‘1 Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, 2 in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 There will be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night, and they will need no lamp or sunlight, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever.’
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1).
The judgment on evil, which began with the throne of God in Revelation 4:2 and ended with the Great White Throne Judgment in Revelation 20:11, has been completely concluded. In other words, the final great disasters of the end, the seven seals, the seven trumpets by angels, and the seven bowls, were carried out by Christ who was worthy to break the seals by going forth from the throne of God, and finally, Christ returned and subdued the forces of evil, resurrected all mankind, gathered all people before the Great White Throne Judgment, destroyed evil, settled everything, and accomplished the salvation of His people. The great history of God’s judgment and redemption was completely concluded.
Therefore, all that remains is the description of the kingdom of heaven and the blessed life in that kingdom of heaven that God promised to save from the judgment of His wrath and to put on salvation and to enter into eternal rest. And this is described appropriately and well in Revelation 21:1 to 22:5. Finally, we have now reached the climax of the revelation, which contains the most beautiful and final scenes and themes. Moreover, since the purpose of writing this book is to give hope, courage, and encouragement to all the disciples of Christ who have suffered for the name of Christ in this world, this part where the ultimate destruction of evil and the eternal happiness that the saints will enjoy are brilliantly displayed can be said to be the pinnacle and the best of all revelations.
It shows the characteristics of the world of eternal rest, which is the pinnacle and the best of all revelations. The first of these characteristics is that although this world is a reformed version of the present world, it is a completely new world that is completely different from the present world. The second characteristic is that the saints live a life of living together with God, just like the life of a married couple. And the third characteristic is that all the pain, tears, and sorrow of the old world are completely gone.
We can see that the kingdom of God that we will enter in the future is not a kingdom that simply fixes this world and makes it easier to live in, but a completely new world that is completely different from this world because it has been renewed. In other words, the kingdom of God that we will inherit in the future is completely different from the current material world that was cursed due to Adam’s sin, which is easily broken and corrupted in every way, qualitatively, structurally, and content-wise. This is a completely new world where the curse of God has been completely removed and the relationship between God and man has been completely restored.
The ‘new heaven and new earth’ here is usually thought of as the same as the kingdom of God, but strictly speaking, the new heaven and new earth are not equivalent to the kingdom of God. In other words, the new heaven and new earth are a new universe and a new world that includes both heaven and hell that will be created after the destruction of Satan and his forces (19:20; 20:10) through the second coming of Christ, the collapse of the present universe and history (20:11), and the final judgment. Therefore, strictly speaking, the kingdom of God is in the new heaven and new earth. The new heaven and new earth are a new world that includes both the kingdom of God and hell.
And what we must keep in mind is that the new heaven and new earth are not completely new creations, but rather newly improved ones made from the old world. The new heaven and new earth are a new world newly created from the old heaven and old earth, the old universe, and the old earth. However, the new heaven and the new earth are not simply improvements of the old, but are completely remodeled and renovated into something new, and are a completely new world that is different in structure and essence from the old.
Just as when we think of the resurrected body, the body of the resurrected saints, the resurrected body uses the elements of our current body to become a completely new resurrected body, resurrected body, and spiritual body, or as explained in the resurrection chapter of 1 Corinthians 15:37-38, “And what you sow, you do not sow the body that will be, but a grain of wheat, or perhaps of some other grain; and God gives it a body just as he has chosen, and to each seed its own body,” it means that when a grain of wheat is planted in the ground, a plant called wheat with a completely different form from the grain of wheat comes out of the ground.
The words that show that this new heaven and new earth are different from the old earth are that there is no sea. Currently, 70% of the earth is covered by water. Because of water, it supplies oxygen to the creatures that exist on the earth and regulates the climate. And in the case of humans, 70% of the body composition is water. So, we need to drink water to survive. During the millennium, the sea existed. Because at that time, the saints were spiritual beings and did not need water, but there were people who had bodies that absolutely needed water, so the sea was needed. However, in the new heaven and new earth, there are no people with bodies at all, so the sea is no longer needed. In this sense, the new earth is different from the old earth.
It is said that no matter how fast a being with mass runs in the universe, it cannot surpass the speed of light. What is the speed of light? The speed of light is 300,000 km per second. To put it simply, light circles the Earth seven and a half times in one second. When we see stars twinkling in our eyes in the night sky, that twinkling light has traveled tens or hundreds of billions of light years to twinkle in our eyes. It is said that the starlight of a billion light years traveled 300,000 kilometers in one second from the star and flashed in our eyes, traveling for 1 billion years.
