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Religious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

Jan 11, 2025, 3:43 PM

Well, here we are. The end of the End. So let’s see how this thing wraps up.

Last time, God destroyed the beasts of land and sea and locked Satan in jail. But the End of the World comes with a predictable twist. Every true horror fan knows the bad guy you thought was gone for good, always gets an encore.

And so, after 1000 years of incarceration, Satan gets released as required. Why required? Who knows.

A thousand years is a long time. Ancient Israel’s entire colorful past, from all those crazy judges and kings to famous personalities like Moses and Jesus, lasted only about 1200 years. And we hear a LOT about all of them in the Bible.

But as far as I know, there is virtually no information about the End Time grace millennium aside from this:

Rev 20:6
“Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection…they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.”

That’s it. No gripping stories, no details, no predictions, no parables, no anecdotes, no nothing. Just, the lucky survivors get to be priests for 1000 years. Well, Ok.

When Satan is released, he makes the most of his freedom and goes right back to his mean old ways, gathering the entire world to attack Israel, again:

Rev 20:9
“[Satan and his deceived nations] marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves.”

My how far we’ve come. From stone and clay tile to satellite dishes and solar panels.

The three great Abrahamic religions all in one fantastic pic; the Muslim Dome of the Rock sitting atop the Jewish Temple Mount, from an Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. Cool.

The Citadel of David

This time, the final, final, final, battle is not at Megiddo, but at Jerusalem itself. And God is waiting for the bad guys when they arrive with their armies from around the world.

Rev 20:10
“But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil…was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

And that’s it for world destruction. Whew.

Next comes judgement for the rest of us; the guys who were not persecuted by Rome. Remember, those persecuted by Rome (Peter, Paul, et al.) got a Fast Pass to the front of the resurrection line. They’ve been watching the final battle as priests, while we were all still dead. Now it’s our turn for accountability.

Rev 20:5
“(The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.)”

And, as one might expect from an old school Jewish-Christian like John of Patmos, he seems to think his judgement is based on deeds, like Jews today, and not on faith alone. Faith in Yahweh is implicit, ya know? I mean, who’s sending him the vision he’s believing in the first place?

For John, everything bad you do goes in the books, the same thing his ancestors believed. It’s your ‘permanent record,’ just like in elementary school. After all, John of Patmos might have been writing to Paul’s churches warning them of the End, but he wasn’t Paul himself.

Rev 20:12
“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books…each person was judged according to what they had done.”

Here’s Jesus and John on the ceiling of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, maybe meeting to discuss John’s earthly deeds and his eternal fate. In Greek, the “IC XC’ stands for Js Ct, shorthand for Jesus Christ. ‘OArio’ is The Holy, and ‘IW’ is Jo, shorthand for John. Both holy men sport halos, but Jesus’s halo is just a little bit swankier.

Closing the books on the Earthly experience, God ties up one last loose-end, and shuts down a tag-team duo that all humans must face. They’re not evil guys, they’re just bureaucrats doing the job they were given to do, grim though it may be.

Rev 20:14
“Then death and Hades (the Greek guy, not the place) were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Many of you will be relieved to know that Death WILL allow us to take our cars to the great beyond with us.

Now that the dirty work all done, it’s time to PARTY! The new regime is coming!

And we learn a few things. First, God wipes the whole slate clean, again, and starts all over, again. If Noah’s flood was a ‘soft’ boot of this world, this End is a ‘hard’ boot.

Rev 21:1
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…the old order of things has passed away.”

Second, there won’t be much reason to go to Heaven anymore, because no one will be there. God’s relocating his operation to new earth.

Rev 21:2
“I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.”

Along with certain pron stars…

A whole city coming down from heaven? Sure SpaceX can land a rocket back on earth, but can they land a whole city?

Third, Jesus may have had a thing for Mary Magdelene, but there’s some women you date, and some women you marry. And Jesus’s true love is the City of David, aka Daughter Zion:

Rev 21:9
“Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” and [the angel] showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”

The groom and the blushing bride

Daughter Jerusalem turns out to be a big ole girl. About as big as half of America…1400 miles by 1400 miles big. Almost 2 million square miles of all woman.

