Bible study notes Revelation 21-22b

 OT background: Ezekiel; Isaiah 

• The New Jerusalem, the river of life, the tree of life, and God’s ultimate restoration of creation echo Ezekiel 40-48 vision of a restored temple and city, complete with precise measurements, a life-giving river flowing from the temple (Ezekiel 47:1-12), and the renewal of the land. 
• The detailed description of New Jerusalem parallels Ezekiel’s detailed blueprint of the future temple and city. Ezekiel’s vision of the square outer walls of the New Jérusalem with 3 gates on each side, supposedly named after the tribes of Israel (Ezek 48:31), though they are in fact named after the sons of Jacob (NOTE Joseph and Levi rather than Ephraim and Manasseh);
• Rev 21:10 John is “transported me in a prophetic trance to a great and high mountain.” Ezekiel 40:2 is brought “in the visions of God” (here interpreted as “in ecstasy” or “in the spirit”) to a very high mountain, where the prophet saw something “like the structure of a city”; this structure is then described as the eschatological temple.
• The river of life in Revelation 22:1-2 also strongly recalls Ezekiel’s river, which brings healing and abundance.
• Isaiah 5-7 times including: Isaiah 65 3 times: Revelation 21:1 quoting Isaiah 65:17 (“new heaven and new earth”); Revelation 21:4 (cf. Isaiah 65:19) andRevelation 21:5 (cf. Isaiah 65:17).

1. Revelation 21:4 - “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Isaiah 25:8: “He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,”
2. Revelation 21:5 - “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’” Isaiah 43:19: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
3. Rev 21:6 “I will freely give some water to the one who is thirsty from the well of living water.” 

Isa 55:1 (nrsv), “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters .... Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price [LXX drink without money].”

1. Isaiah 60:1-3 alluded to in Revelation 21:23-24: The glory of God as light and the nations/kings coming to it.
• Isaiah 60:11 alluded to in Revelation 21:25-26: Gates always open, nations bringing their wealth/glory.

1. Isaiah 60:19-20 alluded to in Revelation 21:23: No need for sun or moon, God’s glory as light.
2. Isaiah 60:19-20 alluded to in Revelation 22:5: No more night, God gives light without sun or lamp.
3. Revelation 21:10-11, 23-27 - The New Jerusalem “having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel,”

Isaiah 60:1-3 states, “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you… nations shall come to your light,” and Isaiah 60:19-20 adds, “The sun shall be no more your light by day… for the Lord will be your everlasting light.”

Cp. Ps 132:13-18 YHWH chose Zion as His home forever because He promised David and his sons a crown that will shine forever! 

• NOTE the NT oftentimes repurposes OT texts, e.g., Yahweh texts for Jesus and Christians etc. Not one to one equal prophecies.

Different Interpreations Rev 21-22:5

1. PostMill is the traditional view;

1. The angel takes John back to the beginning of the Thousand Year Reign. JW.org

Contra:

• sin no sin; death no death; temple no temple; God no God on earth; sea no sea; the nations from book of life; 1,000 years or millennium never used. 
• Millennial type conditions and nowhere is “millennium” or “1,000 years” said once!

1. The new earth and conditions in the renewed "Jerusalem…city,” mentioned 13 times.

• The WBC notes that “the New Jerusalem is distinguished from the saints: 

(1) Rev 21:2 compares the city to a bride; the city cannot be that bride. 

(2) Rev 21:7 mentions that the saints will inherit the city; they cannot be the city. 

(3) The city is described as a place where the saints dwell (21:24-26).”

• This follows the views of Jewish end times where the heavenly Jerusalem descends to earth to replace the earthly Jerusalem, or a heavenly temple becomes a replacement for the earthly temple, e.g., Rev 21:24-26 talks about the “nations” and “kings of the earth” bringing their glory into the city, apart from the rest of the new earth—where nations still exist, distinct from the New Jerusalem’s perfection.
• So that the city is once again the unique, divine capital while the rest of the new earth might not yet share all its traits (e.g., no death, no sorrow) to the same degree or at the same time.
• But no one view is perfect.

21:1 new heaven, new earth, new Jerusalem

• Biblical cosmology https://thehumanjesus.org/2018/06/01/christ-the-creator/
• ESV “God seems always to renew, not destroy and recreate, parts of his creation that are marred by sin.”
• WBC: The phrase “the entire earth will be consumed by the fire of his/my passion” occurs twice (Zeph 1:18; 3:8), but it probably refers to God rising to destroy the nations.

21:4 pass away

• AB This is an appropriate use of the verb “pass away.” Its popular use to describe “dying” is misleading by Bible standards since when people come to the end of their lives they die or sleep the sleep of death, or “sleep with their fathers.” Resurrection at the return of Jesus to reign in his Kingdom is the only biblical way out of death. The idea of a surviving immortal soul is disastrous for a clear understanding of Scripture, since if man is immortal then part of him must continue to live. If man is immortal then the whole point of the Bible is derailed since it is the epic story of how mortal man, including Jesus, the Son of Man, may attain immortality by resurrection from death.

21:8 deplorables list

• WBC notes a pagan inscription from the 1st century B.C., with a remarkably similar list to Rev 21:8 and 22:15: 

When men and women, whether free or slave, enter this building they should swear by all the gods that they bear no lies against man or woman, perform no malevolent magic or malevolent charms against others, that they neither participate themselves nor advise others to participate in love [potions], abortions, contraception, nor anything else that kills children.... Except for sexual relations with his own wife, a man must not defile a foreign woman whom a man has, whether free or slave, and a man must not corrupt a boy or a virgin or advise others to do so....

