The New Heaven, Earth, and Jerusalem: It’s Always Been the Plan
By Martin Canell
The typical explanation of the Bible narrative from Genesis to Revelation is often presented in four main chapters: Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. In Genesis, we see Creation, followed immediately by the Fall. Right after humanity's fall, God begins revealing how He will bring Redemption to His people, with Genesis 3:15 understood as the very first prophecy of the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, in scripture. Elsewhere in scripture, we learn another layer of the story—how angels created to serve God rebelled alongside Lucifer, who sought in his pride to become like God. This same sin rooted in pride was so powerful that Lucifer, taking the form of a serpent, tempted Eve with the exact same desire, causing Adam to commit the original sin. This sin not only corrupted mankind and broke our relationship with God, but it also corrupted all of creation that had been made for us.
From Genesis through the rest of the Old and New Testaments, we see God providing redemption for His people, ultimately fulfilled through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Within all this, God provides prophecies of how He will bring His people back into harmony with Himself. He promises to bring Restoration not only to the relationship He originally created with mankind, but also to creation itself so that God and man can dwell together again in creation. Nowhere else in scripture does God describe how He will accomplish this Restoration in as much detail as He does in the book of Revelation.
Revelation also reveals how Jesus, through His divine authority, will deal with the rebellion of Satan and the fallen angels. The cataclysmic events from Chapter 6 through Chapter 20 represent the collision of these two narratives, dealing with the final judgment of Satan and his followers—both fallen man and fallen angels. This completes the story of Redemption where God's people will no longer be influenced by Satan and sin, and sin itself comes to an end at the close of chapter 20. Revelation 21 and the first part of chapter 22 then provide the final Restoration of man to God and the Restoration of creation.
However, the word "restoration" doesn’t seem to provide the full context of what God is going to do by creating a new Heaven, a new Earth, and a new Jerusalem. Restoration implies that something went wrong and needs to be fixed, which is certainly true of mankind and creation. Adam sinned and put mankind and creation on a path to destruction; however, this was not an unexpected disruption of God’s plan. He knew man would fall and need restoration. Alistair Begg explains it well in one of his messages from his Truth for Life podcast:
"The ultimate purpose of God was actually not Adam and Eve in the garden; it was Christ in Gethsemane, and it was His people in a new heaven and a new earth. For the cross of Christ was not something that was slotted into time in order to correct a defect in a system that had gone wrong; it was the eternal counsels of God’s will that purposed, in the view of man’s inevitable rebellion, that things would be this way."
Just like Jesus’ death and resurrection, the culmination here in Revelation is God’s plan from the start now being revealed to us. It has always been God’s plan. When we understand that our sovereign God has been in control all along, it should bring a new calm to the chaos and calamity we may feel throughout much of the book of Revelation. As we explore the new creation, we begin to see that God creates a new and ultimately greater Heaven, Earth, and Jerusalem for mankind and God to dwell together in harmony. That has always been God's purpose: dwelling together with His people for eternity in a unique and far greater way than ever before. It goes beyond a simple restoration to a former state. The plan has always been a new and glorious creation for His people to live in harmony with God—made possible only by a redeemed and restored people through Jesus’ death and resurrection. I hope to relay this truth in the rest of this article.
Introduction to a New Creation
In Revelation 21, we are introduced to the new Heaven, new Earth, and new Jerusalem. When God is done with His current creation, He will create all-new places for His people to dwell. Heaven and Earth will exist once again, with Jerusalem serving as the Holy City of God (Rev 21:2). This new Creation, especially the new Jerusalem, will not look the same as the former. God's plan does not merely duplicate and repair the current places; rather, Heaven, Earth, and Jerusalem will be even more glorious than they have ever been before.
Most of us can easily understand why we need a new Earth and a new Jerusalem. Since the original sin in the Garden of Eden, man and all of creation have been on a collision course with death and final destruction. But why a new Heaven—meaning the dwelling place of God as we know it now? That question is answered by the last verse in Revelation 21:
"But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life" (Rev 21:27).
Heaven itself encountered sin and evil when Satan and the fallen angels rebelled there. In the book of Job, we even see Satan coming before God in heaven alongside other angels to accuse Job. Therefore, God will do away with everything that sin and evil have impacted and recreate them incorruptible. He will even eliminate many of the painful experiences that sin caused, including death, pain, tears, and mourning (Rev 21:4).