Rev 21:16
“The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long.”

And she’s VERY Jewish.

Rev 21:12
“[Jerusalem] had a great, high [200 foot thick!] wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west.”

But, she comes with a new twist…

Rev 21:14
“The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”

I’m go out on a limb here and assume that those twelve foundations are the 12 NEW disciples, and not the original ones. And so one foundation is named for Matthias, and not Judas.

We also learn that those twelve foundations are made of the very same jewels that adorn the old Jewish High-Preist’s ephod.

Rev 21:19
“The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper…and the twelfth amethyst.”

Twelve foundations, twelve apostles, twelve tribes, twelve stones.

Now, John’s vision of New Jerusalem is a little bit different than Zechariah’s vision a few centuries earlier. John had to know and read about Zechariah, and their visions do have a lot of similarities like lampstands, and tasty scrolls, and horsemen, and wicked ladies who are responsible for the corruptions of the earth.

But, Zech is Zech, and John is John, ya know? So they’re not quite the same. Here’s the highlights of Zech’s vision:

Zech 2:4 “Jerusalem will be a city without walls…I myself will be a wall of fire around it,’ declares the Lord…”

Zech 2:10 “Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the Lord.

Zech 5:8 “This [woman (Babylon)] is wickedness,” and he pushed her back into the basket…”

Zech 6:2 “The first chariot had red horses, the second black, the third white, and the fourth dappled…”

Zech 14:1 “A day of the Lord is coming, Jerusalem…I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it…”

Zech 14:16 “Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles.”

Close, but not exactly the same. Walls of fire and eternal Jewish festivals seem more important to Zechariah than to John.

Also, in Zechariah’s vision, God doesn’t wipe the slate clean like he does in John’s vision. But somehow, even with John’s clean slate, there will still be foreign kings.

Rev 21:24
“The nations will walk by [Jerusalem’s] light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it…The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it…”

Lastly, God brings the Heavenly copy of Eden down with him too, and plants it in the city. And he ok’s tattoos that were outlawed back in Leviticus. Or at least, ok’s phylacteries.

Rev 22:2
“On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”

Here’s one way to put God’s name on your forehead; a phylactery with a little scroll in it.

God also says he’s coming so quickly that people won’t have time to change their ways, so why even bother? I mean, who’s going to tell a guy dying from lung cancer he can’t have a death-bed smoke? At that point, does it really make any difference?

Rev 22:10
“Then he told me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll, because the time is near. Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong…let the one who does right continue to do right…Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”

Party’s over. Oops, out of time.

So that pretty much closes out the human experiment. The dead are burning in the Lake of Fire, the resurrected are walking the streets of New Jerusalem, and their dogs are left out in the cold. Wait, what?

Rev 22:14
“Blessed are those who wash their robes, they may go through the gates into the city. “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”

Cats, apparently, are ok.

That’s about all the detail the Bible provides for the afterlife; you get to live forever in Jerusalem, without your dog.

And that’s Gods final word, because John wraps up his book up by saying don’t add any details, and don’t take any details away, or God will get ugly again. And nobody wants that.

So till the End finally comes, hot chicks!

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>“Rev 21:24
>“The nations will walk by [Jerusalem’s] light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor >into it

>What in the world is this about?

Well, I see it as a little bit of old, and a little bit of new. For context, I'll throw in the two preceding verses...

Rev 22:21
"I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp."

For the 'old', there is a consistent thread through the Bible of Jerusalem surviving invaders. It's a very nationalist perspective, where nations attack Israel (Assyria, Babylon, Greek Seleucids, Rome), and Jerusalem either survives, or comes back if it's destroyed. Only twice was it destroyed while the Jews have occupied it...once by the Babylonians and once by the Romans. That's why I think there are so many parallels drawn by prophets between those two events.

