Great to be here, great to be in the Lord's Word, the Word of God, and we're gonna be in chapter 21, nine through 18 of Revelation. Coming to the conclusion of this book, only after 21, we got 22. Like I've said already, we're gonna be doing the Book of Romans after we get done here in Revelation. So, I was thinking about this passage here and about the city. You know, sometimes people say, well, I don't care for cities. Well, we might not care for some cities on this earth, but there's a city we're looking forward to. It's this holy city. Everybody, I'm sure, have heard of Augustine. Everybody's heard of Augustine? Augustine wrote a book, or thesis, called The City of God. Augustine was a very vile person. He had a godly mother by the name of Monica. And he was from North Africa. He was living with a concubine. And she didn't sit well with Monica. But he ended up going over to Italy. He went to Milan. And he ran across Ambrose. And Ambrose started witnessing to him. But one day he heard a child read, pick up and read, and it was about, I'll read it to you, it's actually Romans 13, 14. This is what he heard. Romans 13, 14. And he heard this, they say a child, but it says that he heard this being read. 13, 14. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof. And as a result of that, Augustine was converted and became a solid Christian. The church as a whole looks at Augustine as a great man of God. He lived back in the 400 A.D. time frame. The Roman church looks at him, the Protestant church looks at him, obviously. He is a great man of God, but he wrote that book called The City of God. There is a city that we're looking forward to. Shortly after I graduated from high school, I was brought up on a farm. So you can picture this, a farm boy goes to New York City. And I'm very thankful that I did. I spent a year and a half there in the city. I went to City College, CCNY, up on 139th Street, Convent Avenue. Anybody know where City College is? CCNY? You know where it is, right, Wad? Okay. I took a few courses that took calculus. I took a course on philosophy, and one on Freud's dream theology, or therapy. I was interpreting Donna's dreams and her mother's dreams. I thought I had that all wrapped up. I could tell you, give me a dream and I'll interpret it for you. If you know Freud, he was big on that, little, Not quite right on stuff. But anyway, I remember taking those courses. But the city, at the time I enjoyed the city. I was able to get around the city easily, especially Manhattan. Manhattan is very easy because the streets run this way and the avenues run this way, if you know the city. There were three subway lines at the time. There was the Independent Line, the IRT and the BMT, Brooklyn Manhattan Transit. They have different names today. But I was able to manipulate the subways and so forth. So, that was the city. But the city had some problems then and has a lot more problems now. But, the city we're going to talk about here has no problems. And this is a city I'm looking forward to going to. And I'm sure everybody here is as well. This is the city of God. The New Jerusalem. So it's in chapter 21. And we're going to talk about some dimensions of this city. I'm going to give you some math today. On math and some calculations. Everybody like math? How about calculus? Okay, it says here, and there came unto me one of the seven angels. Now in the book of Revelation, angels are mentioned frequently and there's certain numbers that are mentioned frequently. One is seven, one is 12, the number seven here, the three judgments. of the three sets of judgments are all sevens. But also there's 12. It's going to mention the 12 tribes of Israel, and it's going to mention the 12 apostles in this passage. But which had the seven vials for the 7777, seven last plagues, and talk with me, saying, come hither, I will show thee the bride, the lamb's wife. Now we know in the Bible that the church is referred to as the body of Christ, and we're also the bride of Christ. We have a wedding coming up on July 6th. There's a bride sitting here, or a bride soon to be sitting here, right? Okay, we know what a bride is. The bride is gonna be united to the bridegroom. Okay, that's always a wonderful time. And we, as the bride of Christ, are gonna be united to our bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a glorious time that will be when we are. brought up to see our bridegroom. I was thinking about that as we were singing the last hymn, I believe it was, about seeing him. We see him through the eyes of our heart now, by faith, but we're gonna see him face to face, that hymn that we sing, face to face, thy shall behold him, that's gonna be incredible. That's gonna be so wonderful. I was sharing with somebody the other day, And you'll notice, it's this way. Believers, what way do they go when they worship God? Forward. In the Garden of Gethsemane, when they arrested Jesus, which way did they