Right now, angels have the speed of God’s glory. This speed of glory means that in a flash, they can travel from Korea to the United States, from the Earth to Venus, or from the Earth to Heaven. If we think about going from Los Angeles to Seoul, we are there. If angels move at the speed of light, when we pray to God, angels receive answers to our prayers from God and convey them to us. If we prayed today to heal our child’s illness, the angels would have brought us the answer to our prayers from God 1 billion years after we died.
Right now, angels move at the speed of glory. When we are resurrected, we will also move at the speed of glory. However, we do not need to wait until the resurrection. Even now, if God wants to, he can make us move like that. Because Acts 8:39-40 shows that such a thing already happened. After Philip met the eunuch, the finance minister of the Ethiopian queen Candace, in the Judean Desert and preached the gospel to him, he baptized him in water, and then the Holy Spirit moved him in an instant to a place called Azotus, which is in the northern Galilee region. The Judean Desert is in the southern province, and Azotus is in the northern province of Galilee.
Chapter 22 of the Book of Revelation is not only the last chapter of the Book of Revelation, but also the last chapter of the entire Bible, which consists of a total of 1,189 chapters. Therefore, Chapter 22 of the Book of Revelation naturally has profound significance not only as the closing words of the Book of Revelation, but also as the closing words of the entire revelation of the Bible, in the entire redemptive-historical horizon. Moreover, this chapter itself deals with the divine authority and value of the Bible itself, which is an absolutely infallible revelation given directly by God to show the principle of salvation, that is, the principle of Jesus’ redemption, to all saints of all generations to come during the entire history of redemption from the beginning to the end, and the core content of the Bible, the idea of Parousia and Maranatha, that is, the idea of the second coming of Jesus and the expectation of the second coming.
Therefore, Revelation 22, the last chapter of the entire Bible, is not only the final chapter of the Bible in terms of its position, but also its content, while finally establishing the divine authority and absolute value of the Bible itself, comprehensively condenses the entire horizon of the history of redemption and its fundamental principles, and ultimately presents the idea of the second coming, which can be said to be the core truth of the Bible.
The image of the kingdom of God that the Apostle John finally speaks of is based on the complete restoration of the lost Garden of Eden. If we look at the Genesis account, before Adam sinned and fell, there was the tree of life (Gen. 2:9) and the river that fertilized the garden (Gen. 2:10-14). And man was given the authority to rule over all of it (Gen. 1:26; 2:15). However, when man ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which he was forbidden to eat in the Garden of Eden, he was cursed and driven out of the Garden of Eden.
However, Revelation 22 depicts the Garden of Eden that mankind had lost. There, the river of the water of life flows from God again (Revelation 22:1), and the tree of life grows luxuriantly because of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit every month, and all those in the kingdom of God enjoy eternal life through it. On the other hand, in heaven, the authority to rule over all things in heaven is returned to the people of heaven. In Genesis 2, Adam had the authority to rule over all things on earth and in the Garden of Eden, but in Revelation 22, the saints with the resurrected body rule over the entire universe. This is because they are the sons of God, who have a higher status than the angels. In a word, everything that was lost in the Garden of Eden is restored. However, heaven is not simply a restoration of what was lost in the Garden of Eden, but God grants something better to mankind. This means that the possibility of the fall that occurred in the Garden of Eden is completely eliminated. Because Satan, the originator of sin, does not exist. Therefore, in heaven, there will be no more curses, sins, darkness, or temptations, and all creatures will enjoy an indescribable blessed life in the glory of God forever.
In the city of Jerusalem, the throne of God and the Lamb will be in the middle (Revelation 22:3), which clearly shows that in the kingdom of God, God and Christ will dwell together with the saved saints forever. Also, in verse 4, it says, “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”
This blessing of God and Christ dwelling together with us forever (Immanuel) is the greatest blessing that the saints will enjoy in heaven (the earth where God’s throne is in the eternal world). This is because this blessing is the source of all blessings and the greatest glory. This is the greatest glory that we can have. God is the Father who loves us so much that he does not know what to do. Zephaniah 3:17 “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save. He will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with singing.” Amen. Hallelujah.
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