Notes on the book of Revelations/Chapter 21
There was now not merely an economic change. The great white throne had no reference to any dispensation, but to the dead. There was an actual physical change, a new heavens and a new earth, and no more sea. And here John sees a new object, new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. This general fact, I conceive, is presented here, to give the object. Its bearings are taken up apart, and first the historical progress or result is stated: and we find the tabernacle of God, not the throne or heavenly dwelling of God and the Lamb; but God all in all,—the tabernacle of God with men. The race, man, now are blessed with God’s presence, and grace had provided a way in the which with no desolating enquiry of “Where art thou?” God could visit, yea, have His tabernacle among men, now headed up in the blessed second Adam—the risen and glorified man, not in the first fallen one. The millennium, as we have said, is the contrast to Noachic failure, when Satan is cast out of the heavens, and government comes in, righteous and effectual for blessing and peace. To man’s fall, the ruin of the first Adam, is here contrasted the perfect, unfailing, and new and durable blessing of the second—all things made new—no more death—all evil put in the lake of fire. Chap. xix. 9. is the special recorded blessing of the former state—the marriage of the Lamb: xxi. 5, the blessing of this. The condition of the earth during the millennium is more properly the subject of the Old Testament prophets—the restitution of all things spoken of by them. The connection of the heavenly blessings with it, during the millennium, is, however, taken up in what follows, to complete the picture, and give the saints the joy of their own portion in it, which, in its own proper and intrinsic character, moreover, is eternal. This account is from xxi. 9 to xxii. 5, 6.[1] On this I have but few remarks to make, having so far prolonged this. It is not here the children in the Father’s house,—it is not dwelling in God as love (and thus, through Jesus, in whom all fulness dwells, filled with His fulness, we in Him, and He in the Father), but the glory of God, the order of all dispensation. Glory is taken up in it; i.e. that which constitutes the glory of each, as displaying the character, foundation and ways of God, the excellency of mediation, and the basis of righteousness and true holiness, firmly established as the very streets of the city. These constituted the characteristics of the city. But there is another very interesting point in this character of the heavenly Jerusalem, the Lamb’s bride, the perfection and blessedness of mediatorial glory. First God and the Lamb are the light of it—they enjoy the immediate light of glory—the nations of the spared ones walk in the light of it, i.e. of the heavenly Jerusalem—the Lamb’s wife—the glorified Saints. It is not merely “nations shall come to the brightness of its rising”—the acknowledgment of a new and dominant power owned of God and glorified in the earth—it is proper blessing, “they walk in the light of it.” And yet more distinctly does it preserve its character of grace, and the immense privilege of grace; and what it possesses in common, it has on the incomparably higher ground than even Paradise of old.
- ↑ xxi. 8, closes the historical statement: what follows is description, and that of the millennial effect of the city, as well as of the city itself.