The New Jerusalem

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 10, 1863

The New Jerusalem.

In the Revelation of St. John, the scriptures describe a glorious city, which shall descend from heaven and be established on the renewed and purified earth. It is a habitation prepared for those saints who shall hereafter live with Christ when all has been accomplished, and the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously.

In this description the apostle accurately defines the New Jerusalem as a material structure, established in a certain locality. In it will be found all that can satisfy the renewed and developed powers of those who, although glorified and restored to a state of primeval innocence, are yet endowed still with the attributes, the feelings, and sympathies which man received originally from his Creator. Here the tabernacle of God shall be with man, and God himself shall dwell with them. There will be reproduced in a higher degree all the scenes and glories of paradise; the cooling fountains, the perpetual springs, the healing waters, the river and the tree of life whose leaves are for the sustentation of the people. For the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, even of that city which Isaiah has described, which the Lord will cause to descend when the new heavens and the new earth have been created. "For, behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth." The prophet thus describes it,—Thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates praise, and "the Lord shall be thy everlasting light, and thy God thy glory." We who are still under the dominion of a corrupt material nature, who, together with the whole creation, groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body, cannot realize these scenes and the surpassing glories of heaven. Here we look through a glass darkly; our perceptions are weak, our intellect darkened through sin, our higher nature overborne by the desires of a carnal mind. Here, while this dispensation lasts, the sons of God are "strangers and pilgrims" who have no continuing city, but "look for one to come."

Still God has not deserted his people. He has not left man to wander on the ocean of life without a chart or compass by which he may direct his course. The Book of Inspiration is the only unerring guide. Without it we cannot attempt to penetrate the mysteries which are involved in the problem of humanity. Man lost by the fall those great principles of knowledge which he had once derived by intuition from his Creator. The curse pronounced on Adam oppresses our spiritual and intellectual, as well as our material nature. In toil, in sorrow, in the sweat of our brow we gather the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The great law entailed upon us since the transgression is, that "man is born to trouble;" but through the cross he will win the crown, for "through much tribulation shall ye enter the kingdom of God," the heavenly Zion.

As men became corrupt, the greater part of the traditional wisdom derived from Adam and the patriarchs was forgotten; and therefore we, the children of transgression, have been toiling ever since along a steep and painful road, working out life's problems by the dim light of reason, picking up fragments of that primeval lore which man when innocent did once possess, which he will again possess when, through Christ, he has been elevated to a higher condition, even to the "inheritance of the saints in light." Then shall it be understood how Christ is to his elect both wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption.

The advent of our Saviour has, however, solved the great problem of humanity, and has indeed brought life and immortality to light. He proved that the creation which God pronounced very good cannot be essentially evil. He will prove hereafter that what God has cleansed we may not call common. This earth, once so beautiful and undefiled, will again be created anew, and restored to its pristine beauty, when the trail of the serpent has been effaced. Again the roses shall bloom in Sharon, the dews fall on Hermon, and the glory of Lebanon spring forth. But more than this. Our Saviour has proved that the fallen race of Adam might be raised to higher honor; that the feelings and affections and sympathies incidental to our human nature are not inconsistent with the utmost purity; that a material form might be suited to one who was "holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners."

A new light has therefore been shed on truths which had been hard to comprehend before the manifestation upon our earth of the incarnate Son of God. Those predictions are now understood as literal, which men had formerly interpreted as spiritual. The great fact stands forth incontrovertible, engraved as upon a rock. The Divine footsteps have left their impress on this earth. God manifest in the flesh has solved the great problem of humanity.

When our Saviour did actually walk with man and endured privation and suffering in a human form; when after His humiliation He assumed again this body, glorified, but still material, capable of recognition, bearing even the peculiar marks of His crucifixion, thus fulfilling to the letter all the prophecies concerning Him; when, lastly, at His ascension, He assured His disciples, by the voice of angels, that He would return in like manner (that is in like form) as they had seen Him taken up into heaven, He gave the strongest assurance that all the predictions connected with His second coming, and the future renovation of the earth, would also receive a complete fulfillment. Hence it follows that our Lord will actually and literally restore all things, all that creation which Satan for a season has been permitted to defile; that man, the first of God's works, will be raised again and endowed in a higher degree with those powers which had been lost and weakened by the fall. His spiritual nature will be more perfect than that of Adam; because having been purchased and redeemed by our Saviour's blood, he is secure from temptation, and no longer liable to fall. His intellect will be enlarged by the contemplation of those mysteries which even angels cannot discern, while his body, preserving still all the attributes of humanity, will yet be endowed with higher perceptions, and thus fitted to share in the pure enjoyments of heaven.

On this earth the story of our race began; here Satan has, for a brief space, displayed his power, and here, when the last scene closes, the triumph of Him who will be the victor over death and hell will be manifested. This earth will be renewed, but not annihilated, at least in the sense in which we understand the term. Why should God destroy His own work? It will be restored, purified, cleansed from all the defilement of sin; and then the saints, whom Christ has redeemed, shall find here an abode. Clothed in those attributes of humanity which our Saviour assumed even after His resurrection, they will behold the pristine beauties of creation, such as it was when God pronounced his blessing upon it. Here will be heaven, for God will make this His especial abode when He shall again return and dwell among men in Jehovah Shammah. Then may it not be, that when all has been accomplished, and God has established His kingdom, those glorious scenes described by the apostle may be actually realized? Here the redeemed of mankind may walk in a glorious city beside the peaceful waters flowing through the Paradise of God. Here the fruit of the tree of life may still be needed for the sustentation of those who, though immortal, are yet clothed in material forms.