21:1 – The Scripture clearly teaches that this present order of creation is to pass away in order to make room for a new heaven and a new earth. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said, “Heaven and earth shall pass away…” (Matt. 24:35). The old creation was made for the first Adam. Christ, the Last Adam, has a new creation for His new creatures. “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa. 65:17). “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain” (Isa. 66:22).
21:2 – This is the part which should interest us. I believe that the New Jerusalem is where those of us who are children of God are going to live. When you talk about going to heaven, what do you think about it? To most people it is just “a beautiful isle of somewhere.” However, it is a definite place. It is a city called the New Jerusalem. It is a planet within itself. Very candidly, very little is said in Scripture about heaven—but here it is, and that is the reason this ought to be important to us.
“I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” This New Jerusalem should not be identified with the old Jerusalem, the earthly Jerusalem down here.
The New Jerusalem is the habitation, the eternal home that is prepared for the church. The Lord Jesus said: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2-3). You could not have a more lovely or more appropriate picture given. We have seen in Revelation 19:7-8 that ushering in the millennial period, actually before Christ returned to the earth, was the marriage of the Lamb, and the bride was the church.