That also ties in with the also very old (but not entirely consistent) thread that everyone will be Jewish, someday. Micah saw it differently, but over and over again there are allusions that the world will end 'Jewish', just as it began. Some Apocrypha say Hebrew was spoken in the Garden of Eden, for instance.

For the 'new', there is the 1st Century-ish idea that God is 'light.' Where this started is a bit tougher to track down, but it wasn't always so. For instance in Genesis, God creates light, so he can't really be light if he creates light.

There are lot and lots of earlier examples of God being more "man-ish'; walking in the Garden, wrestling with Jacob, etc.

The light idea has some Gnostic roots, and somewhere I'll do some posts on it, but the idea is that light is good, and material (flesh, earth, etc) is bad. So since God is all good, he must be pure light.

So, when you put those two ideas together, you get a Holy City illuminated by the purity of God's presence.

>There are going to be countries and kings and all that in heaven?

Well, on earth, but since heaven will be on earth I suppose that's accurate. All through the Bible there's a confusing duality about who's here, and who's left. For instance, after Eden it's often assumed that Adam and Eve's kids left and married 'others' outside of Eden. Where did they come from? At the End of the World, dogs and immoral types won't be allowed into New Jerusalem...but where did they come from if God wiped the world of evil and started clean again?

So those lines in Revelation do imply that although New Jerusalem will bask in the perfection of God, there will still be other corrupt folks outside the city walls.

>“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done.”

>What will he give and what are the things you have to do?

It's heavily implied that the ultimate gift is eternal life.

Rev 22:17
“Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.

But whether there are other gifts, or what the quality of life will be in New Jerusalem, who knows? As far as what one has to do, Idk really know....'good' stuff, lol. Traditionally, that's meant be good to widows, and orphans, and be nice to neighbors, etc.

That a consistent thread that even runs through Islam and the Koran. They talk about widows and orphans a LOT. I guess it's just a Middle East/Abrahamic thing that's indicative of the time all this was written.

There are a couple of really interesting things here about early Christianity. One is that although John is writing Rev in maybe 80-90ish AD, and writing to the churches Paul himself set up in the 50's, there’s still the faith-deeds thing going on. I think that shows how gray it was for a lot of people. Giving up old ideas, or integrating new ones, is tough. It’s far from a black and white issue for some.

I think for Paul’s primary audience, Gentiles who were never Jewish to start with, faith alone was an easier idea to accept. But for converted Jews, Rev shows the difficulty in going all-in on the concept.

The second interesting thing it that John seemingly, and subtly, acknowledges the Roman destruction of the Temple. That was far bigger deal than many realize…akin to having the eternal heart of your entire nation ripped out. So, how does one explain that? How does one understand why God allowed that to happen?

It seems that for John, that answer was that the Temple just wasn’t needed anymore, because God himself is the Temple. You don’t need to summon God to the Temple when he’s gonna live with you all the time, in the city, anyway. That’s maybe not a perfect answer, because the Temple was always God’s home, anyhow.

So John’s kind of saying God will be homeless, wandering around New Jerusalem, but it seems like it was a good enough answer given the harsh reality Jews were dealing with. Whatever the celestial reason, the Temple was a pile of rubble on earth. And while God could have rebuilt it, he chose not too. It still had many functions beyond sacrifice. Lots of offerings of all kinds still went on, even after Jesus's D&R.

Getting behind those verses is fascinating…trying to think how they thought, and how they were trying to understand their circumstances, in their time.

Religious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

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I was told in here that dogs can;t go to heaven because they don't have

Re: I was told in here that dogs can;t go to heaven because they don't have

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Relig­­­ious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

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Re: Relig­­­ious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

Re: Relig­­­ious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

I was told in here that dogs can;t go to heaven because they don't have

Re: I was told in here that dogs can;t go to heaven because they don't have

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Religious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

Re: Religious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

Re: Religious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven

Re: Religious Pron: Book of Rev (24of24); Ch 21-22 The End, and Dogs in Heaven