Join Archbishop Mark Coleridge for Episode 5 of “The Navel of the Earth: Jerusalem in Time, Theology, and Imagination.” This episode looks at the concept of the New Jerusalem, as described in Revelation, which represents a divine vision where God dwells among humanity, eliminating suffering and death. This vision reassures believers that despite present challenges, they are moving towards a restored paradise, filled with joy and healing for all nations.
Transcript
In these podcasts focusing upon Jerusalem, we have looked at Jerusalem in time. The city, with its extraordinary history. Seventeen times destroyed, and eighteen times rebuilt. We’ve also looked at Jerusalem, understood as the soul of the individual believer. And then Jerusalem as the Church, in that Christian understanding.
In this podcast, I want to turn to Jerusalem as the end. And the word sometimes that is used is, Jerusalem understood eschatologically. In other words, the New Jerusalem, as the New Testament puts it. Because Jerusalem becomes the great goal towards which human history is moving, according to Scripture. So, it is the future. It is the end of things.
And in Christian understanding too, it’s another way of understanding Paradise, or what we have come in history, in English at least, to call heaven. The fullness of life. Which is found in God and into which God wants to draw us. Jerusalem has become the locus, the place, of that fullness of life.
This sense of Jerusalem as the end really arises out of an experience of historical disappointment, even defeat. Because the roots of what we find spectacularly in the book of Revelation in the New Testament, as we shall see, are found deep in the Old Testament, particularly in the prophets. Because the fact that they were dealing with was the destruction of Jerusalem, the catastrophe. The destruction of the Babylonian exile that came in 587 BC. But that had, as we have seen, a considerable pre-history.
So, given that Jerusalem in place and in time, in history, had been destroyed, what happened to all those hopes and beliefs that attached to Jerusalem as the place where God had chosen to pitch His tent on earth, the place where the glory of God dwelt? Had that hope, had that belief simply collapsed or evaporated? Or could it be in some ways reshaped, reconfigured, so that we could hold on to the hope and retain the belief?
The reconfiguration is what actually happens in the Bible. And it becomes a vision, not of the Jerusalem destroyed in history, but a new Jerusalem that will be indestructible, inviolable, and where God will make a home among human beings once and for all, and then draw all human beings into that place which is the fullness of life.
So out of the experience of catastrophe and historical disappointment, what is borne is a kind of eschatological hope and belief that we are moving away from the experience of catastrophe and human and historical disappointment, towards a fullness of life that will be found in a Jerusalem which is indestructible, beyond the ravages of human violence and time.
One of the great voices, prophetic voices of the exile, the Babylonian exile, was the prophet Ezekiel. And it’s in Ezekiel that we find the roots of this kind of vision of a new Jerusalem. The last eight chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, chapters 40 to 48, are an extraordinary and extraordinarily detailed vision. Not so much of Jerusalem, but the temple. But you’ve got to keep in mind with Jerusalem that the city and the temple are inseparable. To speak of the city is to speak of the temple. To speak of the temple is to speak of the city. And this is because the temple was the place where the glory of God dwelled. And that’s what gave and gives Jerusalem its very peculiar power and resonance.
So, in the midst of all the devastation, and that’s important to keep in mind with Ezekiel. The city is destroyed, its leaders are taken off to Babylon. They’re transported in the midst of all of this devastation. And it’s huge, huge disappointment. And the questions it puts to hope and faith. Ezekiel has this vision of a new temple and a new city.
And the very last line of this great vision, chapters 40 to 48 is this, and the name of the city henceforth shall be, the Lord is there. Now this is the key, the presence of God, the glory. Because Ezekiel at the time of the exile has this vision, extraordinary vision, which he recounts of the glory of God, leaving the temple in Jerusalem and going up and stopping on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the city, and then leaving.
So, the departure of the glory and the vision now in the midst of all this devastation, is the vision of the glory returned. So, the name of the city henceforth shall be, the Lord is there. And it’s there that you find the roots of this vision of a new Jerusalem.
Now, another prophetic voice that speaks of the New Jerusalem is the prophet Isaiah. In fact, it’s the prophet we know as Second Isaiah. Keep in mind that with the prophet Isaiah in the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, there are three different voices. They are related, and yet they are quite distinct, and they come from different moments of ancient Israel’s history. First Isaiah is the late eighth century prophet. So, in about 715 BC, based in Jerusalem. And his prophetic oracles are contained in chapters 1 to 39.
