The Giant Flying Cube (No, not the Borg. The Bride.)

It’s strange, isn’t it, that John mixes his metaphors for the church side by side? The church, he says in the Book of Revelation, is both the Bride of Christ and a giant cube-shaped city called the New Jerusalem. 

Revelation 21:2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Why both a woman given in marriage and a city? It’s really quite simple. 

John is contrasting fornication with a whore (Rome – the unholy city) and marital union with a virgin Bride (the church – the holy city).

Compare Revelation 21:2 (above) with selected verses from Revelation 17:1-9:

Revelation 17:1-9 "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore who is seated on many waters, ² with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk." ³ So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. ^{. . . 7} But the angel said to me, "Why are you so amazed? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. . . . ⁹ . . . the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated . . .”

(This is referring symbolically to Rome’s seven surrounding hills for which it is famous.)

Fornication with the whore in the unholy city of Babylon (Rome and her idolatrous abominations), or union with the lamb-husband in the holy city called the New Jerusalem (the Lamb-husband’s kingdom and marital union with him)? Which will it be? John asks.

In John’s vision: Jesus is a Lamb, a groom, and a husband. The church is a bride, a wife, and a city. Rome is evil Old Testament Babylon, the unholy city, and the great whore.

Mixed metaphors? Yes. Strong language? You betcha!

So should we literalize John’s vision? Look to these mixed metaphors for your answer. Are Christ’s company of believers literally a bride? Obviously not. The bride is an image in a vision. Then is his New Jerusalem literally a massive cube flying down from the sky? Of course not. But see for yourself:

Revelation 21:16 The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width; and he measured the city with his rod, fifteen hundred miles; its length and width and height are equal.*

*This New Jerusalem is in the form of a cube. Fifteen hundred miles cubed has a volume of eleven thousand million cubic kilometers, which is about half the volume of earth’s moon.

The New Jerusalem is a giant flying cube? If you take John’s image literally, yes! It’s a cube that’s about half the size of the moon with walls 1,500 miles tall (John’s highly symbolic 12,000 stadia or furlongs). 

A mile is 5,280 feet. Commercial jets fly at an altitude of about six miles (31,680 feet). So a wall that is 1,500 miles tall is about 8,000,000 feet high. That’s over 250 times higher than a commercial jet. That’s outer space, people! Earth’s atmosphere is only about 100 miles thick.

A cube that huge stuck to the side of our planet would destroy earth’s atmosphere, disrupt earth’s orbital spin, and catastrophically distort earth’s solar orbit and the moon’s earth orbit. In a nutshell, a cube that big landing on our planet would result in the extinction of all life, if not the tearing apart of the earth.

This is clearly not what John has in mind by marriage! 

John is trying “by means of the reported measurements to give the impression of a city which in magnitude, symmetry, solidity, and splendour transcends the power of man to envisage.” He’s bursting “the bonds of language in an attempt to hint at what is essentially beyond imagination.” (Caird, The Revelation of Saint John, p. 272) 

John is sharing the inexpressible Good News of God’s eternal, earth-heaven uniting presence in the Lamb-Groom and his New-Jerusalem-Bride. John is telling his churches that we are his Bride and we are his City, and that he is our husband and he is our home. What we will become is beyond words.

1 John 3:2 . . . what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.

So let’s not take it literally. If the New Jerusalem is not a giant cube coming in for a landing, then what is it? 

It’s clear to me that The End in John’s apocalypse is not a distant time or a massive place. The End-time Place John is describing is an eternal union with the person who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Great I AM. He is the Eternal Emmanuel, God with us, forever. All that is required of us is to open ourselves to trusting our “husband,” says John. Prepare to be his Bride and his City as he always meant for you to be. Be his bride and his home.

