Not to Be Explained Away

Isaiah himself has plainly declared that the joy at the resurrection of the righteous will be of this kind. He says: “The dead will rise again, and those who are in the tombs will get up, and those who are in the earth will rejoice. For the dew that comes from you is health to them.” And Ezekiel says the same: “Look, I will open your tombs and bring you out of your graves, when I draw my people out of their burial places. And I will put breath into you, and you will live; and I will settle you on your own land, and you will know that I am the Lord.” And again the same prophet speaks like this: “This is what the Lord says. I will gather Israel out of all the nations where they have been driven, and I will be made holy in them in the sight of the sons of the nations. And they will live in their own land, which I gave to my servant Jacob. They will live in it in peace, and they will build houses and plant vineyards and live in hope, when I bring judgment down on all who have dishonored them, on those who ring them round about. And they will know that I am the Lord their God and the God of their fathers.” [a]

I showed a little while ago that the church is the seed of Abraham. And so, to let us know that the one who in the new covenant “raises up children for Abraham out of the stones” is the very one who, according to the old covenant, will gather those who are to be saved out of all the nations, Jeremiah says: “Look, the days are coming, says the Lord, when they will no longer say, The Lord lives, who led the sons of Israel out of the north and out of every region where they had been driven; he will bring them back to their own land, which he gave to their fathers.”

That the whole creation will, by God’s will, be given a vast increase, so that it can bring forth and keep up fruits of the kind I have described, Isaiah declares: “And on every high mountain and on every prominent hill there will be water running everywhere on that day, when many perish, when the walls fall. And the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, seven times the light of the day, on the day when he heals the anguish of his people and takes away the pain of his blow.” Now “the pain of the blow” means the blow struck at the beginning on disobedient man in Adam — that is, death. The Lord will heal that blow when he raises us from the dead and gives back the inheritance of the fathers, as Isaiah says again: “And you will trust in the Lord, and he will make you pass over the whole earth, and will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father.” This is what the Lord himself declared: “Happy are those servants whom the Lord finds awake when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will tie up his own robe and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and wait on them. And if he comes in the evening watch and finds them so, they are blessed, because he will have them sit down and will wait on them; and if it is in the second watch, or in the third, they are blessed.” John says the very same thing in the Revelation: “Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection.”

Isaiah has also declared when these things will happen. He says: “And I said, Lord, how long? Until the cities are laid waste for want of anyone to live in them, and the houses are without men, and the land is left a desert. And after these things God will remove men far away, and those who are left will be multiplied on the earth.” Then Daniel says this very thing as well: “And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of those under heaven has been given to the holy ones of God Most High, whose kingdom is everlasting, and all dominions will serve and obey him.” And so that the promise just named should not be taken as belonging to the present time, it was said to the prophet, “And you, come and stand in your lot at the end of the days.”

The promises were not announced to the prophets and the fathers alone, but to the churches joined to them out of the nations — the churches the Spirit also calls “the islands.” They are set in the middle of rough water; they take the storm of blasphemies full on; they stand as a harbor of safety for men in danger; and they are the refuge of those who love the heights and are working to get clear of Bythus, that is, of the deep of error. Jeremiah declares it this way: “Hear the word of the Lord, you nations, and announce it to the islands far off. Say that the Lord will scatter Israel, and will gather him and keep him as a man feeding his flock of sheep. For the Lord has ransomed Jacob and rescued him from the hand of one stronger than he. And they will come and rejoice on Mount Zion, and will come to what is good, and into a land of wheat and wine and fruit, of cattle and of sheep. And their soul will be like a tree bearing fruit, and they will hunger no more. At that time the young women will rejoice in the company of the young men; the old men too will be glad. And I will turn their sorrow into joy, and I will make them exult, and will make them great, and will fill up the souls of the priests, the sons of Levi; and my people will be filled with my goodness.” Now in the earlier book I showed that all the Lord’s disciples are Levites and priests — the men who used to profane the Sabbath in the temple and are blameless. So promises of this kind point out, in the clearest way there is, the feasting of that creation in the kingdom of the righteous, which God promises he will wait on himself.

Then again, speaking of Jerusalem and of the one reigning there, Isaiah declares: “This is what the Lord says. Happy is the man who has offspring in Zion and a household in Jerusalem. Look, a righteous king will reign, and rulers will rule with judgment.” And about the foundation on which the city will be rebuilt, he says: “Look, I am setting in place for you a stone like a live coal, and sapphire for your foundations; and I will build your ramparts of jasper, and your gates of crystal, and your wall of choice stones. And all your children will be taught by God, and great will be the peace of your children; and you will be built up in righteousness.” And again he says the same thing: “Look, I make Jerusalem a rejoicing, and my people a joy; for the voice of weeping will be heard in her no more, nor the voice of crying. And there will be no child there born before its time, nor an old man who does not fill out his days; for the young man will be a hundred years old, and the sinner who dies at a hundred years old will be under a curse. And they will build houses and live in them themselves, and plant vineyards and eat their fruit themselves, and drink the wine. They will not build and have others live there, nor prepare the vineyard and have others eat. For as the days of the tree of life, so will the days of my people be in you; for the works of their hands will last.”

