Made for Forever · Day 11 of 14 · About 10 minutes

The City

Fourteen hundred miles high. Gold you can see through. And no need for the sun.

Michael Kendrick · Scripture: King James Version

READ FIRST Revelation 21:9–27

The night before He died, Jesus told His friends, “In my Father’s house are many mansions ... I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). Revelation 21 shows us that place. And it’s mind-blowing.

An angel measures the city, and John writes down the numbers:

And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. — Revelation 21:16 (KJV)

Twelve thousand furlongs is about 1,400 miles — in every direction, including up. Taken at face value, if you set it down on North America, it would cover more than half of the lower 48 states. And it would rise more than five times higher than the International Space Station orbits.

Why a Cube?

Here’s where it gets really cool. Only one other perfect cube shows up in the Bible: the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple — the innermost room where God’s presence dwelt. It was 20 cubits long, 20 wide, and 20 high (1 Kings 6:20). Only one person, the high priest, could go in — and only once a year.

Now the whole city is that room, scaled up to 1,400 miles. That’s why John says, “I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it” (Revelation 21:22). There’s no special holy room, because the entire city is holy ground. Everyone who lives there lives where only the high priest used to stand.

Gold, Pearls, and Light

The street is “pure gold, as it were transparent glass” (Revelation 21:21) — gold so pure you can see through it. The thing people fight and steal for on earth is pavement there.

Each of the twelve gates is a single pearl. A pearl forms when something wounds an oyster and it covers the wound, layer by layer, until it becomes beautiful. It’s hard not to think of Jesus, whose wounds opened the way in.

The city doesn’t need the sun or moon, “for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23). And the gates are never shut, “for there shall be no night there” (Revelation 21:25). With a city that size, nobody gets squeezed out. The only question is whether you’ve accepted the invitation.