NOTES for Rev 21:5

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⁵And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

For many people today the Apocalypse is associated with the end, with a worldwide or even universal catastrophe. Yet the Book of Revelation ends in a completely different way. At the end there is not catastrophe, but renewal. A new world. A new heaven and a new earth. And the heavenly Jerusalem descending from the new heaven to the new earth. All these images are traditional for Yahwistic visionary experience, both prophetic and apocalyptic. Strictly speaking, the coming of the Messiah and the appearing of the Kingdom were linked with the renewal of creation even in pre-exilic times.

But "behold, I make all things new," sounding from God's mouth, also has a deeper meaning. Indeed, God does not simply create the world once and then leave it without His presence and without His support. The world is created by God constantly. The "in the beginning" where God "creates the heaven and the earth" is in God's eternity. And with respect to the created world, it can be revealed only in the fullness of the universe, in the totality of all its spaces and all its times. This means that the world is created, or rather renewed, by God at every moment and at every point of its existence.

A slowing of this process is possible only as a consequence of a rupture in creation, and rupture is possible only as a consequence of the fall - of a human being or an angel. If God's renewal of the world ceased altogether, the world would immediately collapse, disappear as such, and turn into chaos, into something formless and without qualities. And now, when the world has been renewed by God's breath and has become the Kingdom in fullness, it is entirely natural that its very existence has become constant renewal.

Indeed, breath is nothing other than the constant renewal of the one who breathes, who at one and the same time is always the same and always other. And the world as God's Kingdom was intended to exist precisely in this way. Now, after transfiguration, it finally begins to correspond fully to God's design for it. The words that "the sea is no more" are symbolic and testify that in the world there are no longer forces opposed to God, for in the Bible the sea symbolized precisely these forces. And the heavenly Jerusalem symbolizes the Kingdom as such.

For Jerusalem, for example in the visions of Isaiah of Babylon, where the features of the heavenly city are already visible, is not simply buildings, but first of all people, inhabitants. And the Kingdom consists of its inhabitants, of the people dwelling in it. Their relationships with one another, with God, and with Christ form the structure of the Kingdom. And the spiritual backbone of the Kingdom is Christ's own relationship with His Father. On these rests the heavenly Jerusalem opened to John - the triumphant Kingdom on the renewed earth under the renewed heaven.

Other notes

For Rev 21:1-8

¹And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

²And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

³And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

⁴And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

⁵And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

⁶And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

⁷He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

⁸But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

A new earth is the dream of a person in grief and sorrow. When everything around us is collapsing and the world appears to us as a mass of wicked and... Read more

A new earth is the dream of a person in grief and sorrow. When everything around us is collapsing and the world appears to us as a mass of wicked and evil deeds, there is nowhere we can hide from the nightmare of the news. Then there arises the problem of finding “another globe,” a problem that is absurd even to contemplate. And yet this thirst for another earth, another heaven, and a holy city where everything will unfold differently is neither a riot of fantasy nor self-deception. Anyone who dreams of another earth illustrates Jesus' words: “In My Father's house are many dwelling places...” (John 14:1-3). Even if we know nothing of the Bible's existence and have never read it, Christ's word still works within us with sighs too deep for words.

For Rev 21:1-8

¹And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

²And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

⁴And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

⁵And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

⁶And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

⁷He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

The Book of Revelation ends with a description of the new, transformed world, whose spiritual center becomes... Read more

The Book of Revelation ends with a description of the new, transformed world, whose spiritual center becomes the heavenly Jerusalem. Evidently, the transformation of nature and the appearing of the heavenly Jerusalem turn out to be two sides of one and the same spiritual process, by which the first stage of the history of the Kingdom is completed, a Kingdom that fully includes the world transformed by the breath of God. Apparently, this is precisely the first stage, after which another, new one will follow, the content and meaning of which still remain a mystery for us. It is clear only that with the coming of the Kingdom, life by no means stops developing; it only takes on certain new forms that are still little understood by us. One thing is clear: the "new heaven" and "new earth" mentioned by John imply the complete renewal of creation, a qualitative change in the very nature of our world. The apostle's mention of the sea, which "is no more" (v. 1), testifies to the same thing.

In biblical books the sea usually symbolizes chaos, as well as the forces behind it and that generated it, forces opposing God and striving to destroy the world God created. It is no surprise that in the new, transformed world there is no longer any place for these forces. And Jerusalem turns out to be the center of the new world, which is no surprise: after all, it is precisely with Jerusalem and the Temple that the Presence is connected, the Presence that made the Hebrew people the people of God. It is not by chance that in John's visions the Throne often takes on the features and forms of the Temple or the Tabernacle. Now, after the transformation, the Throne becomes the spiritual center of transformed creation, its meaning and focal point. The "new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God" (v. 2) becomes the symbol of this focal point.

In the new world, at last, what had been partly revealed in the visions of the great prophets of Israel has been fulfilled: the abyss that previously separated God from His people has disappeared, an abyss connected not so much with the incomparability of God and man, which is surmountable for God, as with human sinfulness, which only the person himself can overcome through repentance and conversion. And now, when human sin and the evil of the world have disappeared, nothing any longer hinders that fullness of communion with God which the righteous and God's witnesses so desired (vv. 3-4).

This communion with God, evidently, now includes not only the human being but all creation, which has become far more receptive to spiritual influences. Before, the world, permeated by evil, barely reacted to them; now it has evidently become more responsive to God's will, and at the same time more dependent on His influence. "I make all things new" (v. 5) applies, perhaps, not only to the fact of creation's renewal and transformation, but also to its very existence: now even more than before, it is determined by that breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated. The world exists by being constantly renewed under the influence of its Creator, and if before this was hidden, now the spiritual freshness and newness of creation, revealed to everyone, testify to God no less brightly than the righteousness of the faithful testified to Him before. Thus in the new, transformed world, human testimony merges with the testimony of nature renewed by the action of God's breath.

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NOTES for Rev 21:5

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