• Ironic common core of ethical concerns for even some pagan religions! What does that say about "Christian" society and governments of today? 

21:13 twleve angels at the gates

• Cp. Gen 3:24; Ezek 28:14,16 angels guarded Eden, the garden of God, and since the New Jerusalem is the eschatological counterpart of Eden (see 2:7; 22:1-5).

21:22 “I did not see the temple" implies “I expected to see but did not.”

• Ezekiel; Zecheriah expectation of millennial temple. 
• Jeremiah was unusual in that he apparently expected no future restoration of the temple and explicitly indicated that the ark was no longer necessary; he envisioned all Jérusalem as the throne ofYahweh (Jer 3:14-18).

21:24-27 the nations = Widescreen Gospel

• v.24, TDNT: “This phrase alludes to Isa. 60.3, ‘And nations shall go to your light, & kings to the brightness of your rising’….It’s important to note that the LXX translator of Isaiah exhibits a theological agenda that included the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God; cf. Isa. 23.14-24.1; 62.4…In Rev. 21.24-26 full participation in eschatological salvation is presupposed....The pilgrimage of the kings of the earth to the New Jerusalem presupposes the existence of the nations of the world & their rulers as well as the location of the eschatological Jerusalem on the earth."

The nations being saved and healed are from the Lamb's book of life from white throne judgments in Rev 20.11-15

What is your Christian duty?

I sometimes hear Christians say to other Christians “it’s your civic duty to help ensure good governance. That’s why Christians should always vote and even be prepared to serve in politics, military, police, or the judicial system.” But Jesus limits his followers' civic duty to paying your taxes (Mar 12:17); obeying the government (Rom 13:1-6) and to pray for their leaders (1Tim 2:1-2).

That’s why my suggestion to all Christians is to stop referring to the government as We or Us. For the Christian the government should always be They or Them. Often people ask, "But what if we had not stopped Hitler?” But it’s not the role of the Christian to fight the wars of this world, there will always be other people for that.

David himself attested to the fact that “the gods of the nations are demons” (Ps 95:5, LXX)!

Paul was very clear-eyed about this when he taught that Christians are not the State and vice versa.

Romans 12:19 “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord.”

Paul then gives this opposite statement regarding government officials in Romans 13:4b:

“He [i.e., government agent] is God’s servant, an avenger of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

Note that the government official can avenge but Paul had explicitly commanded the Christian never to avenge themselves!

“These words are important, because looking back in the passage, 12:19 explicitly denies the prerogative of vengeance and violence to God’s people using the same words…It will not do, as the tradition since Augustine has suggested, to posit the denial of revenge to be binding on Christians in the sphere of private morality while claiming that Christians acting as governmental agents are required to carry out God’s vengeance in the sphere of public morality. This is because such dualistic designations are the product of philosophical innovations attempting to confine religion’s applicability only to one’s private life.”[1]

The point is Christians cannot have two standards of morality in their lives. And just as in every election Christians invariably vote against other Christians, in every war Christians kill other Christians!

[1] Excerpt from: “The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity,” Consistently Pro-Life by Rob Arner, p 34.

Who Would Jesus Kill?

War, Peace, and the Christian Tradition by Mark Allman.

In the early Church, a commitment to pacifism was considered a constitutive or essential element of the Christian faith. So how is it that today most Christians are not pacifists? Tradition holds that after a victory he credited to the Christian God in 312, the Roman Emperor Constantine became a supporter of Christianity, thus reducing persecution by the pagan Roman religion in which the emperor was considered a god. Shortly after, the Edict of Milan permitted Christian worship within the empire. Constantine s toleration and eventual privileging of Christianity posed serious challenges to the Christian faith. How would a once persecuted minority religion based on the teaching of a first-century Jewish rabbi adapt to being the official religion of a world superpower? It is impossible for an extended empire like that of the Romans to rule by a commitment to pacifism. By 416, only Christians could serve in the empire's military. In little more than one hundred years after Maximilian and Marcellus were beheaded for refusing military service, the Christian stance on the use of force had changed completely. What had happened?

....the question of whether Jesus was divine wasn't settled until 325; the debate over the doctrine of the Trinity and the role of the Holy Spirit wasn't settled until 381; all of which means that, for the first 350 years of Christianity, there was no uniformity of belief regarding the very nature of God. Interestingly, the early Christians were fairly univocal in their stance toward the use of force and violence, however. For the first three to four centuries of Christianity, pacifism was the norm for Christians.

Interestingly, Augustine and Ambrose forbade clergy (priests and monks) to participate in military activity because they celebrated Eucharist, which required a ritual purity. Thus we see even in this early slide toward the ethics of empire (that is, an ethic that justifies certain activities in the name of state interests) an uneasiness regarding the use of force. It was something that had to be rationalized. Augustine and Ambrose did not praise the use of force, nor did they fully justify it; instead they reserved it as an instrument of statecraft.

Simons and the Anabaptist tradition are challenging and fascinating. In their attempt to return to biblically based Christian faith, they came to the same conclusion reached by early Christians like Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Maximilian, and Marcellus: the gospel of Jesus Christ requires a commitment to pacifism, and resorting to force is akin to renouncing one's faith. The Anabaptist tradition and its radical commitment to pacifism survive to this day among the self-identified "peace churches": Anabaptists (Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites), the Church of the Brethren, and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), as well as in a number of other Protestant denominations that have also historically espoused pacifism.