go? Backwards. We go forwards, they go backwards. Okay, because I never seen anybody bow their knee backwards. My knee goes this way, so does yours, right? I can't go the other way. Okay, so I bow my knee, confess, Jesus Christ is Lord. So now he goes on here, and he carried me away in the spirit. Now remember, John's writing this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, John the Apostle. But he's carried away in the spirit to a great and high mountain and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. I know some of you have been to Jerusalem, right? I know, Marcus, you have been, right? Okay, that's the earthly Jerusalem. But there's a heavenly Jerusalem that's coming. And this is going to be a wonderful place, a wonderful city. You know, again, like I said, some people say, oh, I don't care about cities. There's too much stuff going on and everything. But this city is going to be perfect. This is what we're looking forward to. And now, he sees it descending out of heaven. Okay? Out of the heaven from God. Having the glory of God in her light was like under the stone most precious, even as Jasper stone. There's a number of stones that are mentioned here. Now, if you know the high priest, if you ever get a chance to go down to Lancaster County, Amish country, visit the tabernacle. They have a reproduction of the tabernacle there, and they have Aaron, who is the first high priest. He's dressed in his priestly garb. And on his shoulders are two onyx stones that have the 12 tribes inscribed on it. And on the front is his breastplate with the 12 stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel. And there's different stones on that breastplate. And of course he has the ephod and all that. Then he has around the bottom of his skirt, he has bells and pomegranates. So basically, when he went into the Holy of Holies, you could hear the bells and the pomegranates. The bells. And they do that. They have a full-size figure of him down there. And they run him up and does an altar of incense and all that. So it's really something else to see. It's right on Route 30, just before you get to Lancaster City. It's called the Mennonite Center. And who's been there? OK, I would recommend you go on, I go several times. And if you go downstairs, they have a film on the Amish and Mennonites that tell a little bit about the Amish and Mennonites down there, downstairs. So that's in the center there. But anyway, as you think about this, this is going to be some city having the glory of God and having a great wall and a height that had 12 gates. And at the gates, 12 angels. There's 12 now. See, we have seven, we have 12. 12 angels and the names written therein, which are the names of the 12 tribes of the children of Israel. We know those are the 12 tribes of Israel. The sons of who? Jacob. Jacob's name was changed to Israel. And he had 12 sons. And that's the 12 tribes. And of course, on the east, there were three gates, and on the north, three gates, and on the south, three gates, and on the west, three gates. And the city of the wall had 12 foundations. So we had the 12 gates, and we had the 12 foundations here now. And in them, the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. So we had the 12 tribes of Israel, and we had the 12 apostles of the Lamb. It's like 12 from an Old Testament point of view from the covenant of Israel and then 12 from a New Testament point of view of the 12 apostles. And he that talk with me had a golden reed to measure the city and the gates thereof and the wall thereof. And the city had four square and the length of it as large as the breadth. And measured the city with a reed, 12,000 furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are 12. Now, some math. This is like a cube. Do you know what the formula of a cube is? It's length times width times height. Now, also you could say x cubed, x to the third power. What is x to the third power? Well, let me just give you a little math here. The first power, if you take 3 to the first power, it's 3. 3 to the second power is 9. 3 to the third power is 27. 3 to the 4th power is 27 times 3. 3 to the 5th power is 27 times 3 times 3. You understand that? That's math. This is the size of the city. And it's a big city. In fact, I have the measurements down here. Let me just read them to you. It's actually going to be like thousands of miles. This is a big city. This is not some small little city. And that's going to be incredible. And praise the Lord for that. And that's the dimensions. Actually, it's going to be... Here's the dimensions. It's going to be 2 million square miles. You know what 2 million square miles is? It's 2 million times 2 million. You think everybody can live there? Yes. You know, New York City is big, but it's like, what is it, about 20 miles by 10 miles or something like that, in that range. If you go to Manhattan and you go over to Queens and Brooklyn and Bronx and Staten