Future-Town - Part 1 - Part B

Erwin Lutzer, who wrote a book, One Minute After You Die, said this, Now this city could be composed of 396,000 stories at 20 feet per story. With each area as big as one half of the United States, that's each level, divide that into separate condominiums, you have plenty of room for all those who have ever been redeemed since the beginning of time.

Picture this, a cube-shaped city that hovers the earth, mostly made of precious jewels, and allowing for vertical and horizontal travel. It sounds like something from science fiction, doesn't it? Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how that's actually going to be your future home. But first, Skip wants to invite you to connect with him on social media. Hey, Pastor Skip here. If you want to stay up to date on the latest from this ministry, follow at Skip Heitzig on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. That's Skip, H-E-I-T-Z-I-G. Now, we're in Revelation chapter 21 as we dive into our study with Skip Heitzig. This is John's description visually. This city is breathtaking. Also, I would say this is a description metaphorically.

Now, hear me. In the Bible, the closest relation on earth is a marriage relationship. It's where people really get to know one another in the most intimate way. And so, very often, Paul included, would describe the relationship of God's people, the church, as a bride and a bridegroom.

In 2 Corinthians 11 verse 2, he writes, For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you, or engaged you, to one husband, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. And I think a few weeks back, we told you that there's three different phases to the old Jewish weddings. First was the betrothal.

It lasted a year. It was the engagement process. At the end of that year, at some point, though they didn't know exactly when, the groom would show up at the bride's house unexpectedly, make his announcement, and take her from her house to his house, which brought us to the third phase.

That was the wedding ceremony and then the marriage feast. Right now, we as the church, as God's people, are in phase one. We're spoken for. We're engaged.

At the moment of our conversion, we're engaged to Jesus Christ, and we are waiting for Him to literally sweep us off our feet at any moment in something called the rapture of the church, where He'll take us to heaven, to His kingdom. So, this is the courtship phase. We're getting to know Him. Now, I will be honest with you. My own courtship was not the model you want to follow. I dated my wife for a couple months. I wasn't really sure about the relationship.

I mean, I was Joe single. I just was a mess. And I flaked out of the relationship. I didn't really communicate adequately with her. I just sort of didn't call her. Just sort of walked off the face of the map and kind of left her wondering. And then after a couple years went by, the relationship was kindled up again, and I asked her to marry me. And even that didn't go very well. I wasn't like the Mr.

Romantic. I remember when I asked her to marry me, I was talking really weird, like, you know, life is many roads, and there's green lights and red lights, and you know if you should turn right or left. And she's thinking, what on earth is he telling me?

And then she discovered, I think he's about to ask me to marry him. Now, I never remember popping the question, honestly. She said I did, but I don't remember asking her the question.

What I do remember is kind of an interruption. She said, skip, skip, skip. I said, yes. I said, to what? Well, you just asked me to marry you, and I said, yes, I will marry you. And I remember, this I remember. I said, now, wait a minute.

This is a huge decision. We have to talk about this. I mean, I was talking to my wife, this. I mean, I was so flaky.

I guess I'm bringing myself up as the negative example to say, Jesus Christ isn't flaky. He's absolutely sure. He's certain you're the bride for him.

And he knows all about you, and he still wants you. That's beautiful. That's love. Here's my question. Do you have a personal, close relationship with your groom-to-be, like a bride-to-be should have?

I'll ask it in another way. Are you flirting with the world? Are you going out on Jesus?

Is there something in your life that needs to be eradicated, removed, cut out? Do you need to return to your first love, that first love of the spousal? So, I think this meaning here of the bride is simply to say, in this city, future town, your love with Jesus and for Jesus will be real, fresh, and absolutely complete. Best description? It's a bride adorned for her husband. Go down to verse 11. Let's read a few verses and note now the magnificence of this city. Notice, having the glory of God and her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. Also, she had a great high wall with 12 gates and 12 angels at the gates, and names written on them, which are the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. So, four sides, three on each side. Three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, three gates on the west. Now, the wall of the city had 12 foundations, and on them, the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb.

