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"And I saw," he says, "a great city, new Jerusalem, coming
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying,
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with
them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with
them. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, but neither shall
there be any more pain: because the former things have passed away.
And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things
new." This city is said to come down out of heaven, because the
grace with which God formed it is of heaven. Wherefore He says to it
by Isaiah, "I am the Lord that formed thee." It is indeed
descended from heaven from its commencement, since its citizens during
the course of this world grow by the grace of God, which cometh down
from above through the laver of regeneration in the Holy Ghost sent
down from heaven. But by God's final judgment, which shall be
administered by His Son Jesus Christ, there shall by God's grace
be manifested a glory so pervading and so new, that no vestige of what
is old shall remain; for even our bodies shall pass from their old
corruption and mortality to new incorruption and immortality. For to
refer this promise to the present time, in which the saints are
reigning with their King a thousand years, seems to me excessively
barefaced, when it is most distinctly said, "God shall wipe away all
tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, but there shall be no more pain." And who is so
absurd, and blinded by contentious opinionativeness, as to be
audacious enough to affirm that in the midst of the calamities of this
mortal state, God's people, or even one single saint, does live,
or has ever lived, or shall ever live, without tears or pain,, the
fact being that the holier a man is, and the fuller of holy desire, so
much the more abundant is the tearfulness of his supplication? Are not
these the utterances of a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem: "My
tears have been my meat day and night;" and "Every night shall I
make my bed to swim; with my tears shall I water my couch;" and
"My groaning is not hid from Thee;" and "My sorrow was
renewed?" Or are not those God's children who groan, being
burdened, not that they wish to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that
mortality may be swallowed up of life? Do not they even who have the
first-fruits of the Spirit groan within themselves, waiting for the
adoption, the redemption of their body? Was not the Apostle Paul
himself a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, and was he not so all the
more when he had heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for his
Israelitish brethren? But when shall there be no more death in that
city, except when it shall be said, "O death,where is thy
contention? O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is
sin." Obviously there shall be no sin when it can be said, "Where
is ", But as for the present it is not some poor weak citizen of this
city, but this same Apostle John himself who says, "If we say that
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
No doubt, though this book is called the Apocalypse, there are in it
many obscure passages to exercise the mind of the reader, and there are
few passages so plain as to assist us in the interpretation of the
others, even though we take pains; and this difficulty is increased by
the repetition of the same things, in forms so different, that the
things referred to seem to be different, although in fact they are only
differently stated. But in the words, "God shall wipe away all
tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow, nor crying, but there shall be no more pain," there is so
manifest a reference to the future world and the immortality and
eternity of the saints, for only then and only there shall such a
condition be realized, that if we think this obscure, we need not
expect to find anything plain in any part of Scripture.
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