If, however, anyone tries to turn prophecies of this kind into allegory, such men will not be found consistent with themselves at every point, and they will be refuted by the wording of the very passages they are handling. Take these. “When the cities” of the nations “are desolate, so that no one lives in them, and the houses so that there are no men in them, and the land is left desolate.” “For look,” says Isaiah, “the day of the Lord is coming, past all remedy, full of fury and wrath, to lay waste the city of the earth and to root the sinners out of it.” And again he says, “Let him be taken away, so that he does not see the glory of God.” And when these things have been done, he says, “God will remove men far away, and those who are left will be multiplied on the earth.” “And they will build houses and live in them themselves, and plant vineyards and eat of them themselves.” [t]

All these words, and others like them, were beyond question spoken about the resurrection of the righteous, which takes place after the coming of Antichrist and the destruction of all the nations under his rule. In that resurrection the righteous will reign on the earth, growing stronger through the sight of the Lord. Through him they will grow used to taking their share in the glory of God the Father, and in the kingdom they will have the company and the fellowship of the holy angels and union with the spiritual beings. And this holds as well for those whom the Lord will find still in the flesh, waiting for him from heaven, who have come through affliction and have escaped the hands of the Evil one. It is about them that the prophet says, “And those who are left will be multiplied on the earth.”

And Jeremiah the prophet has pointed out that as many believers as God has prepared for this purpose — to multiply those left on the earth — will both be under the rule of the holy ones and will serve this Jerusalem, and that his kingdom will be in it. He says: “Look around Jerusalem toward the east, and see the joy that comes to you from God himself. Look, your sons are coming, the ones you sent away; they will come gathered in a band from the east to the west, at the word of that Holy One, rejoicing in the splendor that comes from your God. Jerusalem, take off your robe of mourning and affliction, and put on that beauty of everlasting splendor that comes from your God. Wrap yourself in the double garment of the righteousness that comes from your God, and set the turban of everlasting glory on your head. For God will show your glory to the whole earth under heaven. For your name will be called forever by God himself, ‘the peace of righteousness and the glory of the one who worships God.’ Rise, Jerusalem, stand on the height, and look toward the east, and see your sons from the rising of the sun to the west, at the Word of that Holy One, rejoicing at the very remembrance of God. For they went out from you on foot, dragged away by the enemy, and God will bring them in to you, carried in glory as the throne of a kingdom. For God has decreed that every high mountain be brought low, and the everlasting hills, and that the valleys be filled, so that the face of the earth is made level and Israel, the glory of God, may walk in safety. The woods too will make shady places, and every sweet-smelling tree will be for Israel itself at God’s command. For God will go ahead of them with joy, in the light of his splendor, with the pity and the righteousness that come from him.”

Now all these things being what they are, they cannot be understood of matters above the heavens; “for God,” it says, “will show your glory to the whole earth that is under heaven.” In the times of the kingdom the earth is called back again by Christ, and Jerusalem is rebuilt after the pattern of the Jerusalem above, of which the prophet Isaiah says, “Look, I have drawn your walls on my hands, and you are always in my sight.” And the apostle too, writing to the Galatians, says the same: “But the Jerusalem which is above is free, and she is the mother of us all.” He does not say this with any thought of a wandering Aeon, or of some other power that fell out of the Pleroma, or of Prunicus, but of the Jerusalem that has been drawn on God’s hands.

And in the Revelation John saw this new Jerusalem coming down upon the new earth. For after the times of the kingdom, he says: “I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it, from whose face the earth fled away, and the heavens; and there was no more place for them.” And he sets out as well the things that belong to the general resurrection and the judgment, mentioning “the dead, great and small.” “The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hades gave up the dead they were holding; and the books were opened. And the book of life was opened, and the dead were judged out of what was written in the books, according to their deeds; and death and hades were thrown into the lake of fire, the second death.” Now this is what is called Gehenna, which the Lord called eternal fire. “And if anyone,” it says, “was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”

And after this he says: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, like a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying, Look, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will live with them; and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death will be no more, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor will there be any more pain, because the former things have passed away.” Isaiah declares the very same: “For there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and there will be no remembering of the former ones, nor will they come into the heart; but they will find in it joy and gladness.” And this is what the apostle said: “For the outward shape of this world is passing away.” The Lord declared the same thing: “Heaven and earth will pass away.”

So when these things pass away above the earth, John, the Lord’s disciple, says that the new Jerusalem above will then come down, like a bride adorned for her husband, and that this is the tabernacle of God in which God will live with men. The earlier Jerusalem is an image of this one — the Jerusalem of the earlier earth, in which the righteous are trained in advance for freedom from decay and made ready for salvation. And Moses received the pattern of this tabernacle on the mountain. Nothing here is capable of being turned into allegory. Everything stands firm and true and solid, made by God for righteous men to enjoy. For just as it is truly God who raises man up, so also does man truly rise from the dead, and not in a figure, as I have shown over and over. And as he rises for real, so also will he be trained for real, in advance, for freedom from decay; and he will go forward and flourish in the times of the kingdom, so that he becomes able to take in the glory of the Father. Then, when all things have been made new, he will truly live in the city of God. For it is said: “The one who sits on the throne said, Look, I make all things new. And the Lord says, Write all this, for these words are faithful and true. And he said to me, They are done.” And that is the truth of the matter.