
• • No grieving
  • No clamor
• No disease

The verses continue now with a subtle shift in focus. So far John has been an observer; now he becomes the focus.

⁵ And I walked and he who sat on the throne said to me, "Behold, I make all things new." And he said to me, "Write: 'These words are trustworthy and true." ⁶ And he said to me, "They are done. I am Alap and I am Tau, The Source and The Fulfillment. I shall give to the thirsty one from the fountain of the water of life without charge."

Alap, often called Aleph, and Tau, sometimes called Tav, are the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. They have a connotation of beginning and end that we do not have in the English alphabet. If someone tells us there is no letter before the letter A and none after Z, we would say "So". But to them that was significant.

Aleph and Tav also tie into the creation account in Genesis, where there was nothing and then God created and out of nothing came something. That is also tied to a word in the Hebrew language that is Aleph - Tav. It's more of a characteristic of the language than a word. It can't be translated. It appears in Genesis 1:1 though in an interesting way.⁴

Notice the Aleph - Tav (אֵ֥ת) in the 4th column (Hebrew reads from right to left). With "God" (Elohim) just before it, it could be read as "God Aleph - Tav". This was noticed before Jesus' time and was taken as a hint of something, like Aleph - Tav was the creator, but they didn't fully understand what. So when Jesus says "I am Alap and I am Tau" he is saying I am the creator.

The "fountain of the water of life" here probably has the same role as the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. A common understanding is that Adam and Eve could have lived forever if they could have continued to eat from the tree of life. After they sinned this presented a problem as described in genesis 3 "²² And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' ²³ So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden". Therefore the understanding of these verses is that we need to continue to drink from this fountain, but it will be available to all at no cost.

⁷ "And he who is victorious shall inherit these things, and I shall be his God and he will be my son. ⁸ But to the timid, the unbelievers, the evil, the defiled, murderers, sorcerers, fornicators, idol worshipers and all liars: their part is in the burning Lake of Fire and Brimstone, which is the second death."

Those who overcome evil in this life will inherit the holy city. All the others will be thrown in the Lake of Fire. Note that the timid are also thrown in the Lake of Fire - we understand this to mean those who hide their light and have no fruit, as opposed to those who are called victorious in verse 7.

⁹ And one of the seven Angels who had with them the seven vessels full of the seven last plagues, came and he spoke with me saying, "Come; I shall show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb."

The angel says he will show John the bride who is now the wife of the Messiah. But the following verses are a description of the holy city. Does that mean the Messiah has married a city? No, to understand this we go back to Genesis chapter 2 "²⁴ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." This concept of becoming one flesh is repeated by Jesus in Mark 10:8 and Matthew 19:5 and elaborated on by Paul in Ephesians 5:22.

In this case the bride is the community of believers. So the holy city is not only the tabernacle of God but also the bride, as a wife joined to her husband. ✡

We will skip the verses describing the holy city except to say that they describe the holy city as being founded on the 12 apostles and on the 12 tribes of Israel, represented by 12 stones as seen in the high priest's breast plate.

Having described the city's foundation and walls and their construction, the angel now describes some other aspects.

²² And I saw no Temple in it, for the Lord Yahweh God Almighty, he is its Temple.

Why would you need a temple or a place to worship when the one you are worshipping is with you? You wouldn't.

²³ And the Lamb and the City do not need the Sun or the Moon to illuminate it, for the glory of God illuminates it, and The Lamb is its lamp.

Our Sun and Moon are metaphors or shadows of higher things. They teach us that there is a single source of light and that the Sun rules the day and the lesser light rules the night. But the real light they point to is God's glory, not God, but his glory. We who live in a world where light is made of photons find it odd that there could be light with anything but photons, and especially not from something as abstract as glory. That would seem as odd as saying "Her smile lights up a room."

But light from glory is different from light from the Sun in some important ways. And I'm not just talking about sun tans and sun burns. From other verses we understand that this light leaves no shadows and is not blocked by walls or anything. It reaches into the deepest recesses. The universe will be very different from this one.

Another interesting statement is made here. Paraphrasing, it is this. While God's glory is the source of the light, the Messiah is the "light bulb" that emits it. This is really no different from a real light bulb. It does not create photons it only makes it possible for them to be released.

²⁴ And the nations walk in its light and the Kings of The Earth bring glory to it. ²⁵ And its gates shall not be shut by day, for there shall be no night there. ²⁶ And they shall bring to it the glory and honor of the nations. ²⁷ There shall not be anything defiled there, or one who makes defilement or lies, but only those who are written in the Book of the Lamb.

God's master plan is done, perfect and complete, 7. God has a people for himself and we will live together forever. Except for some concluding paragraphs, the book of Revelation is also done.

Questions

What does the Bible say about Jesus and light?
The people who sat in the darkness have seen the Great Light, and those who were sitting in the region and in the shadow of death, to them the light has dawned. (Matthew 4:16 quoting Isaiah)
And Yeshua was transformed before them and his face shone like the sun but his garments became white like light. (Matthew 17:2)
In him was the life and the life is the light of men. ⁵ And the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it. (John 1:4-5)
This is the judgment: the light has come into the world and the children of men loved the darkness more than the light, because their works were evil. (John 3:19)
And many more ...

Can you think of a parable that Jesus taught that talks about the destiny of the timid?
The parable of the talents "³⁰ And they cast the worthless servant into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing teeth. (Matthew 25:14-30)

¹ Richard Bauckham; The Climax of Prophecy. Studies on the Book of Revelation

² "Where The Sea Leads", Stan Burton, Amazon eBook

³ "Where The Sea Leads", Stan Burton, Amazon eBook

⁴ NIV Standard Lesson Commentary, May 22, I.A