Second Isaiah is chapters 40 to 55. He’s a different kind of poetic voice. And he is a voice that comes with the return from exile fifty years after the Babylonian exile. So we are at about 537 BC, so centuries later than First Isaiah, but related to a tradition of prophetic preaching that looks back to Isaiah of Jerusalem in about 715.
So, Second Isaiah is 40 to 55, and then Third Isaiah, again, a different kind of voice, but related in terms of theology, is from chapters 56 to 66. And he is a prophet of the period of the return from exile. So, after they have returned to Jerusalem. So, First Isaiah, late eighth century. Second Isaiah, is the middle of the sixth century BC. And then Third Isaiah, a later period again, once they have returned from Babylon to Jerusalem.
So, the voice we’re about to listen to is the voice of Second Isaiah. So, he’s at the time of the return from the Babylonian exile. Which was a time of new hope, certainly. Hope to rebuild Jerusalem. But a time of enormous challenge. Because, in fact, when they return, when the exiles return to Jerusalem, they find a city that is in complete and utter ruin.
So, the challenge of rebuilding the city and rebuilding the temple was extraordinarily daunting. And at times, Spirit’s flag. So, the prophets at about this time had to say, now come on. The task is enormous, but up and at it.
So, Second Isaiah, as they are returning from Babylon to Jerusalem, says this, O afflicted one storm tossed and not comforted. That’s what Jerusalem was. Behold, I will set your stones in antimony. And lay your foundations with sapphires. I will make your pinnacles of agate, your gates of carbuncles, and all your wall of precious stones.
So, it’s a vision of glory, of splendour, at a time when there wasn’t much glory and splendour at all. He goes on, all your children shall be taught by the Lord. And great shall be the prosperity of your children. This was not the case at the time. In righteousness you shall be established. You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear, and from terror, for it shall not come near you. And so, on it goes.
So, this is a more mature vision of a new Jerusalem and a new temple at a time when it was anything but that. In a time when spirits were low, the vision is high. So here again, you find the roots of the vision of the New Jerusalem that will come to full flower in the New Testament.
A still later prophetic voice is the last of the prophets we hear in the Old Testament, the prophet Zechariah. Now, he is of a later period, again, when they’re trying to rebuild the city and rebuild the temple. And he’s raised up as a prophetic voice of encouragement. To encourage the people to keep pursuing a task that seemed overwhelming.
And the prophet Zechariah says this, Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of people and cattle in it. And that wasn’t the way Jerusalem was at the time. It was a small population, that was part of their problem. For I will, so the prophet goes on, for I will be to her a wall of fire round about, says the Lord. And I will be the glory within her. Here again, the key is the presence of God, who pitches a tent among us in this city, high in the Judean mountains. So, I will be the glory within her. And that’s the key to understanding Jerusalem at many different levels. It always was, and it still is.
Now, that kind of vision that you find so strikingly in the prophets through time really comes to full flower in the Christian understanding in the last book of the Christian Bible, and that is the Book of Revelation. Or as we know it sometimes, the Apocalypse, which simply means the unveiling.
This again was a text written for a people under pressure and suffering persecution. So, it was a dark and tough time. So, it’s a vision of glory, not unlike what we found in the prophets. A vision of glory in a very inglorious moment. So, it’s high vision for low morale, as it were. Because this was the persecution that was suffered, under the Roman Empire. Almost certainly the Book of Revelation speaks about the situation in Rome, towards the end of the first century of the Common Era.
So, the author of the Book of Revelation. Has this extraordinary vision really, of the New Jerusalem. And this is what he says, I saw the Holy City. So, it’s a prophetic vision. The New Jerusalem is our phrase. The New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. So, it’s all God’s work. Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. This is drawing upon the great nuptial imagery of the Old Testament, God and his people. Imagined as a marriage, which itself is extraordinary the more you think about it.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, here is the dwelling place of God with human beings. So here again, it’s the presence of God. I will be the glory within. God will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be with them. And this is the vision of the New Jerusalem. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And this in a city that was drowning in tears, and it still is. And death shall be no more, a city full of death. Neither shall there be mourning or crying or pain anymore. For the former things have passed away.
He goes on, I saw no temple in the city. Now this is crucial, because the temple was the very heart, and as it were, the raison d’etre of Jerusalem in the Old Testament, you couldn’t imagine the city without the temple. And here, in this vision, this Christian vision of the New Jerusalem, you have the seer, the prophet, saying, I saw no temple in the city. Why? For its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the lamb.
