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Revelation 21:24: Difference between revisions
→What the Bible teaches
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Taken literally, this verse suggests that in the new earth there will be two companies of people: the redeemed who inhabit the new Jerusalem, and unregenerate nations of earth who live outside the city but who are influenced by its presence, walking in its light, and bringing their glory to the city. | Taken literally, this verse suggests that in the new earth there will be two companies of people: the redeemed who inhabit the new Jerusalem, and unregenerate nations of earth who live outside the city but who are influenced by its presence, walking in its light, and bringing their glory to the city. | ||
The phrase “the kings of the earth” occurs eight times in Revelation (Rev 1:5; 6:15; 17:2, 18; 18:3, 9; 19:19; 21:24), and only in Rev 1:5 and 21:24 are they not hostile to God and his people. The term is synonymous with the “nations” as revealed in the parallel couplets in Rev 18:3 and Rev 21:24.<ref>David E. Aune, Revelation 17–22, vol. 52C, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 1171.</ref> | |||
The | The passage leaves us with two possible conclusions: | ||
# John is describing the millennial Jerusalem, not the Jerusalem of the eternal order when all wicked men shall have been cast into the lake of fire. | |||
# It is equally possible that John is using conventional human language to describe the universality of the knowledge of God in the eternal order. In the divine consummation, the redeemed will consist of peoples from every nation and tribe and people and tongue (7:9) who will not lose their national identity. John’s language means no more than the statements of the prophets: “and many peoples shall come and say: ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob’ ” (Isa. 2:3); “and nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” (Isa. 60:3). This is the affirmation of the universality of the knowledge of God.<ref>George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972), 284.</ref> In this case, “the nations” are the glorified saints, in Rev 5:9, those “out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation,” in Rev 7:9, the “great multitude, which no one is able to number, out of every nation and tribes and peoples and tongues.”<ref>R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. John’s Revelation (Columbus, OH: Lutheran Book Concern, 1935), 644.</ref> | |||
====Comparison to Isaiah 60==== | ====Comparison to Isaiah 60==== | ||