Island, that's way out here of course. But if you just take the mainland of the city, it's big. But this is going to be that big. It's going to be 2 million square miles. And this is going to be like a cube coming down from heaven. Now, there's different theologians try to describe how is it going to be. Is it going to be like a pyramid type like this coming down? I would probably hold to be probably something like that coming down from heaven. So this is going to be incredible. And it's going to come down from heaven to earth. Now, sometimes you'll hear people say things like this. Man, I won't want to live on earth for eternity. You know what they're referring to? The way earth is now. But what's going to happen to earth? It's going to be a new heaven and new earth. It's going to be purged and cleansed. This earth still has the curse. When we get to chapter 22 of Revelation, the curse is going to be removed. When did the curse start? Back in Genesis, chapter 3, after the fall. In Revelation, it tells us that there's gonna be, in chapter 22, that there's gonna be no more curse. It's gonna be removed, and praise the Lord. In fact, I'm jumping ahead to me, because I've already prepared this, next weeks or so. You're not gonna need lights. You're not even gonna need the sun. Listen to this. And there shall be no night there. And they need no candle, neither the light of the sun. For the Lord God gives them light, and they shall reign forever and ever. Isn't that gonna be exciting? Who is the light? God is the light. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. And praise the Lord. Now, It also says that we're to let our light so shine before men. But we have no light of ourselves, no more than the moon has any light of itself. But what the moon does is reflect the sunlight. When you see the moonlight, you're seeing the sun shining off the moon, right? That moon doesn't have any light of itself. Neither do you unless Christ is in you. When Christ is in you, your life is gonna shine because Jesus said, let your light so shine before men that they'll see your good works and glorify the Father which is in heaven. So that's exciting. There's so much exciting about all this that it's incredible. But going back to 21 here, as he goes on, and so they're measuring this city. And that furlong, that 12,000 furlong is actually, if you equate it to miles, it's 1,400 to 1,500 miles. And now, he goes on here and he measures it. It's measured, of course. The length and the breadth and the height of it. And he measured the wall thereof. And it's 144 cubits. Now this is a thick wall. You know how thick this wall is? 72 yards. Which is 218 feet, if my math is correct. That's pretty thick, isn't it? So it's going to be incredible what it's going to be like. And so he mentions that here. But he's going to mention, and I'll get into this next week as well, he's going to mention a number of stones, a lot of gems. Now, gold. This gold is like different than the gold we're accustomed to. It's going to be more clear or transparent. Now, there's different gems. There's rubies, there's sapphire, there's diamonds, there's different gems. Quartz. Anybody ever find quartz around? Up home, where I lived on the farm, we used to go to this quarry and we got quartz. You ever see quartz? Who's seen them? Huh? We used to dig them out of the sides of the quarry. Used to be right in there, quartz. I never found a diamond. Well, I did find one, I gave it to Donna. Found it in the store, I bought it. Okay, so praise the Lord. And now, so he goes on through here and he talks about all this. and how wonderful this is going to be. But just think about this. The wall is going to be this thick, as I mentioned. According to the measure of a man, that is of an angel, means that the angel, in verse 9 and 15, uses this units employed by men. He's using units that we would be accustomed to. See, God often does this in the Word of God. He brings things down to our level so we understand it and we're accustomed to it, instead of saying something that's far beyond our understanding. This often happens in the Word of God. For example, a lot of the parables that Jesus taught, what did Jesus do? He used things that they were accustomed to on earth to illustrate or demonstrate spiritual things, right? He mentions the mustard seed. He mentions different things in the parables. He's using earthly things to illustrate heavenly things or spiritual things so that we would understand and be accustomed to it. So he goes on here and he talks about the wall was jasper and the city was pure gold. It's hard for us to visualize these things. It's designed or created and it's magnificent and brilliant. There's no things about this city that are run down. Like we often hear about cities being run down. This city is gonna always be at its zenith of brilliance and beautiful. It's a beautiful place that we're gonna reside in. See, as Christians, we become