As I mentioned the first time I spoke, this is my thirtieth Richmond Conference. It has been a wonderful time for me. Every year, I feel a little more indebted to more people. There are so many people behind the scenes—the brothers sitting here, the people who do the audio, and those who teach classes.
This year, I have two grandchildren who delighted in their classes, you know, and I appreciate so much the brothers and sisters, and the fact that we can come together and fellowship like this. It is not as if you come as a lone speaker. Even when we are praying in the back and preparing for these evening meetings, I feel like I am part of a body of brothers standing with me as I share the Word of God. We share together.
And, of course, above and beyond it all, we thank the Lord that He has spoken to us this week through different voices. Our brother Stephen sometimes was weeping as he took us along the way of responsibility, and Hosea sometimes whispering regarding the mysteries of the realization. And then that other guy—what is his name?
Well, whoever he was, he was roaring like a lion. He was encouraging us on the way. And my responsibility is basically to shout you awake before we go home.
It has been a week where the Lord has spoken to us. We have a capacity that always seems quite full at this point. But whenever we come into the presence of the Lord, He entices us and whets our appetite by the Word of God, to increase our understanding and our commitment to Him.
We do not come to this time just to receive teaching, but to respond to the Lord. Worship is a very vital part of our response and time together.
Tonight, I want to share the third line that I am thinking of in terms of Revelation: Revelation and the New Jerusalem.
Revelation 21, beginning with verse 1:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
for the first heaven and the first earth passed away,
and there is no longer any sea.And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God,
made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying,
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men,
and He will dwell among them,
and they shall be His people,
and God Himself will be among them,
and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain;
the first things have passed away.”And He who sits on the throne said,
“Behold, I am making all things new.”And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”
Then He said to me, “It is done.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end.
I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost.
He who overcomes will inherit these things,
and I will be his God and he will be My son.“But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple.
And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb.
The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.
In the daytime—for there will be no night there—its gates will never be closed; and they will bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it; and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street.
On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.
And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.
And he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must soon take place.
We share all of these matters of Revelation under that theme: the time is near.
“And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.”
—Revelation 22:7“Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.”
—Revelation 22:10“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.”
—Revelation 22:12“Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
—Revelation 22:20
Oh Lord, repetition alone does not give us a sense of the nearness of Your coming. But the Spirit speaking to our hearts impresses us as to the time.
Oh Lord, we thank You that in these last days everything that we do and say has a particular importance because the time is near. Give us that kind of sober wisdom to redeem the time. Grant us Your mercy, even as perhaps some have stumbled; but having been laid hold of, we stand and gaze once more upon the goal of the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, and we run after it, that we might lay hold of that for which we have been laid hold of.
O Lord, it would please Your heart if everyone here tonight was captured by a vision of Your Son and found striving and running after the goal to know Him in every way. By Your Spirit, place these things—write these things—upon our hearts in indelible ways, that we might live, when we return home, in ways that are pleasing to You.
Lord, we ask for Your mercy and help by the Holy Spirit now, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
At the very end of the book, after all has been said and revealed, we sense that the time is so near that it is almost too late to change. Let the unrighteous continue unrighteous; let the holy continue in holiness.
It is too late to blame people. It is too late to have regret. By the mercy of God, lay hold of the reason you were born.
It does not matter how you have tried in the past—perhaps you have seen something and striven after it, and been disappointed, frustrated, even offended. The time is very late. Let go of those things, and lay hold of the Lord while we have the chance.
There is no time for fooling around. There is no time for excuses upon excuses. There is no time for self-recrimination. There is no time for anything other than: listen to what the Spirit says to the church—come.
What an invitation we have in these last days.
In the New Jerusalem, we see the ultimate realization of the revelation of Jesus Christ. The whole book of Revelation unlocks for us basic secrets about how to live in these last days.
The secrets are twofold. First, we are to live under the realization that the Lamb who sits on the throne has conquered, is victorious, and has overcome. That realization should lay hold of us as brothers and sisters in such a way that we find ourselves overcoming by the strength of His life.