As I worked my way through the passage, which I did, I noted some very descriptive adjectives, like holy, glory, great, high, clear, pure, precious, magnificent. I'll never forget my first view of New York City. I was in Hoboken, New Jersey. Ever seen the view from Hoboken looking toward Manhattan at night? It was one o'clock in the morning.

Wow! It was brilliant, magnificent, sparkly. Now, in verse 11, it says, having the glory of God. This, I believe, is the most significant feature of Future Town, of New Jerusalem.

This is the most striking and overarching characteristic. God's glory is there. Now, John, obviously, wants to tell us about the light, because, notice, he says, and her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone clear as crystal.

Now, by reading that, I don't think you'll understand what he's saying. I want to help you. The word light here is the Greek word phoster, which means an illuminator, or, get this, a source of light. A source of light. Light is emanating from it. It's something that is emanating from it. It's something in which light is concentrated and from which light is pouring out of.

So it's not like, wow, here's something really cool and light's bouncing off of it, ambient light from another source. John wants you to know that it's like this huge diamond with light cascading out of it, emanating from it. Notice, it says it's like jasper.

Now, that may not help us. If you're a gemologist, you'll be a bit confused, because modern jasper is an opaque stone. And notice what he says. It's like jasper stone clear as what? Crystal. This is clear. And so most commentators will say probably what John was describing is a diamond, because it's clear as crystal that an ancient jasper was very different than a modern one, or it's simply an ancient description of what would be a diamond. It's clear as crystal. Now, the best diamonds are the clearest diamonds.

I've had a little education over the years, you know, being married. The first diamond I ever bought was our engagement ring. I spent a whopping maybe two, three hundred dollars for it. And it had a diamond on it. They told me it did. I know that if you took a little microscope or even a little glass, you could see the diamond. It was there. But if you put it under a microscope, because I saw it some time later, it wasn't clear.

It was more yellowy and a little bit opaque. And they told me it wasn't a great diamond. Believe me, I've been educated. Diamonds that are good are clear. And the clearer they are, the better they are, and the more expensive they are.

So I've gotten an education since then. Verse 12. Let's peek at this magnificence. Notice there's 12 gates, 12 foundations, and an angel posted at each gate. Now the angel isn't to guard the bad guys.

There are none present. And the gates are never shut, it will tell us later on. I see these angels sort of like ushers, passing bulletins out, greeting you as you leave. Hey, welcome home when you come there.

If you're leaving for the day or for a million years, have a nice trip. But there's 12 gates, and there's 12 angels, so you're going to get to know these guys pretty good or these beings pretty well. Now, it gets more wild. Begin with me at verse 15, and I want you now to consider the measurement. How big is this place? Let's look at it. Verse 15.

And he who talked with me had a gold reed. It's a measuring stick to measure the city and its gates and its wall. And the city is laid out as a square.

Mark the word square, I'll get back to it. Its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed 12,000 furlongs, or stadia in Greek. Its length, its breadth, and its height are equal, so it's a cube. And then he measured the wall, 144 cubits according to the measure of a man that is of an angel. So obviously the Spirit of God wants us to know how big it is because we're given an exact measurement. Now notice it says it's square. The Greek word is tetragonas, or four cornered, a perfect cube, a tetragon, a perfect cube. Now a furlong is 600 feet, or an eighth of a mile.

12,000 furlongs is 1,500 miles. So he's looking at something in his vision that the angel says, let me tell you how big this baby is. It's 1,500 miles wide, it's 1,500 miles deep, and it's 1,500 miles tall. It's a perfect cube. I was studying the Old Testament a little bit this week and I discovered that the cube goes all the way back, at least in my thinking, to a little room in the tabernacle called the Holy of Holies. It too is a perfect cube. The Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was, where God dwelt with his people, was 15 feet wide, 15 feet deep, and 15 feet high.

This is like that on steroids. 1,500 miles as a cube. Notice the walls, verse 17. They turn out to be 72 yards, or 216 feet. Now notice it doesn't say that's how high they are. They may be that high, or they may be 216 feet thick, deep.

After all, this is a 1,500 mile city. 216 foot thick walls is not a big deal. Why are they there? For protection?