This has led many to speculate that even our negative memories of sin and death will be wiped from our minds in this new creation. I don’t know if I believe this, because knowing that Jesus saved us from our sins is a unique source of joy for His people. No other created beings are provided salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and I believe we will always remember and praise God for it. Nevertheless, God’s ultimate plan is an entirely new realm that has never seen sin.
New Earth and New Heaven
There is not much detail in the passage about the new Earth, except that it will have no sea. I am not going to cover why there is no sea, though many commentaries will provide helpful biblical speculation for your curiosity. Similarly, there is only one primary detail mentioned regarding the new Heaven: the new Jerusalem will come down out of Heaven (Rev 21:2, 10). This gives the impression that Heaven will be connected to the new Jerusalem while the city itself is situated above the new Earth, effectively merging the spiritual realm of Heaven with the physical realm of Earth and creation.
New Jerusalem
Most of the descriptions of the new creation focus on the new Jerusalem itself, likely due to the new way God will dwell with His people within it. Called "the Holy City" in Revelation 21:2, many commentators refer to it as the "Capital City of God" in the new creation. The Apostle John gives us many details about the city, though it remains difficult to imagine exactly how it will look. The Apostle John clearly had a hard time describing the new Jerusalem in human words when the angel revealed it to him, and we naturally have a hard time imagining what he described. Yet, as hard as it is to visualize, what we read is profoundly beautiful and glorious!
To help process these details, I’ve organized the characteristics described by John into key groupings. While this summary deviates some from scripture, it offers another way to view the features of the city in a way we might say it in English today:
The City's Description & Wall
The city comes down out of Heaven, beautiful like a bride prepared for her husband (Rev 21:2, 9, 10). It is radiant like rare jewels, yet clear as crystal (Rev 21:11) perhaps suggesting that all jewels in the city will resemble how we see diamonds today, carrying a hint of color while remaining transparent and shining from many facets. Surrounding the city is a great high wall built of jasper (Rev 21:12, 18). The wall’s thickness measures 144 cubits by both human and angelic measurement (Rev 21:17). Based on the standard measurement of a cubit (the length of a human forearm, roughly 18 inches), that makes the wall about 216 feet thick.
Gates & Foundations
The wall features twelve gates with twelve angels standing at them—likely not to guard, but to display the glory of the holy city (Rev 21:12). Each gate has the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel written on it, with three gates positioned on each of the four cardinal sides: east, north, south, and west (Rev 21:12, 13). Remarkably, each of the twelve gates is crafted from a single, massive pearl, and these gates will never close (Rev 21:21, 25). Furthermore, the wall rests on twelve foundation stones, each bearing the name of one of the twelve Apostles and adorned with precious jewels: jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carnelian, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst (Rev 21:14, 19, 20).
Dimensions & Streets
The city measures 12,000 stadia in length, width, and height, making it a perfect cube (Rev 21:16). According to the Bible Hub website, 12,000 stadia equals approximately 1,380 miles. With each edge measuring 1,380 miles, the city possesses a footprint of roughly 7.6 million square miles and a volume of about 2.6 billion cubic miles—equal to roughly 1% of the current Earth’s volume for this single city. Bible Hub illustrates this by noting that in earthly terms, the city would stretch from the Canadian border to the Gulf of America, and from the Atlantic coast deep into the Midwest, rising the same distance upward into the sky. Running through this city are streets made of pure gold, transparent as glass (Rev 21:21).
Dwelling Together for Eternity
In the new Jerusalem, God and His people will dwell together in a personal and unprecedented way. There will be no temple in the city in the traditional sense of the Old and New Testament Temples (Rev 21:22). Instead, the entire city becomes the dwelling place of God, where He will reside with His people forever. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it (Rev 22:3). His people will see His face, worship Him, and bear His name on their foreheads (Rev 22:4).
There will be no need for the sun or moon to provide light, for the presence of God and the Lamb will illuminate the entire city, and there will be no night there (Rev 21:23-25, 22:5). While it isn't explicit whether the entire Earth will lack night, the city itself will provide light for the nations to walk in, and the kings of the Earth will bring their glory into it (Rev 21:24-26). Nothing unclean, detestable, false, or accursed will ever enter; only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will enter, and His people will reign forever and ever (Rev 21:27, 22:3, 5).
