Lighting Up the Apocalypse 37: The Bride, the City, and the Eternal Light

Rev 21:9-27; Ex 28:15-21; Dan 2:34-35; Ezekiel 40-43; Is 2:2-3, Is 54:11-14; Ps 48:13-15

In cinematography, significance is signaled by panning in to the object being observed, and panning across it so that everything can be seen in detail.  The same procedure can be used in describing a vision, and John does this for us here, as we come to the climax of the Apocalypse.  We have already heard several times about the City-Bride, and earlier in this chapter John saw her coming from afar.  Now one of the angels who had heralded the destruction of Babylon opens up a moment of joy—he takes John, in the Holy Spirit, to the very mountain of God, and lets him observe New Jerusalem up close and personal.  Here is the passage:

Then one of the  seven angels who had held the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God,  having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—  on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal.  He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by a human measure, that is, an angelic measure. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, like clear glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.  And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.  By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it,  and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.  But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

St. John, as one who knew the Scriptures, understood well the significance of this great mountain to which he is taken.  The great prophet Isaiah had looked for the time when “the mountain of the house of the LORD  shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it” ( Isaiah 2:2).  The prophet Daniel had seen, in a vision, the unlikely transformation of a stone cut without hands, that vanquished God’s enemies and was established forever: “…a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image and broke it into pieces…. and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:34-35).  And from the parables of Jesus we learn that this foundational stone is our LORD himself, rejected by the builders, but made into the key stone of the entire new temple. His reign fills the whole earth, and is the support of His people.

This people we see pictured in the New Jerusalem, the Bride of Christ, prepared by God Himself.  She has the very radiance of God, and she shows the fulfilled glory of God’s ancient people, the 12 tribes, now transformed into all those rescued from the nations of the world.  Like God Himself, who was described for us in Revelation 4, she has the clarity of jasper, and according to God’s own will she is foursquare, making a perfect cube, recalling the 12 tribes and the 12 apostles.  Her identity is clearly marked in writing, so that no one will forget the long history of faithful Israel and the Church, joined in one city.

And, before our very eyes, her magnificent structure is measured. In chapter 11 of the book, measurement was a kind of accusing judgment, but here it is a sign of God’s favor and protection.  We may think of the joyful call in Psalm 48/LXX 47:12-14

Let Mount Zion be glad!

Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments!

Walk about Zion, go around her:

number her towers,

consider well her ramparts,

go through her citadels,

that you may tell the next generation that this is God,

our God forever and ever. He will shepherd us forever.

This protection of God is a vision of true eternal security, never to end. Let us recall our discussion in previous episodes, where we saw that some have sadly limited the phrase “unto the age” so that it does not refer to eternity.  Here there is no question of that, for the Greek version is extremely emphatic, declaring that this is our God “to the age and unto the age of the age,” and “He will shepherd us to (all) ages!”

Measurement, here, is a good sign, and it reveals some happy surprises.  Like the 12 foundations, the figures here are also multiples of 12, signs of perfection.  The number “144” figures here, and so does 12,000, reminding us of the 144,000 whom we glimpsed earlier in John’s visions. We encounter a bit of a puzzle when we hear, in verse 17, that the angel measures the wall to be “144 cubits by a human measure, that is, an angelic measure”.  First, 144 cubits is not so very high for a wall, so could this be the measurement of its width, very thick indeed?  Or does it suggest that a high wall is no longer necessary since God’s enemies are destroyed?  Next, how can a “human” measure of a cubit be “an angelic measure”—literally, “the measure of an angel?”  Commentators of past and present have contemplated this and come up with different answers.  Some of our translations read this as meaning that the angel was using a human cubit to measure, so that we can understand.  Others see this as the angelic equivalent, were an angel to have an arm and elbow (which is how a cubit is measured)—and so the size is unimaginable to us, because angels are immense.  Others have simply commented that, in the New Jerusalem, angels and humans will mingle, and so this is a sign of the new greatness of human beings.  Oecumenius, for example, says “by the contemplation of the greatness of God men become [as] angels” (COMMENTARY ON THE APOCALYPSE 21.17  TEG 8:274-5.)  And Primasius, a sixth century African bishop who knew of earlier commentaries on Revelation, has this to say:

 Since the church is gathered together from people and is lifted high by the promises of Christ, she hopes for equality with the angels and her every intent longs for their company, and for this reason it says, “the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.” Or this verse indicates that that city that will reign more fully consists partly of angels who already live there in perpetual happiness and partly of those who are on the way, that is, of people. COMMENTARY ON THE APOCALYPSE 21.17. CCL 92:293, alt.)

Perhaps it doesn’t matter exactly what St. John has in mind here, for we get the gist—that the City is huge, that it is in God’s care, and that angels can communicate with us that great hope, as God instructs them to.

And, indeed, the brilliance is overwhelming.  The stones which John goes on to describe correspond to the stones representing the tribes which the High Priest wore on his breastplate—jasper for Benjamin, emerald for Judah, and so on. (Those who are so inclined may check out the lists of these tribes in Exodus 28, Numbers 1-4, and Ezekiel 48.)  I find it intriguing that “jasper,” though mentioned last in the Old Testament lists, takes first place here, and throughout the Apocalypse, though Benjamin was the smallest and youngest tribe.  Is this the vision’s way of signaling to us that the least has become the greatest, in God’s economy, that the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner?

When we compare the chapters in the prophet Ezekiel which describe the future Jerusalem with the description here, I think we can see that St. John has been overwhelmed with brilliance, and with the personal beauty of the members of the City.  Ezekiel stresses the architecture, but St. John notes the radiant shining quality of the Bride, who has been prepared by God Himself, and who actually shares His glory.  Ezekiel, with priestly rigor, emphasized the utter purity of this new Temple-City, and has God instruct His people, “Now let them put away their whoring and the dead bodies of their kings far from me, and I will dwell in their midst forever”  (Ezekiel 43:9).  Of course, St. John also tells us that the City-Bride is pure, and reminds us that only those whose name is in the book of Life will dwell there.  Yet the gates remain open! So for him the real wonder of the New Jerusalem is that it provides light for the nations, and that the kings will bring their redeemed riches into it.  We are reminded of the prophet Isaiah’s tenderness towards God’s people, when he said,

O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted,

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.

All your children shall be taught by the LORD,

and great shall be the peace of your children.

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.  Isaiah 54:11-14

 

The Prophet Isaiah looked for a time when the people of God would dwell with God in peace, and even hinted, in the last chapter of his prophecy, that God’s people would include Gentiles.  But for St. John that is no hint—it is a delightful prospect that he stresses in this climactic vision.  The jeweled gates, set with pearls and the radiance of God, now are filled with everything that is redeemable in God’s creation. And those who dwell in that place need no more mediation of light, for Father and Son illumine it directly. The kingdom of this earth has become the Kingdom of our God, and He shall reign forever and ever!  All those who have been afflicted for the sake of God now find that even their affliction has meaning, and that it has been God’s means of preparation. The whole people of God emerge fit, and whole, and shining with the luster of heaven, in a place illumined by God Himself, and where there is never any night. As Michael Wilcock puts it,

We are not merely spectators [in the final vision], we are ourselves the spectacle:  it is we who are God’s building….The city shown to us here is what we shall be in the age to come, what in a sense we already are, on the level of ‘the heavenlies,’ (Revelation, IV Press, 1975, 207.)

This vision may conceal still some mysteries within it, but it speaks clearly enough to us of this eternal hope, made possible because of the foundation of the apostles, and the actions of the slaughtered-standing Lamb who is even now in our midst.