Even to the church of Laodicea, the Lord says:
“He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
—Revelation 3:21-22
The Lord is not merely saying, “Use Me as an example. I did it; you can do it.” No. He is saying, “Take hold of My life.” This book is full of the impartation of Christ’s life into us, enabling us to overcome.
John, who received this revelation, is the same John who wrote:
“Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”
—1 John 4:4
Our overcoming is because of the life within us. We have never been expected to overcome by our own strength.
The book of Revelation does two things for us. It gives us a fresh, living revelation of the Lord Jesus as He presently exists in glory; and it calls for man to respond as an overcomer.
What is an overcomer? A man who hears what the Spirit is saying to the churches and obeys. That is all.
Brother Sparks said that the overcomer is a man who is found running at the end. We are running because we are pursuing something—not merely because we have to run. We are pursuing a revelation that is laid out before us.
God’s response to difficult times is that He pours out revelation of His Son. This should encourage us in our own lives through difficult times. This is the Lord’s way.
There are seven blessings in the book of Revelation—the blessednesses of the overcomers. If you are faithful to the Lord, a good bond-servant who listens and obeys, there are wonderful rewards. Do not think they are short, little, crummy rewards. The seven blessings in Revelation are truly blessed. What they get to do is wonderful. You will want to be part of that group.
There are also seven songs of worship sung from the heavenly point of view. In heaven, no matter what is going on down on earth—bowls, tribulations, beasts—they are singing, “It is done. It is done. It is the Lamb. It is done. Hallelujah!”
But the backbone of the whole book is the seven visions of Jesus. The whole book, from Revelation 1 through Revelation 22, is one revelation: the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We must choose whether we will be distracted by the context or focus on the center.
There is blessing in looking at the Lord in all these circumstances.
Now we come to Revelation 21. When we touch the New Jerusalem, we realize that some kind of morphing process is going on. Sometimes the description is speaking about a bride, a corporate entity of people. Sometimes it is speaking about a city, an actual geographical and locatable place.
This is the seventh and ultimate revelation. It is not only a revelation of Jesus Christ, but the realization of all that God has worked for, planned for, and purposed in His heart. The end has become the beginning. All things have been made new.
I see this in three sections:
First, we see a bride for His Son.
“And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.”
—Revelation 21:2
This has been in the Father’s heart from the creation of Adam and Eve, and their joining together. God’s desire has always been that His own Son would have a bride. Here, in the new heaven and the new earth, she comes down adorned as a bride for her husband—not merely for a wedding ceremony, but forever to live together with the Lord Jesus.
Then we see a second desire of God’s heart:
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them.”
—Revelation 21:3
God has always wanted to dwell with men. From His walking in the cool of the day with Adam, through the tabernacle and all the ways of fellowship and access, He has desired a house where He could dwell and man could dwell with Him.
Now the house has been prepared by the Lord Jesus. God and man are together in daily fellowship. There is no more separation, no more veil, no more special preparation. Here are the sons in glory, fellowshipping with God in this beautiful oneness that has been on God’s heart from the beginning.
Then God, as the Alpha and Omega, finishes the old business. He takes away the weeping, crying, loss, shame, and sorrow. He finishes off all the old and says, “Behold, I make all things new.”
This is God’s heart: His life, His reward, His fellowship, His oneness, His Son and the bride all together.
One of the angels says, “Come here. You want to see the bride, the wife of the Lamb?” John says, “Yes.” The angel carries him to a great and high mountain to show him the bride—and John sees the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.
The bride has now become a city. I believe the New Jerusalem will be an actual, literal place, but it will also be that bride.
The great aspects of God’s work—the bride, the city, the kingdom, heaven, and the house—have all merged together. We used to pursue the house, the kingdom, and heaven as though they were separate things. Now they are all merged, because the bride comes down from heaven to earth.
The city is huge: 1,500 miles long, 1,500 miles wide, and 1,500 miles high. It is the realization of the kingdom. There is a kingdom where God is absolute Lord: a beautiful kingdom, a crystal-clear kingdom, a diamond kingdom, a glorious kingdom.