I call your attention to John 14:2 where Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you.” (italics mine) He goes (via death, resurrection, and ascension) to prepare a “room” (mone = abode) for you in his Father’s “house.” He goes to prepare a place, yet he is the place, he promises to bring you to himself (John 14:3) and he is in the Father:

John ..1:18.. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart (literally “in the bosom of the Father”) who has made him known. (italics mine)

The closeness of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son is expressed biblically by speaking of close proximity in space. They are in a place together, yet they are the place.

When Jesus spoke of an afterlife place he painted it symbolically by picturing a house with guest rooms. By preparing a place for you in the house of God, Jesus is preparing a place for you in the heart of the Father.

He’s speaking of something much more heavy duty than lodging. Jesus is talking about being “moved in” to the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and their relationship of mutual love, admiration, and respect. He’s talking about utter union, not unlike a marriage.

In the archaeological excavations of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and other New Testament Jewish villages, we have learned that rooms were often added onto houses. It’s believed that when a son married, his father added a room on the house for the son and his bride. The new wife thus joined the household of her father-in-law. 

Among Palestinians in the West Bank there is a similar practice. The Quran prohibits borrowing money even to build a home, and Palestinians, even if they aren’t particularly religious, might nevertheless avoid borrowing. So they only build the first floor when they have the money saved. But, they put very tall rebar in place to support another floor that they plan to build later when funds again are available. The purpose of such an addition is often a marriage. 

Not long ago, a friend of mine who lives on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem completed the third floor of his home on the occasion of his second son’s marriage. But rather than give the new third floor to his son and new daughter-in-law, my friend moved up to the third floor with his wife (with a great view of the Dead Sea and Jericho up there). The oldest son (already married with children) moved up from the first to the second floor. The newlyweds got the first floor.

So when Jesus said that he goes to his Father to prepare a room for you in his Father’s house, he’s exactly referring to what would happen in his culture when a son expects his father to help him prepare a room for him and his new bride. 

Jesus calls his followers “brides.” The bride lives in a new room readied by the Son in the Father’s house. The relationship the believer has with Jesus is likened to a marriage relationship, arguably the most intimate human union possible. The two become one flesh. (Genesis 2:21; Matthew 19:5-6; Mark 10:8; 1 Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 5:31) 

This bride and groom analogy matches the verses in the Bible that refer to the church as Jesus’ Bride.

Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

Revelation 19:7 Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready;

Revelation 21:2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

Revelation 21:9 "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb."

These are John’s powerful portraits of Jesus’ followers, members of John’s congregations, those Christians who endure faithfully to their wedding day, their New Jerusalem day. And John’s key portrait of Jesus is that of a lamb, the one who is your lamb-groom and your lamb-husband. No need to remind you to avoid taking that literally!

I’m confounded by those today who insist on a literal cubed city coming down from a doomsday sky. If Jesus is not a literal lamb, if the lamb is not a literal groom and husband, and if the church is not the lamb’s literal bride and wife, then the church is not a literal flying cube-shaped city either!

John isn’t showing us future catastrophe. He’s showing us marital bliss in the newlywed’s abode—symbols of our eternal union and mutual indwelling with Christ.


For more on the Book of Revelation see my blogs 666, Rapture Interrupted, The Millennium, Pearly Gates and Streets of Gold, Names In the Book of Life, and The Lake of Fire Defined.

Heaven is like a crazy farmer

Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴ And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. ⁵ Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. ⁶ But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. ⁷ Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. ⁸ Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. ⁹ Let anyone with ears listen! (Matthew 13:3-9)

The always overlooked point of this parable is that the farmer is reckless with his seed. A sane farmer would carefully plant expensive, good seed one by one in the rich, cultivated soil of a field cleared of rocks, weeds, and brambles.

Yet, in Matthew 13, seed is landing all over the place, even on the road and on rocks and in thorn bushes. Jesus’ parable-farmer is flinging expensive, good seed in every direction. He must be crazy! Why would he throw perfectly good seed on the road? On rocks? In a brier patch? That’s not just wasteful. That’s nuts!

Thankfully, a few seeds land (purely by chance, it seems) in some good soil, and those seeds grow a bumper crop. So what’s Jesus’ message here?

