In Chs. 21 & 22 the end of John’s visions reveal the new creation and the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven. There have been passing intimations of this ending in promises to the faithful martyrs, the white-robed multitude, the triumph songs of Moses and the Lamb, the wedding feat of the Lamb and his bride. Now John reveals with certainty how the story is to end. The sea, death, grief, suffering, all that is opposed to God’s purpose will be no more.
The invisible barrier between humanity and God is gone as God’s dwelling is with us. We are at last to be blessed by God’s eternal presence as it had been prefigured in the earlier experiences of Israel, the covenant people of God, and the Incarnation.
The hope of the world rests in God forever making all things new. Paul spoke of this happening in each person as we are transformed into the likeness of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18; 4:16-18; 5:16-17; Col. 3:1-4). John sees this same transformation occurring on a cosmic scale. Above all else, he believed that from start to finish all of this is the work of God.
As Prof. Caird wrote: “Blind unbelief may see only the outer world, growing old in its depravity and doomed to vanish before the presence of holiness; but faith can see the hand of God in the shadows, refashioning the whole. The agonies of the earth are but the birth-bangs of a new creation.”
Perhaps this is the most important revelation that we should learn from this climactic vision in John’s long apocalypse. In the end, The Book of Books is the same as in the beginning - God. Jesus Christ, the Lamb who was slain, and now stands at the right hand of God, is at the centre of it all. Those who do not wish
to believe depart to their assigned place – Babylon, the symbol of all that opposes God.
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