Jesus is actually a Man. He must have a throne, a place to rule from. And where is it? New Jerusalem. We have a Man in glory, and soon enough He will be a Man on the glorious earth.
The New Jerusalem tells us that heaven comes to earth. Our eternal existence will be lived out centered upon the new earth. The city Abraham was looking for, whose architect and builder is God—this is it. The bride for which the Son has waited—this is it. The kingdom promised to David that would last forever—this is it. The house prepared by Jesus for those troubled in heart—this is it.
The main point about this wonderful place is that it is glorious throughout. The gold is glorious. The jasper is glorious. The streets are gold, so pure that they are transparent. The whole city shines with glory.
The foundations are adorned with precious stones:
Jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst.
—Revelation 21:19-20
The city includes both the Jews and those saved through Jesus Christ from among the Gentiles. The gates bear the names of the twelve tribes, and the foundations bear the names of the apostles. All are co-inheritors, all part of the same family.
This bride is big. It is a huge expression of life and unity with God.
In Revelation 21:22, John sees no sanctuary in the city:
“I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple.”
—Revelation 21:22
The temple had been the crowning beauty of Jerusalem. But in the New Jerusalem, the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple. This is even more wonderful.
At the heart of the city is the throne of God and of the Lamb. The whole city is built from the inside out, beginning from that throne.
The greatest realization in the New Jerusalem is the realization of what it means to live eternal life. Everything comes out of the throne, and it is life.
“Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”
—Revelation 22:1
The river pours down with abundance, waters of life that we may drink freely. Along the river is the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit and yielding its fruit every month.
What a picture of the abundance of eternal life becoming the very center of our life.
Everybody has access to God the Father and God the Son. We will see God. We will see the Lamb upon His throne. We will have fellowship with Him.
This eternal life is an eternal life of fellowship with the Father and with the Son. By the grace of God and through salvation, we are included in that fellowship. The Father and the Son have this eternal fellowship, and we have been brought into it as part of the family.
We experience this now. One day, face to face, we will experience it in fullness.
“There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads.”
—Revelation 22:3-4“And they will reign forever and ever.”
—Revelation 22:5
This is what I call serving. Brothers and sisters, you who serve the Lord—you serve loving Him whom you do not see. Can you imagine the motivation of seeing Him face to face and serving Him? It will be a piece of cake.
In the light of His presence, there will be no sense of fatigue, no questioning, “Why? Why me? Why this menial task?” You are in the presence of the Lamb of God. You look at His face, and you are there serving.
His name upon our foreheads means that He has taken possession of us. We are His. When we see Him, we will be like Him. There will be some kind of family resemblance: holiness, righteousness, and love.
This is life. The essence of life is eternal life, and our life will be experienced in this uncreated life.
Now wait a minute. According to John, this is a revelation of Jesus Christ. How can that be?
We see Him on the throne. We know that He is King. But there is something more. Why is every stone in the place transparent? Why is every stone of the wall, the road, and even the water glorious?
Because this is the perfect corporate expression of Jesus Christ.
“Christ is all, and in all.”
—Colossians 3:11
Every bit of it shines the glory of Christ. Every stone is transparent, and Christ shows through. Everything is Christ.
The end of God is not simply that Jesus should be the most exalted and powerful Person in the universe. The great revelation is Jesus in everything, expressed as glory filling the earth.
The street—the plaza—represents our spiritual commerce and fellowship. It is completely transparent. It is all about Jesus. It is all Christ-centered and Christ-sourced, because everything comes from the throne.
Those precious stones are you and me. Everybody is a different stone. You are not the same as me. But every one of those stones is precious, pure, and transparent.
When I see you, I see Christ. When you see me, you see Christ. Opaque flesh—no more. No more unholiness. No more hiddenness.
We do not lose our personality. I still recognize an amethyst when I see it. We never become one huge hunk of putty. You are a precious stone, and I am a precious stone. But we are transparent, and we are glowing.
