The New Jerusalem

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 14, 1865

The New Jerusalem.

A WRITER in a recent number of the World's Crisis, in answering the objection that this earth is not large enough for the redeemed to stand upon, makes the following calculation about the size of the New Jerusalem, and the area it will occupy:

The New Jerusalem city of Rev. xxi, 16, being 12,000 furlongs, or 1500 miles in measure—probably the whole distance around it; though some suppose it means 1500 miles square; but the city was four square, and its measure being 12,000 furlongs, we understand it to be the whole distance around, not a quarter of it. Allowing this to be the distance around, would make the city 875 miles square, and would contain 140,625 square miles, or ninety million acres. All who ever lived on earth could stand within the walls of this city, and each one would have a space of over thirty-nine square feet, over six and a quarter feet square. The city would cover an area of land nearly equal to the seven States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania. It would cover land equal to the whole of Palestine, Syria, and all of Mesopotamia excepting the southeast part, below the ruins of old Babylon. Or, it would extend from the southwest corner of Palestine, northward, the whole eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and beyond as far north as Tarsus, in Asia Minor; and from thence eastward about fifty miles beyond the ruins of ancient Nineveh, and from there southward, within fifty miles of old Babylon, and down to a point one hundred miles into the desert of Arabia, and from there westward to the southwest corner of Palestine.

If the city were fifteen hundred miles square, it would be six thousand miles around its walls, and would contain two million two hundred and fifty thousand square miles. The countries of Turkey in Europe, and Asia, Persia, Arabia, Greece, and Italy, contain less surface than the supposed area of this city. The whole of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf of Mexico to the British Possessions, would be about the right size, shaped into a square, for such a monstrous city, which would extend one-seventeenth around the earth. And hence we conclude that it must be only three hundred and seventy-five miles square, and this size, it will be seen, is of sufficient magnitude to contain all who ever lived on earth.