How Big?

Scripture: The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. Revelation 21:16

Observation: According to the footnote, that's a city ... 1,400 miles square! The "New Jerusalem" is the size of an area from Canada to Mexico, and from the Pacific coast to Wichita, Kansas!!!

Application: I have never understood the relationship of the "New Jerusalem" to heaven before. When I have read about the New Jerusalem before, I have understood it to be Jerusalem - that Jerusalem will be rebuilt as a perfect city for all of us to live in with God - and that it was the same city sitting on the same hill in the Middle East. Well, clearly that can't be!

The New Jerusalem is actually heaven - it is the place where we can all go live, in mansions our father has prepared for us, in the glory of God and the nonstop light of Jesus. It doesn't nearly fit on one hill ... it can't fit on the entire Rocky Mountain Range.

And I wouldn't be surprised if this size isn't more of a generalization. I just so happens that it is 1,432 miles from Jerusalem to Rome (yes, I had to Google that). So maybe John was just saying "that's a massive distance - the longest distance people of our age can even fathom - and THAT'S how big the New Jerusalem is ... it's the size of the longest distance you can even reasonably understand."

I will never again picture New Jerusalem as a perfected version of Jerusalem. It is instead the name for God's own city, the place where he dwells among his people. It is heaven, come down to earth.

Prayer: Jesus, I can't wait to be with you. Your love is so wonderful, it will be so amazing to live in the literal light of your presence. I pray I can we worthy by faith and resulting attitude and actions of the place prepared for me in your city. Amen.