and are citizens of heaven. It says that in Philippians chapter three, just turn with me. Chapter 3, 2021. Philippians. It says here, and I have the King James here, and the word is conversation, but it could also be translated citizenship. Who has citizenship in your translation? Okay, notice what it says. For our conversation, this King James, or our citizenship is where? Is in heaven. I'm a citizen of the United States of America, but I have dual citizenship. Our grandchildren out west have dual citizenship because their mother was from Canada and their father, our son, is from the United States of America. Maureen, do you have dual citizenship? You have citizenship of the great country England and the United States, right? But you have three citizenships. England, the United States, and heaven, right? Everybody here that knows Jesus Christ has at least dual citizenship. We're citizens of heaven, and we're going to be occupying and living in that holy city, New Jerusalem. Notice as it says, I said here in 320, for our citizenships in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies that might be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to do all things unto himself. See, these bodies that you have and I have are not gonna be in that new city. We're gonna have new bodies or glorified bodies fashioned like his glorious body. What do you think of that? You ready? How's your body this morning? You ever have any aches and pains? The young people probably don't know what I'm talking about. Okay? I was telling Donna the other day, I'm planning on playing ball this summer, but you gotta cut me a little slack. I'm not gonna be like I was when I was 18. I can run fast, but not like I did when I was 18. Plus my bat speed is not there. Okay? So that's one of the reasons I might not play, because people say, I thought he was a good ball player. You got to remember, I'm a little older now. Huh? I can still slide though, even though she says no. Okay, but you know and I know that our bodies, things happen to them. You all know that. But we're gonna have new bodies, and these new bodies are gonna be in that holy city. There'll be no pains, and we're gonna get into that. We already covered it earlier on here, in the earlier part, but we're gonna have new things. It's not gonna be any hindrances to our lives there. It's gonna be a beautiful place, and we're gonna see the beautiful one that died for us. His name is Jesus. Amen? I trust everybody here can say I'm a citizen of heaven. I'm a citizen of that new Jerusalem. Now, the streets of the city were pure gold. That's a transparent glass. That's going to be incredible. Walking on pure glass or gold, transparent gold. That's going to be exciting. The whole city speaks of his glory, the glory of God, and we're gonna see it. Remember when Jesus, in the high priestly prayer in John chapter 17, when he's praying about the glory that he had with the Father, he's gone back to that place in glory after he ascended into heaven. But that's a glorious place. There's no problems there. There's no night there. There's no trouble there. It's a perfect place. No matter how good we may have it here on earth, or how perfect it may seem to us at times, there's always some difficulties we have to deal with. Right? Just look at the things we deal with in this country. It can really, at times, get you a little upset or discouraged. But don't get wrapped up into that. Look forward to that. Amen? Now, there are certain things missing, obviously. We'll get into that next week from the city. But what about the 12 foundations? And again, like I said, we're going to get into that. I'd like you to read this over ahead of time. The wall, as I said, it's hard for us to visualize this. We think about a wall, a wall maybe this thick, but this wall is incredible in the city. It's going to be incredible to realize how big and magnificent and how brilliant it is. So, Let me just sum all this up, and then I want to just move on, not to the next section, but I just want to talk about some things as we come to the conclusion here about the importance of knowing Him, Christ. Listen, you want to be a citizen. Now, how do you become a citizen of this country? Well, Maureen knows again. She came from England. She decided she wanted to be a citizen of the United States of America, right? You had to go through some citizenship learnings, right? Then you had to be able to answer some questions. I'm sure questions like this. Who's the president? Okay. Who's your representative in your area? Anybody know the representative in our area? He's not sitting here. He's a representative in the area above us. Pat Ryan, did you know that? Huh? Isn't he? He's right up the road here in, I think, Columbia County and all the way over to Binghamton. Am I right? OK. So you know some things. You know about Somebody asked me the question the other day. How many representatives are there? How