No, you don't need any protection. I think for adornment, not for security, but for beauty. Walls look cool. Now the whole point of this is, if I can be so base as to paraphrase it, John is saying God's town is really huge. We're given the measurements. 1,500 miles. You know how far that is? That's from Maine to Florida. That's from Dallas to Philadelphia. That's from Albuquerque to Spokane. If you were to drop this city, given its measurements, in the United States, it would go from Canada to Mexico.

It would go from the Appalachian Mountains to the border of California. Absolutely huge. There would be 2,250,000 square miles. That's just the first level. Remember, it's high as well as that deep. It would be 40 times the size of England, 10 times the size of France or Germany, 15,000 times bigger than the city of London, and that's just the first level. You put all the levels together, you have something the size thereabouts of our moon. It's huge.

Erwin Lutzer, who wrote a book One Minute After You Die, said this. Now this city could be composed of 396,000 stories at 20 feet per story, with each area as big as one half of the United States. That's each level. Divide that into separate condominiums. You have plenty of room for all those who have ever been redeemed since the beginning of time. James McDonald, who did a little thing on heaven, said if today we went by the modern grid, there's 10 to 12 city blocks per mile.

This is all supposition, but it's fun. You go with a standard grid, 10 to 12 city blocks per mile. That means you could have 45 million miles of road.

That's just the first level. That means you could have 675 billion miles of streets. Now don't worry, these are safe streets. These are clean streets. Verse 21, they're of gold.

They're clean. Let's talk mansions for a moment, shall we? Let's say you have four mansions to a street because everybody gets a corner.

We want the corner lot. You get a view. You'd have more than one billion mansions on the first level. So let's say you get to heaven, you go, I'd like the mansion tour. You could go to Beverly Hills, you want to take the mansion tour. You get to heaven, I want to take the mansion tour. Well, if you saw 60 mansions an hour, 12 hours a day, it would take you 6 million years to get the mansion tour. So I think Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said, in my father's house, there are many mansions.

If it were not so, I would have told you. He had all this in his mind and he gives it to John in the book of Revelation. And that's not meaning that we're all going to be there all at the same time because there's gates and people coming and going and there's a whole new earth and new heaven and we're going to be in new bodies. And if you remember back in that study, we're able to move not just horizontally, but vertically.

And so guys like Henry Morris, a scientist, assumes that with this cube configuration, there's going to be vertical as well as horizontal passageways. Let's close this off, verse 18 to 21, with the materials of the city. Okay, this is all what John is seeing.

This is so cool. And the construction of the wall was of jasper. Remember, that's clear as crystal, like a diamond. And the city was pure gold, get this, like clear glass.

Now, I don't know if you're having trouble like I am and have been trying to get my mind around this description, but it defies description. And the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper, the second, sapphire, the third, calcidone, the fourth, emerald, the fifth, sardonyx, the sixth, sardius, the seventh, chrysolite, the eighth, barrel, the ninth, topaz, the tenth, chrysoprase, the eleventh, jacinth, the twelfth, amethyst, and the twelve gates were twelve pearls. Each individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. Well, obviously, human language comes short in describing our eternal dwelling.

I don't care if you use Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew or English or Spanish or German. Human language falls short. This is what he saw. This is what it looked like to him.

But this is sort of hard to figure out, right? I mean, look at this. The city was pure gold, like clear glass. That doesn't make sense. Ever seen gold like that? Gold is opaque. You can't see through it. It has a very dense, high, specific gravity. But it's like clear glass.

This is translucent or even transparent glass. Now, you might hear that and complain, man, there's no privacy in heaven. Like, do you have anything to hide in heaven? You won't care.

You'll be in a brand new environment with a new resurrected body. Look at some of these stones. Sapphire. That's blue.

Now, just listen to this description. Calcedony is greenish-blue. Emerald, a deep green. Sardonyx is white with reddish-brown streaks going through it.

Sardius is blood-red. Chrysolite, yellow. Beryl is sea-green. Topaz, yellow-green. Chrysoprase is a golden apple-green. Beautiful. Jasonth is deep violet.

Amethyst, a rich but lighter purple. Just, it would make the rainbow look dull. So magnificent.