What if God the Father (the insane farmer!) scatters the truth of his kingdom madly and passionately on everyone? What if he’s seeding the whole world with the good news of his gracious kingdom, seeding the entire cosmos with his Son’s all-inclusive message of Life, and wildly seeding the universe with his word of grace to all people? Jesus said,

“[For your heavenly Father] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

I think Jesus’ point is that the Father loves perfectly—that is, indiscriminately. Impartially. He confers grace to the whole world via the kingdom present in Jesus. His word of truth and freedom and Life is freely distributed to everyone. He doesn’t play favorites.

For Jesus to go to Galilean agricultural villages like Chorazin and Cana to preach, and for him to say that his heavenly kingdom is like a farmer who went out with good seed to plant, and for that farmer to be said to waste seed in every direction hitting the road and rocks and brier patches, would have been both highly entertaining and maybe a not a little bit shocking to those folks. Why? Because a sane farmer from Chorazin or Cana would never do that!

What if, however, this farmer isn’t sane? What if he’s just loopy enough to throw seed in every direction so that the seed lands everywhere? What if he lets the seed find good soil by itself? What if the Father has sown the world with the word of universal forgiveness? What if he’s seeded the world with his Life in Jesus?

The parable implies that he’s an extravagant Father to be sowing such precious seed so recklessly. But reckless extravagance is required to seed a whole planet, or should I say a whole kingdom.

Maybe Jesus is telling his listeners that everybody is graced equivalently by a God who is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34) He has no bias. Maybe God graces everyone just the same, whether you are a rock, a brier, a path, or fertile soil.

This is absolutely congruent with Jesus’ parable of the vineyard where the all-day workers get a full day’s pay and the one-hour workers get a full day’s pay (another great kingdom of heaven parable in Matthew 10:1-16).

This is absolutely congruent with Jesus’ parable of a father who loves his runaway prodigal the same as he loves his stay-at-home prodigal (Luke 15:1-3 and 11-32).

It seems that everyone gets this seed-gift in equal measure in the kingdom of heaven. Forgiveness is scattered on the whole earth without calculation of who’s more deserving. It doesn’t seem fair to scorekeepers, and it may seem as crazy as a farmer wasting perfectly good seed by flinging it without direction, but it is grace personified from the perspective of the heaven of Jesus’ parables.

If this universal grace thing makes you feel uncomfortable, no wonder! Jesus’ word is the grace-irritant in the oyster of your scorekeeping, judgmental heart.

For more on Jesus' parables see my blogs The Absurd Parable of the Unforgiving Slave, The God Who Gambles, Parable of the Vine and Branches, The Crooked Manager, The Friend at Midnight, Heaven Is Like a Crazy Farmer, He Speaks Of . . ., Salted With Fire, Talking Sheep and Goats, Is Your Eye Evil?, Two Prodigals and Their Strange Father, The Lazarus Parable Is Not About the Afterlife,and Jesus Used Parables Like a Sieve.

The Millennium

It’s mentioned nowhere else in the New Testament, only these six times in these six verses: Revelation 20:2-7. Yet your position concerning the millennium is used to define you theologically. (Millennium is a word meaning a thousand years--- mille "thousand" + annus "year.")


Do you believe Jesus will come before the millennium begins? Then you are a “premillennialist.” Premillennialists are typically viewed as pessimistic about humanity. They believe that Jesus will have to break in at the beginning of the millennium because humans are incapable of ushering in the kingdom. This is viewed by most as a conservative position.

Do you believe Jesus will come after the millennium? Then you are a “postmillennialist”. Postmillennialists are typically viewed as optimistic about humanity. Only when the church has transformed and ruled society for a thousand years will it be prepared for Jesus to come. This is viewed by most as a liberal position.


But what if you don’t believe there will be a future earthly millennium? You’re an “amillennialist.” Amillennialists usually see the millennium as a heavenly thing, not earthly.

