First, before we can do business, we have to set aside a number of popular assumptions garnered from various hymns, sermons, and Far Side cartoons. 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, Rev. 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; 1 Cor. 6:19). So the New Jerusalem is the Christian Church, being gradually manifested through the course of history, gradually revealed in all her glory.
That said, this should have obvious political implications. But first a word about how the glory of God works. The glory of God, when it visits the human race, does not obliterate us. The glory of God has infinite weight, but provided there has been propitiation, it does not crush — it lifts and exalts. Observe.
The New Jerusalem is described as having the glory of God (Rev. 21:11). The city does not require sun or moon, because the glory of God shines on it (Rev. 21:23). The city possesses the glory of the Almighty God Himself, and this glory is so resplendent that it makes the sun and moon superfluous. But, with the glory of sun and moon put in the shade, so to speak, what is not put in the shade?
“And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it” (Rev. 21:24).
“And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it” (Rev. 21:26).
The glory of God does not make the glory and honor of kings vanish. The glory of God does not make the glory and honor of the nations evaporate. This means that, within this image, while the glory of the sun and moon is dispensed with, the glory of kings and nations is not. Now this presupposes that the kings and nations are walking in the light of the glory of God in the Church, but doing this does not eradicate their glory, but rather establishes it.
There are those who believe that the civil orders of the nations have nothing good to commend them whatever, and that, once sin is dealt with, there will be nothing left worth speaking of. But the very next verse makes it clear that the sinfulness and corruption of our civil orders has been dealt with — specifically excluded is “any thing that defileth” (Rev. 21:27) — and yet kings and their honor, and nations and their glory, are not excluded, and are glorious enough to be worthy of mention in this context.
So this means that Christians who labor now for the eradication of civil vice, folly, corruption and tyranny — may their tribe increase — are working to shed a Zion light that the nations may enjoy. But when they have succeeded, they will not have achieved a Marxian “withering away” of the state, or some kind of an anarchist paradise. They will discover rather that they have established a Solomonic majesty, true glory, and real honor. If we were given a glimpse of these future rulers now, it would take the breath right out of us. If we were just given a glimpse of the livery of just their servants, like the Queen of Sheba, there would be no spirit left in us (1 Kings 10:5). And we would sit down in gladness, all our political questions answered.