Now in the Gospel of John, we saw that the body of the crucified Christ becomes the new temple. This is the crucial shift. The temple is no longer a building. It is the body of the crucified Christ. The crucified Christ whose side is pierced with a lance, a spear, and from the side of his body there flows forth the stream of blood and water.
Now this looks back to the vision of Ezekiel in chapter 47, part of those chapters at the end of the book of Ezekiel, the talk about the new temple. Where in chapter 47, the prophet is taken to Jerusalem, and he sees that trickle of water flowing from the side of the temple. It becomes a stream, then it becomes a mighty river flowing east down through the Kidron Valley, up over the Mount of Olives, and down through the Judean Desert until it hits the Dead Sea. And wherever this river goes, the prophet says, death is turned to life. There are flowers and trees, and the Dead Sea is full of fish. So, death becomes life.
Now, John, with his vision on Calvary, a different mountain. He sees another stream. Now not just water, but blood and water. The life blood of Jesus. Flowing from the side of Jesus, which is the new temple. And the understanding is, and the vision is, that that stream flowing from the side of the new temple, which is his body hanging on the cross, unbelievably. This is the epicentre of the divine presence and glory. That from the side of that temple there flows out a stream into all the deserts of the cosmos, even the cosmic desert of death, and turns death to life. That’s the whole meaning of his vision.
So that’s why there is no temple in the city, there’s no building you can see. And so, this is where God has chosen to dwell. Now you look at Jesus, you have a vision of the lamb. And you see God. You say, that’s where God has chosen to be. That’s where God has chosen to pitch a tent among us. He is God with us, and from His side there flows the life-giving stream.
The seer in revelation then goes on, the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb. No need for sun and moon, because the lamb, the new temple, is the shining light that nothing can dispel.
So, a source of light that is not purely physical. It is the light of God. And this looks back to the very beginning in the book of Genesis, where we are told that God said, let there be light, and there was light. But this is two or three days before God creates the sun or moon and the stars, the physical sources of light. So, what the Bible is saying, is that there is a light that comes before and after the physical sources of light, and this is the light which is the Word of God. Your word is a lamp for my steps, the psalmist says. So, the lamb now is the light.
And the seer goes on, by its light shall the nations walk. And they won’t walk in any other light, or any other light will be cosmetic. And the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day, and there shall be no night there.
They shall bring into it the glory and the honour of the nations. Then he showed me the river of the water of life. This again takes us back to Paradise, the book of Genesis. Bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb through the middle of the street of the city and on either side of the river. This is straight from Ezekiel chapter 47. The Tree of Life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And night shall be no more. They need no light of lamp or sun. For the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign forever and ever.
It’s hard to imagine a more splendid or glorious vision of where we are heading. And it’s all the more extraordinary and powerful, given that this was addressed to a people under enormous pressure and suffering a persecution. So again, saying to them, in this dark moment, don’t lose sight of the vision of where we’re heading. Don’t think that this is all there is. Because we are heading towards this New Jerusalem.
Now, what this means is that Jerusalem becomes another way of talking about Paradise. Because the whole of the Bible is really a story of the human being’s return to Paradise. The biblical story begins with the expulsion from Paradise. And from Genesis chapter 4 until the very end of the Bible, the story that is told is of a return to Paradise, which is our true home. So, it’s a story of homecoming.
And Jesus, when he rises from the dead, is the first one home. Mary, when she’s assumed into heaven, is the second one home to Paradise. Now, Paradise in Genesis is imagined as a garden. But now, and by the time we get to the end of the Book of Revelation, it’s no longer a garden, it’s a city. And that in itself is interesting. Because it mirrors what happened within Christianity. Christianity begins in rural Palestine, in the countryside, as it were, in the garden.
But eventually it moves and takes root in the great urban centres of the Mediterranean world. Christianity very quickly becomes an urban phenomenon, takes root in the cities. So, Paul, for instance, in writing his letters, isn’t writing to people out in the countryside. He’s writing to people in the great urban centres of the Mediterranean world. So, what you find, this shift in the Bible, the Christian Bible, from a garden to a city, in fact, tells the story of Christianity moving from rural Palestine to the cities of the Mediterranean world.
So, we’ll rest it there for this particular podcast. We will return from this vision of the end, this eschatological sense of Jerusalem, to Jerusalem in time and place, in the next and final podcast. Because the story continues. But in the midst of a story which in some ways is a tragic story, there is still this grand vision of what Jerusalem will be in the plan of God.