So, what am I? I’m none of the above. Like amillennialists, however, I have two fundamental problems with viewing this passage as referring to a literal one-thousand-year future event.

1. Obsession with the “when” of Jesus’ second coming and the accompanying end time events—including speculation about this one thousand years in Revelation 20—is futile. No one knows when. The point of Jesus’ “little apocalypse” speech in Mark 13 is to insist that you forget about “when,” and instead live fully alive and awake and alert. Don’t you think John the Revelator knew Jesus’ concern about dating The End? Don’t you think that’s why his vision is non-specific about “when”—using vague terms like “soon,” “in those days,” and rounded off symbolic numbers like “a thousand years”? To try to turn the Book of Revelation into a psychic medium’s crystal ball is to violate Jesus’ prohibition against eschatological guesswork, and is to contradict John’s anti-dating references to time spans, like his repeated use of Daniel’s “a time, and times, and half a time” (1,260 days or 3 ½ years).

2. John’s one thousand years, this millennium, like all other elements in John’s vision, is symbolic. Again, John underlines that the thousand years is symbolic by picking a large rounded off number. Remember that everything is symbolic in this book, unless John tells you otherwise. Why would John write such a symbolic book only to shift to a literal date-the-end-of-the-world effort in Revelation 20? He wouldn’t, and he didn’t. But it’s hard to remember that when you’ve been programmed to view the Book of Revelation chronologically, literally, and futuristically, as almost all of us have been.

Then what does the millennium represent? Let’s put John’s vision and the Gospels together a bit. Why not? They’re both in the Bible, and they’re both about Jesus.

John says that in his vision Satan was chained for the duration of Jesus’ millennium. Did you know that some scholars have rightly called the duration of Jesus’ earthly ministry as a “Satan-less Time”?

Luke 4:13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him (Jesus) until an opportune time.

Jesus’ ministry begins with his baptism and temptations in the wilderness. After enduring Satan’s tests, throughout the length of Jesus’ ministry Satan had no power over him. Of course when Jesus saw demonic possession, he had the power to cast it out. But up front, at the completion of forty days of fasting and testing, Jesus bound “the strong man” and proceeded to “plunder his house” at will.

Matthew 12:29 “How else can someone enter a strong man's house and steal his property, unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can thoroughly plunder the house.”

Jesus is talking about Satan, the ruler of this world, being bound by him. John’s vision shows us the same thing—Satan being bound by Jesus. In the Gospels, Satan being bound in Satan’s own house (earth) lasts only a few years. In John’s vision, it is represented as a thousand years—the millennium.

Yes, I said that the few years in which Jesus “bound Satan” during his earthly ministry is the millennium in John’s vision. I can back that up if you’ll bear with me.

Could the millennium be John’s symbolic length for Jesus’ magnificent but brief ministry—John’s point being that though tragically brief, Jesus’ ministry was as a thousand years worth of good? Let’s take a look.

When was Satan’s “opportune time” mentioned by Luke?

Luke 22:3-4 Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; ⁴ he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him (Jesus) to them.

This moment at the end of Luke’s Gospel (and the others as well) signals the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. For me, Satan’s return in Judas confirms the millennial reign as being the duration of Jesus and his kingdom’s first century presence on earth. During his ministry, from his temptations by Satan in the wilderness until the time Satan returns to enter Judas, Satan (the ruler of this world) could not rule the kingdoms of this earth because Jesus (the true King and ruler of the kingdom of heaven) stopped him.

Then pointing beyond his ministry, Jesus makes a remarkable claim. During Jesus’ ministry Satan is bound, says Revelation and Luke. But on the cross, says Jesus in John’s Gospel, Satan is driven out. The cross, Jesus claims, is the end of Satan:

John 12:31-32 “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world (Satan) will be driven out. ³² And I (Jesus), when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." (italics mine)

There’s an obvious problem with this claim, however. John’s late first century churches in Asia Minor were going through hell! If Satan was bound by Jesus’ presence and ministry in the early first century, and if Satan was driven out (exorcised) from the earth when Jesus was crucified in 31 or 33 AD, then how can the Asia Minor churches of 95 AD be suffering so under Roman persecution?