The River of Life
Flowing from the throne of God through the middle of the city street is the River of the Water of Life, bright as crystal (Rev 22:1-2). This follows God’s promise in Revelation 21:6 to give freely from the springs of the water of life to the thirsty. Throughout scripture, thirst represents earnestly seeking God. As the psalmist writes in Psalm 42:
"As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?" (Ps 42:1-2).
Similarly, in the Gospel narratives when Jesus met the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, He told her:
"Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:13-14).
Here in the new Jerusalem, God will quench the thirst of the inhabitants and maybe the water will come from the River of the Water of Life ultimately fulfilling the words of Jesus to the Samaritan women.
The Tree of Life
In Revelation 22, we learn that on either side of the river stands the Tree of Life. While it is often assumed that there are multiple trees lining the riverbanks, the underlying Greek phrasing in this passage implies there is a single Tree of Life. It can be difficult to picture how one tree could span both sides of a river, but like so many of the visual details given in Revelation, human imagination struggles to fully capture what John was witnessing. Revelation chapters 2 and 22 mark the first and only times the Tree of Life is mentioned in scripture since the Creation and Fall narrative in Genesis 1–3.
John writes that this singular tree produces twelve distinct types of fruit, yielding a new kind for each month of the year. If these months follow the same duration we experience today, this suggests that the new Earth will operate on a similar twelve-month annual cycle. Scripture doesn't elaborate on whether these different fruits carry specific value for God’s people, but it explicitly notes that the leaves of the tree are "for the healing of the nations". While commentators offer various interpretations of what this healing entails, scripture moves directly to the broader truth that the curse will no longer exist.
This brings the biblical story full circle back to Genesis, where humanity's original sin brought the impact of the curse upon Adam, Eve, and all of creation. With the curse permanently revoked, it is possible that partaking of the tree's fruit and leaves will offer benefits to God's people in the new creation.
Conclusion
In the new Jerusalem there is a profound shift in how God dwells with His people. In the Garden of Eden, God walked and talked with Adam and Eve. Under the Old Covenant, He “tabernacled” or dwelled in the Tent of Meeting and later in the Holy of Holies inside the Jerusalem Temple. In the New Covenant, God no longer dwells in a physical temple in Jerusalem; He dwells inside His people. But in Revelation 21, we learn that God will dwell with us in a whole new way in the New Jerusalem. He will not be confined to an inner room or temple—there is no temple there at all (Rev 21:22). Instead of just dwelling inside us (as amazing as that is!), He will dwell with us in the city. This implies a deep intimacy: He is no longer set apart by the sea of glass, the four living creatures, and the twenty-four elders as described in Revelation 4. We read here that God and the Lamb are on their throne right in the midst of the new Jerusalem.
Literal or Figurative?
The new Jerusalem represents a whole new realm for God and His people following the Millennium, the final defeat of Satan, and the Great White Throne judgment. Like much of Revelation, it has been interpreted both literally and figuratively.
The figurative view is supported by symbolic descriptions like "a bride adorned for her husband," as well as the fact that John was "carried away in the Spirit" by the angel, suggesting he was viewing a spiritual reality. On the other hand, there is strong support for a literal interpretation. Most of the descriptions—such as specific measurements—use physical terms, leading many to conclude there is no need to view it purely symbolically. Even though John was in the Spirit, he naturally used literal physical descriptions to communicate what he saw. I believe, alongside most Premillennialists, that these descriptions should be taken literally whenever possible. Yet regardless of your view, the ultimate truth remains clear: the new Jerusalem will be the final dwelling place of God and His people.
Meditating on Revelation 21 and 22
For this article, I read chapters 21 and 22 many times. The more I read this passage, the more I found it to be a wonderful place to sit and meditate on God’s Word. The new creation, especially the new Jerusalem, is described in ways more beautiful than anything I can truly imagine.
When we are finally there, we will experience our God in a whole new way. He will permeate the entire city with His presence. I cannot fully comprehend what that will feel like, but I know it will be a far greater experience than any other (except perhaps salvation itself). John describes a city lit directly by God, where there is no night and no need for the sun or moon because His presence illuminates every space.
In this new creation of God, I will not merely be restored I will be a new creation. I will not simply be reset to Adam's state prior to the fall but will live in the presence of God in a way humanity has never experienced before. Meditating on this brought me to my knees in worship and thanksgiving many times. It completely changed my perspective on Revelation and the future. It is so glorious that not even the inspired words of the Apostle John can help us fully grasp it now. Yet all of us whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will experience it firsthand. I am in absolute awe of what God has in store for His people!