“The New Jerusalem is not a figure of Heaven, the final eternal state, but is rather a glorious image of the Christian Church. This is explicit in a number of places. The Jerusalem above, Paul says, is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26). When we come to worship God on the Lord’s Day, we do not come to an earthly mountain that can be touched (Heb. 12:18), but rather to a heavenly Zion (Heb. 12:22), a heavenly Jerusalem. And when the angel gives the invitation to John to come and see, the invitation is to see whom? The Bride, the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2; 21:9-10). Who is that? Well, of course, the Bride of Christ is the Christian Church (Eph. 5:25). This city, made of transparent gold (Rev. 21:18), is a perfect cube. What else in the Bible is a perfect cube? The Holy of Holies in the Temple is that shape, and the Christian Church is explicitly described as the Temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 6:19). So the New Jerusalem is the Christian Church, being gradually manifested through the course of history, gradually revealed in all her glory (Empires of Dirt, pp. 80-81).
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