My last post got away from me, so I had to cut it off in the middle of John’s continuing description of the New Jerusalem. I left off at:
5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
We saw in chapter 21 that the city didn’t need a sun or moon because of the glory of God and the Lamb, so it follows that there will be no more night. As I pointed out, John doesn’t say there is no sun or moon, only that they are not needed, and that his symbolic meaning is the safety of God’s people from all that is harmful because of the effects of sin. He reiterates that here, not that these things won’t exist, only that they are not necessary. The symbolic nature of Revelation might apply here as well. In the ancient world night was especially dangerous because bad guys had carte blanche to do their thing given law enforcement was not common. And the safety that is our eternally is the reason the gates are open all the time, unlike the fallen world where they had to be closed every night. That can certainly be some of John’s meaning here, but it can also be a contrast to the theme of John in his gospels of darkness and light. The former is man spiritually benighted, whose deeds are done in darkness because he doesn’t want them seen, while light where we do that which we are not ashamed to do. There will be no deeds of darkness in this new city come down from heaven.
This idea of the saints reigning or ruling with Christ in this new, reconstructed universe is a theme of Revelation, being declared four times. Rule implies authority, and different levels of it, and we see in this fallen world how authority if a feature of existence that makes peace and productivity possible. Without proper authority and the willingness of people to obey it, you have anarchy and thus misery and suffering. Differing levels of authority are also necessary for civilization to exist, so it seems will be in the new earth, the new Jerusalem, as well. The difference between authority in this fallen world and that, is there God’s people will gladly obey, and there will be no rebellion to mess everything up.
Now the descriptions are over, and the affirmation of the truth of John’s visions is declared. This is another binary of the Christian faith, it is either true, or it is not, and there is no in between. If all of what John saw is not true, including all of Scripture from Genesis 1 to this final chapter, then it is all a lie and a hoax, for which the followers of Jesus gave their lives. As my new book argues, no way they just made it all up. The angel affirms this:
6 And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”
The Greek word for trustworthy, pistos- πιστός, is the word for faith or belief, or in other words, we can take “these words” to the eternal bank. And all of it is trustworthy, we can trust it, specifically because it is true, aléthinos-ἀληθινός, literally made of truth, real or genuine. We may doubt it, which I do daily, because for me it’s all hard to believe. I can’t see it! I can’t see this spiritual reality; I have to trust that it is really there. For me, the most surefire recipe for doubt (and psychologically and emotionally healthy people doubt; I don’t trust those who don’t, or who claim absolute certainty is possible) is what’s become my favorite apologetic tactic: the consideration of the alternative. If the Bible and all it declares is not true, then something else has to be. And nothing else, no other worldview, be it informed by atheistic materialism, or pantheism, comes close to being more plausible than Christianity. The reason is that if we put up the evidence side by side for the fundamental assertions of each worldview, or the religions they inspire, next to Christianity, it’s a joke. It’s like comparing a tsunami to a rain drop, I mean not even close to close.
This isn’t the first reference to these words being trustworthy and true. In 19:9, the angel speaking of the wedding supper of the Lamb says, “These are the true words of God.” And in 21:5, he who is seated on the throne speaking of making everything new says, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” It is the very words of God, written down, which we can trust as true. We can take these and the the angel’s reference here to “these words,” to mean the words of these specific chapters about the New Jerusalem, or all the words in Revelation, or what I take to be more likely, the entirety of Scripture. God’s words were written down from the very beginning, from Moses to the entire history of redemption, which is why Jews and Christians are “people of the book.” In Christianity’s battle with pagan heathenism to create Western civilization, words were as fundamental to that victory as swords. All were written with the conviction that they were tied back to the the true words in the Bible. This conviction of the absolute truth of the Christian worldview, and the words that inform it, was unique in the entirety of the ancient world. Every peoples on earth in some sense thought their view of reality was “true,” and they still do, but it’s the exclusivity of the truth claims of Christianity that make it True! I think it is “the spirits of the prophets” who spoke from the Lord God and his Spirit that expands the meaning of “these words” to all of God’s special revelation.
Finally, I have to laugh at the angel’s declaration that he showed John and us “what must soon take place.” God’s meaning of soon and ours are two very different things! As I’ve said and say over and over, God is never in a hurry. Everyone in Scripture, waits and waits and waits, as do we. All of God’s saints, his holy set apart people wait. From Noah (how many years must he have been building his ark with people mocking him), to Abraham and Sarah (the promised child is coming, and 20 years later, nothing), to his descendants (400 years of bondage in Egypt!), to the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness outside of the promised land for 40 years, to the people in the land waiting 400(!) years for their first king, then David waiting his entire reign to build a temple, which is then given his son to build, then waiting 200 plus years for a divided kingdom to come together, only to watch one part destroyed, then another 150 years for the other part to be taken into exile for 70 years, then after the last prophet Malachi speaks, waiting another 400(!) years for the Messiah. That’s a lot of waiting! We can relate to the biblical lament, “How long O Lord!” So we are best advised to take God’s promise of soon in God’s timing, where in Peter’s words, “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” The point is that our hope is sure, and we can stake our lives, and deaths, on it.
Tagged: Revelation, The Bible
My Walk Through The Bible 
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