John’s vision explains this problem by showing that Satan is loosed for “a little while.” That “little while” is the time between Jesus’ earthly ministry (the millennium) and his return (the eschaton).

PAST:..............=►..PRESENT: ......=►..FUTURE:

His first coming......Now is the................His second coming

is Revelation’s.........in between...............is Revelation’s

Millennium with.....time with Satan....... last day when

Satan bound............loosed for.................Satan is finally

.................................a little while.............disposed of

You want more evidence? OK.

The wait for Jesus’ return may seem a long time, John conveys to his churches, even a hundred years (or more, as it turns out), but in John’s vision it is only “a little while” (Rev. 20:3). Look at what John’s vision does with time:

John reverses the language of time concerning Jesus’ ministry (a few brief years). Obviously the return of Jesus began to be hard to wait for in Ephesus and the other cities (already more than sixty years and counting at the time of John’s writing). So John’s vision addresses this by flipping the time spans. The short span of Jesus’ ministry is written large—“a thousand years,” and the long span of Jesus’ delay is written small—“a little while.” This is to produce patience in the hearts of his church members.

Today, we still wait in John’s “a little while” for the return of Christ. Yes, Satan is present today, “loosed for a little while,” but because of Jesus’ victory over him on the cross, his doom is sure.

Does John do this time-language reversal elsewhere? Absolutely!

Revelation 18:10 they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, "Alas, alas, the great city, Babylon, the mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come."

Revelation 18:17a For in one hour all this wealth has been laid waste!"

Revelation 18:19 And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out, "Alas, alas, the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in one hour she has been laid waste."

It will take centuries by human reckoning for Rome to fall, but in John’s vision it is “in one hour.” Rome is fleeting from John’s viewpoint. I’m reminded of a verse that insists that earth-time (kronos) and God-time (kairos) are vastly different.

2 Peter 3:8 But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.

This “little while” John writes about, this “one hour,” is the time frame in which John’s churches find themselves under siege, suffering, and even martyred awaiting Christ’s return. So what is the church supposed to do in this meantime of suffering? That’s where St. John the Revelator comes in.

John proclaims that the years between Jesus’ first and second coming are a “grace period” for the church to proclaim the Good News of God’s grace to all in Jesus Christ, even to its persecutors, a task for which they will suffer, but only for “a little while.”

^KJV Psalm 30:5 . . . weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

John says that the Lord wants all of his prodigals to come home. It’s not his will that anyone should perish. He wants the whole flock. So Satan’s final destruction is only delayed to give John’s churches (and us) time to proclaim forgiveness and grace to the world, even to the enemy.

In a nutshell, John’s vision holds up Jesus’ earthly ministry, brief though it was, as a glorious, Satan-less, one-thousand-year Kingly Reign. And the release of Satan and his Roman beasts to reign on earth, though hundreds of years by human reckoning, is the time for the church to witness with it’s life and death (if necessary), and is viewed in John’s vision as but a mere hour, as but a waning little while.

The brief reign of Jesus’ ministry trumps the hundreds of years of Roman rule in the prophet’s vision. The evil and tragic things of this earth, though they appear triumphant year after year, decade after decade, century after century, have not and cannot and will never win. John’s vision calls for the endurance of the saints, reminding them of Jesus’ monumental reign and Rome’s fleeting day in the sun.

From the perspective of God’s eternity, Jesus’ few years among us are a millennium and Rome’s centuries of rule but a scant sixty minutes. Rome’s generations of geo-political dominance in the Mediterranean basin are dwarfed by the brief mission of one solitary life.


For more on the Book of Revelation see my blogs 666, Rapture Interrupted, The Giant Flying Cube, Pearly Gates and Streets of Gold, Names In the Book of Life, and The Lake of Fire Defined.