All Things New
Tony Nester
Revelation 21:1-8
Who would have guessed that from a cramped, rocky and treeless little island off the coast of Turkey would come the Book of Revelation with a canvass of scenes that go up to the highest heaven and down to the lowest pit of Hell? And yet, from the tiny island of Patmos, which many scholars think was a Roman prison camp, John the Revelator, was caught up in the Spirit on a certain Sunday (Revelation 1:9) and saw and wrote of his vision of the final victory of God, and the Church, and of every believer.
We identify the author of Revelation as ''John of Patmos'' because in Revelation 1:9 he tells us that he was on Patmos being persecuted for the word of God. Scholars think Patmos was a place of exile and punishment by the Roman Empire for any it deemed a troubling presence to its domination of the world. And Roman Emperors often saw Christians as a threat to their authority. While the Emperor insisted that all in the Empire declare that Caesar is Lord, Christians kept contradicting that by declaring that Jesus is Lord.
Today we're going to the next to the last chapter of Revelation. Chapter 21 begins the culminating vision of John's revelation. I hope to show you three aspects of what John saw about Eternity that will give you a new perspective on your life here and now.
Chapter 21 begins like this:
''Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.'' (Revelation 21:1 NRSV).
We can understand what John means by a new earth, but the idea of a new heaven is a little more difficult for us to grasp. The word ''heaven'' in the Bible has many layers of meaning.
Here, ''heaven'' means that part of the earth that you see when you look up into the sky. To the human eye the sky appears as a dome that has been placed above and over the earth. In the Genesis account of Creation, this dome was put in place as a boundary to protect the earth from dangerous wate ...
Tony Nester
Revelation 21:1-8
Who would have guessed that from a cramped, rocky and treeless little island off the coast of Turkey would come the Book of Revelation with a canvass of scenes that go up to the highest heaven and down to the lowest pit of Hell? And yet, from the tiny island of Patmos, which many scholars think was a Roman prison camp, John the Revelator, was caught up in the Spirit on a certain Sunday (Revelation 1:9) and saw and wrote of his vision of the final victory of God, and the Church, and of every believer.
We identify the author of Revelation as ''John of Patmos'' because in Revelation 1:9 he tells us that he was on Patmos being persecuted for the word of God. Scholars think Patmos was a place of exile and punishment by the Roman Empire for any it deemed a troubling presence to its domination of the world. And Roman Emperors often saw Christians as a threat to their authority. While the Emperor insisted that all in the Empire declare that Caesar is Lord, Christians kept contradicting that by declaring that Jesus is Lord.
Today we're going to the next to the last chapter of Revelation. Chapter 21 begins the culminating vision of John's revelation. I hope to show you three aspects of what John saw about Eternity that will give you a new perspective on your life here and now.
Chapter 21 begins like this:
''Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.'' (Revelation 21:1 NRSV).
We can understand what John means by a new earth, but the idea of a new heaven is a little more difficult for us to grasp. The word ''heaven'' in the Bible has many layers of meaning.
Here, ''heaven'' means that part of the earth that you see when you look up into the sky. To the human eye the sky appears as a dome that has been placed above and over the earth. In the Genesis account of Creation, this dome was put in place as a boundary to protect the earth from dangerous wate ...
There are 11518 characters in the full content. This excerpt only shows a 2000 character sample of the full content.
Price: $5.99 or 1 credit