many senators are there? How many senators are there? Every state has two. The founding fathers were brilliant. So now you got a state like Wyoming. You know how many electoral votes Wyoming has? Three. Because they only got one representative. You say it's a big state. They don't go by size of the state, they go by population of the state. Where California has tons. Every state has two senators, but the representatives is dependent on the number of the population of the state. Right? So, now, we know some of these things as citizens of the country. But what do we know as citizens of heaven? What do you know? What do I know? I'll tell you a few things I know, and I'm sure you know too. I know to become a citizen of heaven, I had to trust Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, right? The Bible says you must be born again to be a citizen of heaven. I also know that because I am a citizen of heaven, I gain an inheritance. I enjoy some things right now before I go there, But then when I get there, there's many things I'm going to enjoy as well. Who am I going to follow? Who's my leader? We know who the leader of the country is. We know who the leaders of the areas are. But who's the leader that I look to? I look to Jesus Christ. Okay? Now, suppose I have a question and I have to ask somebody. In our system, political system, I can go to my representative. Is that true? What about you? Right? Am I right, though? You go to your... Right? Well, who do I go to if I got some questions? I go to the Lord. Right? Jesus said, come to me. You know? Come unto me, all you that are weary, heavy laden. I'll give you rest. We're to pray. So we have this privilege to pray and we can seek the Lord. So there's so many benefits and blessings that we have as citizens of heaven. And also as a citizen of heaven, what I will be doing, hopefully, is telling other people how to get to the city. Suppose somebody stops by your house this afternoon and they say, could you please give me some directions to Red Hook? Well, if they stop by our house, I'd say you go out, get on route 9, go north of the light at the intersection down here and go about 5 miles north and you'll be in the town of, the village of Red Hook. Okay? So we're able to give direction. Now, can we give directions to somebody to go to heaven? Suppose somebody comes up to you this afternoon and says, listen, I know you're a Christian. I've seen you going in and out of that building, and I've heard you talk about Jesus Christ. I'd like to know him. What are you going to say? You're going to be able to share God, Jesus Christ, salvation? All of us should. You don't have to be a theologian. Yeah? I can tell people Jesus died for my sins. I've trusted him as my Lord and Savior. And by the way, you can too if you do that. If you receive him and believe on him in your heart and life, you'll be saved. And then by the way, follow the Lord. Right? And you become a citizen of heaven. Right now, we don't have to wait till we get to heaven to be a citizen of heaven. We become a citizen of heaven the moment we come to Christ. So we share the Lord. What about in our homes? We should pray. We should encourage our family members to be, we should encourage our young people to follow the Lord. There's so much in this life that we'll try to distract. So what I'm trying to say is, if you want to go to the city, you need the Lord. I know how to go to New York City. I can drive my car down. In fact, I can get to New York City free without paying a toll into Manhattan. Does everybody know how to get to Manhattan without paying a toll? You go down the sawmill, you cross the Cross County Parkway, you take the Major D, and you cross by Yankee Stadium on that bridge into Manhattan. It's free. Everybody knew that? Okay. Salvation's free. It's paid for by Jesus Christ. Amen? So, now I said I'm going to conclude by this. So read over the rest of this. We're going to talk about the foundations of this city, the gates, and the street, and the so forth in the latter part of chapter 21. And then, you know, certain things we're going to enjoy there, and that there's no night there. It's just a wonderful, it's going to, obviously, it's an incredible place. But look at 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Taking this theme on the light. 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 3. But if our gospel be hid, it's hid to them that are lost. Can you imagine that? It's hid. in whom the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not. Their minds are blinded. Lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. Now, look what Paul writes here in the latter two verses. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord. What he's saying here is when we go around, we're preaching Christ. We don't preach ourselves. We don't preach Grace Bible Fellowship Church. We preach Jesus Christ. And in ourselves, you're servants for Jesus' sake. You know, one of the greatest things is to be a servant of God. If you wanna be great in God's kingdom, be a servant. You might say, well, wait a minute, I don't serve. Yes, you do, or should. We serve the Lord, we serve one another. There's a verse in Galatians 5.13. It says, in 5.1, it says, don't be entangled again with the law. You're set free. But then it says, don't let your freedom be an occasion for the flesh 513 of Galatians, but by love, serve one another. It's a love serving. It's not a twisting your arm behind your back serving. It's a joy to serve the Lord and to serve one another. That's the most wonderful thing you can do. You might say, well, I don't have time. God will multiply your time. I firmly believe in the multiplication factor with God. God multiplies things. He can take a boy's lunch and feed 5,000 to 20,000 people. He multiplies it by a miracle. You might say, well, I don't have time. I hear sometimes people say, I don't have time because it just seems like I just don't have time. If you put God first, he'll multiply your time. My favorite verse, my life verse, is Matthew 6.33. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you. God not only multiplies, he adds. He's a mathematician, so to speak, the divine mathematician. He doesn't make any mistakes either when he multiplies or adds. He always is 100% on. Now, just the last, so here's the last verse. Now listen to this last verse. You talk about the light. You talk about no light in heaven, the sun or those tiny lights, because the Lord is the light. Listen to this. But God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts. Out of darkness, he shined in your heart, in my heart. and he's illuminated it, and I've come to Christ. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Isn't that wonderful? You have the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You and I as Christians, as believers, we have so much illumination from God through his word, through the Holy Spirit, and our hearts have been illuminated, enlightened by God. And that light is him. Now, to sum it all up. There's created light and there's uncreated light. This light in the ceilings and the sun in the sky is created. That sun was created by God. These lights were put in by when we did the building. That's created light. We all experience that all the time. In our homes, on the roads, at night. But what is uncreated light? Huh? It's God. Because God's not created, and he's always light. Okay? Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, in James 1.17. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no verileness or turning. He's always at zenith, at the high point. So I'm going to end with this. I said I was going to end with this, so I'm going to end with this. First John, chapter one. Okay. Verse 5, 1 John 1, 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him in declaring to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. Where are you walking? In the light. We walk in the light of Christ, because he is the light. I am thankful today that we have the light of God. The word is a lamp under my feet and a light under my path. He gives me direction in this moment of my life. As I go down the pathway, I shine the flashlight immediately in front of me to see what's immediately in front of me. But then I shine it down the path to see what's out in front of me. God gives us light for the moment of time now, but he also gives us light for the path ahead of us. Walk in the light as he is in the light, and the blood of Christ will cleanse you from all sin. Thank you, Lord, for your light. Thank you for the light of the city, that heavenly light, that eternal light that we're gonna enjoy forever. But we also have the light right now to live our lives for the glory of God. That's the light of God. That's the holy city that we're going to enjoy forever. But we can enjoy things right now in the light of God and his word. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Let us pray. Father in heaven, thank you for the light. Thank you for the light of that holy city. because you are the light, the foundation, the walls, the beauty of the city. Lord, as citizens of heaven, we will enjoy that city throughout all eternity. What a city that will be. So Lord, I thank you. I pray that everybody here can say, yes, I'm a citizen. I've come to Christ. I believed on him and received him into my life. If you haven't, today is a good day to come to Christ, the day of decision, which you turn from your sin and turn to Jesus. He will give you the light. He will open your heart. He will save you. You'll be born again and redeemed by the blood of the lamb. We thank you so much, Lord Jesus. You're the light, Jesus. You are the light of the world. and you shine brightly, and you're gonna shine through all eternity in that heavenly city. Thank you so much for this time together. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.