There is no need for the sun or moon in the New Jerusalem because Jesus is the light. All fellowship is in the light. Our life is in the light. Even our worship is in the light, because He is the lamp of the sanctuary.
The New Jerusalem is a revelation of Jesus Christ, all and in all. This is the end of what God is trying to do.
How do we respond? The first thing I want to say is this: you already are part of this New Jerusalem.
Look at Hebrews 12:22:
“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels.”
—Hebrews 12:22
Talking to Hebrew Christians, after speaking of Mount Sinai and its fearful holiness, the writer says, “You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.”
Have you tasted this? Have you seen a little bit of Mount Zion? Have you seen a little bit of the heavenly Jerusalem?
“To the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.”
—Hebrews 12:23-24
By that precious blood and better covenant, we have already seen, touched, and tasted a little of the powers of the age to come. We are already part of a tremendous, heavenly, unseen realm.
We need to get our eyes off this earth and realize that we have a heavenly calling. We are part of a citizenry already, part of a privilege already, through our precious Lord Jesus Christ. We are already part of this vision, already part of the New Jerusalem.
We are laid hold of by a vision. We want to serve the purpose of God in our generation. We want to head toward the New Jerusalem and be built into the New Jerusalem. Then we try to lay hold of it, but often we do not ask how.
We jump right in. Perhaps we start something because we know it is God’s will, but the thing blows up completely because we did not know ourselves yet.
God does not say, “You see what a jerk you are. Never pick up that thing again.” No. He says, “Throw down your ideas. Let Me take the snake out of it. Then pick it up and lay hold of it again.”
The only way we learn to trust the Lord is often through those excruciating failures where we relied upon ourselves.
If we really see that the Lord laid hold of us for His purpose, then we need to find the ark: His lordship, His enthroned presence.
We need to pray:
Lord, where are You working?
Where are You building?
Where do You want a home?
Where are You doing this?
When I sense the Lord is building somewhere, I want to be there. You could not offer me a job somewhere else that would satisfy me if I knew the Lord was building there. I want to be where He is building.
In our mobile society, we will have to make decisions. The normal thing is to find the ark and go stand under it.
If God can find people who are serious about the lordship of Jesus Christ—people who say, “We want to live according to the Bible standard. We do not want merely to do traditional things; we want to do what the Lord tells us to do”—then the Lord begins to build a fence around them, a wall, by the unity of the Spirit.
Then we begin to fellowship.
The goal is transparency in fellowship. But that does not happen right away. It may take twenty years for any group of people to come to the threshold of reality in the matter of transparency.
God invests much time in bringing people together, and how quickly we can throw it off because of the wilderness, because of our flesh, because of the opacity of our flesh.
We are often independent. The other side of freedom is independence—the dark side. We do not want anybody over us, and so we have fights over leadership. When rebellion arises, it is an indication that people are in the wilderness.
We have to be called to account for that.
Sometimes, in fellowship, there are intolerable things going on, but we are not willing to pay the price of dealing with them. How do we think we will be sanctified?
The Lord works by His Spirit in our personal lives. He shows us something as we read the Word, and we lay it down before Him. Preaching can also bring us into an understanding of something that needs to be laid down.
But the most real, day-by-day way we enter into transparency is by colliding with one another.
If we cannot stay with one another even while we are colliding, and go back to that ark—that enthroned presence, which for us is a throne of mercy and grace—and show mercy to one another, there is no way we can be a testimony to what the Lord wants.
Everything must be done mercifully. If we do not have mercy, if we do not come together to the mercy seat and ask the Lord to help us, we will never get through.
We often think that our natural characteristics are godly characteristics. “It is just me. My smile. My sense of humor. I am blunt with people. I tell them what I really think. I am cheap. I am a contrarian. I micromanage because I help everybody.”
We think these things are lovable traits. But sometimes they are bothering people because they need to be crucified.
Fellowship, if it is to be transparent, has to begin in the light. If we are irritated by somebody, we do not go around in the shadows talking about it. Are we willing to pay the price for transparency?
We are opaque people, and the Lord wants us to be transparent with Christ.
