And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God – Revelation 21:10
John’s vision of this new, holy city that unfolds in the following verses of Revelation 21 is quite literally beyond imagination! His description is radiant, massive, dazzling with light, precious stones, and streets of gold. He sees angels measuring translucent walls using golden measuring rods, twelve pearly gates and twelve bejeweled foundations each with a familiar name emblazoned on them, and measurements that are nothing short of astronomical. Clearly, John is seeing something that defies explanation, so he finds the best analogies that he can come up with in order to give us an image of this incredible vision.
However, whenever I read passages like this, I get caught up in the details, and I run the risk of focusing on the trees but missing the forest.
In his masterpiece, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis addresses this problem of interpreting Biblical imagery with his characteristic wit and poignancy. He says:
“There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of ‘Heaven’ ridiculous by saying they do not want ‘to spend eternity playing harps’. The answer to such people is that if they can’t understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolic attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendor, power, and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.”
So rather than asking the kinds of questions John never meant to answer, “How wide are the walls?” or “How will we breathe in a city that towers into deep space?,” the better questions might be, “What kind of God builds a home like this?” or “If this is the best John’s words could describe, how much better will the real thing be?” Remember, interpreting these images symbolically does not make them less true; it allows them to be true in the way John intended.
When the words of Scripture stretch the limits of our language, then maybe there is a problem with our language, not a problem with Scripture. It is not that heaven is unclear, but that heaven is too good for words!
Josh Rose
Family Pastor