Keep in mind, light is emanating from the city. Verse 21 is where we close. I want you to get this. And the 12 gates were 12 pearls. Now, listen, each individual gate was of one pearl.

In the streets of the city, pure gold like transparent glass. No doubt, verse 21 is where we get the whole idea of the pearly gates of heaven. But these aren't just pearly gates. Each gate is a solid pearl. Now, let's just say the walls are 216 feet high, 72 yards.

Let's just take that, as that's how high they are. Imagine a pearl 216 feet high. Must have been some big oyster. Of course, this is a God-made new creation. Now, I looked at this and I thought, you know, there could be no more perfect symbol to represent the entrance into God's presence than a pearl.

And here's why. You know how a pearl is formed? It's formed by an irritant. A foreign body gets into an oyster, like a little piece of sand, and it irritates the oyster. And the oyster's response to the irritation is a pearl.

It sends out this fluid called nacre, N-A-C-R-E, and it covers the sand. And then it covers it again with that luminescent flesh that hardens into a beautiful pearl. So a pearl is a precious stone formed by suffering caused from an outside source. That's an apt emblem, is it not, of entrance into the eternal city. Because what injured Jesus Christ? Our sin.

We are the irritant that God made beautiful. So that going in and going out of that city forever and ever, we will be reminded of this truth that access to glory is only through Calvary. Only by the cross, only by our sin which irritated him that has been cleansed and we made beautiful to stand in his presence. By the way, that's the only way you get into heaven, is with that truth.

It's the only way you see the kingdom of heaven. There's nobody in heaven who has never come to a place where they said, I'm a sinner and I need forgiveness of my sins and I need salvation that comes through the blood of Jesus Christ. There's nobody proud in heaven. Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn over their sin.

Theirs, they will be comforted. There was a little boy, he was obnoxious, precocious, bugged his mom. One day his mom just said, look, how do you expect ever to get into heaven?

He said, well, thought about it. I'm just gonna go in and out and in and out and in and out, keep slamming the door every time I go in and out and somebody's gonna say either stay in or stay out and I'll get in. There's a lot of people who think getting to heaven is that easy. Actually for us is very easy.

For him it was very costly. The thing that makes it hard for us is we have to humble ourselves and admit my sins are an irritant. They need to be forgiven. I need to be cleansed. I must come to Christ his way. That wraps up Skip Heisek's message from the series from the Edge of Eternity. Right now we want to share about an exciting resource that helps you navigate your life circumstances so you can embrace your God-given potential. I've enjoyed watching the growth and the ministry of my friend Levi Lusko. This month's Connect with Skip resource, Take Back Your Life, the new book by Levi Lusko.

Here's Levi to tell you about it. It's all around this idea of taking back your life. It's a 40-day interactive journey to thinking right so you can live right and it's gonna be really powerful and special, I think, for people to have this. Not only is it in hardcover, which just makes me happy because I've never had a book released in hardcover, but it has a ribbon so you'll be able to keep track of your progress through these 40 days. It would be an incredible gift to someone who is looking to grow in their faith or for any of us who want to maybe kind of do an oil change for your heart, a checkup on your wellness, on where you're at.

It'll deal with internal difficulties and help you deal better with external circumstances that are challenging as we explore how we can get to the very best version of ourselves that we are meant to be. Get the book, Take Back Your Life, with a donation of $35 to connect with Skip. Call 1-800-922-1888 or online at connectwithskip.com. This hardcover book by Levi Lusko will help you take back your life. It's a 40-day interactive journey to thinking right so you can live right. 1-800-922-1888.

Thank you for tuning in today. We want to come alongside believers who may be struggling in their walk with God, and you can be a part of getting them back on track and growing stronger in their faith when you give a gift to help keep these teachings you love on the air. Just call 1-800-922-1888. That's 1-800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate.

Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig talks about an aspect of heaven some people aren't excited for. They somehow don't like the idea that it's going to be this big city. All I can say to that is God would disagree because it's going to be there. And the obvious point perhaps is that heaven is going to be a very social place. It's going to be a restored, renewed community where we interact with God and we interact with each other. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.