Paul says that he no longer looks at a man according to the flesh. When Christ died, we died, and others died too. Now that we live, we do not live for ourselves, but for Christ.
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
—2 Corinthians 5:17
Paul had the capacity, along with discernment to correct what needed correction, always to see Christ in a person.
In fellowship, in a very practical way, we need to see Christ in one another, because He really is there. There is a precious stone there. It may need buffing. It may need heat work to get out impurities. But if we can stay together in fellowship, the Lord does a precious thing.
The Lord loves a whole bunch of different stones and puts them together. He loves diversity. That is built into the New Jerusalem, and He is working on that right now.
If we really see what the Lord wants in the New Jerusalem, then He sets us on a path to become what we see by His grace.
“For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep.”
—Acts 13:36
Will we serve the purpose of God in our generation?
I am talking to the Davids—those who have laid hold and are laying hold. I am talking to the Solomons—those who have been laid hold of, but have not laid hold yet.
Our generation means us right now. Forget ten years ago or twenty years from now. This is our generation right now.
Will we serve the purpose of God in our generation?
David did. That is forever to his credit. That is the testimony of a heart wholly for the Lord.
There have been generations in the past that served God’s purpose, and God was able to recover something through those generations—something concerning His church and His bride. Then He takes that recovered thing and puts it into the New Jerusalem, where we find it at the end.
Do you think there is still something more that the Lord wants to recover? Do you think everything has been recovered that needs to be recovered?
John Wesley recovered sanctification. The brethren came along and saw the simplicity of gathering and fellowship. In the last forty years, there has been a tremendous understanding of the Holy Spirit because the Spirit has been poured out. There has been recovery in worship, in the Body of Christ, and in the understanding of the Body of Christ.
God is always trying to recover things and bring them to reality. But unless God’s people stand as a testimony before the ark, those things are soon lost. They become institutions—systems worked out—rather than living expressions.
What is it that God wants to recover in our generation?
One day we will touch this New Jerusalem. We will live in it on this earth, in transparency and glory. What a wonderful thing.
But God wants us to move toward that now. He wants a testimony of the New Jerusalem on this earth, now, in our generation.
Are you willing to pursue that? Are you willing to lay hold of that? Whatever it costs you in your life, are you willing to lay aside lesser things and lay hold of the purpose of God for this generation?
This is a high and noble calling. Only God can do it.
Even as we lay hold, we will have to drop the stick, let the Lord take the snake out of it, pick it back up, and run some more. There will always be new areas of self-confidence coming in and defiling us in some way, and we will have to lay them down.
Every fellowship that wants to pursue the purpose of God will have to be shaken from time to time. The Lord breaks things down and puts them back together, and the building is quicker then. They grow for a while, then they are shaken again.
Do you think anything is simply going to go up and up and get better and better without God’s dealing?
We need to be willing, out of the love of Christ in one another, to pay the price and allow the Lord to make us transparent vessels in the daily fellowship of our life.
The only way we will do that is before the ark, that enthroned presence, that mercy seat, where the Lord has mercy on us.
He has forgiven us much. We know what it is for the Lord to be merciful and recover us. He has not quit on anybody in this room tonight, although you may have quit.
If He has laid hold of you for purpose, do not come short of that. Do not lose your reward. There are tremendous blessings in these rewards if you will take hold of His life and lay hold of His purpose.
It is not merely for a holy life for yourself personally, or even for your family. There is something as big as the New Jerusalem—something multifaceted. Though it is beyond our comprehension, it is worth pressing toward.
Everything comes from the throne that is necessary for us to pursue this way. The Lord help you and me in these last days. It is time to be serious about what your life and my life are counting for.
Oh Lord, You are the New Jerusalem, and You will not be satisfied until everything is full of Christ, everything is filled up to the fullness of God, and Christ is all and in all.
God, You have set a purpose in these days, in these last days. You are wanting to apprehend people who are willing to see what You are after and willing to be dealt with in order to get there.
Oh Lord, we do not want merely to see some kind of vision, like dreamers of a heaven that is to be. We want to be realizers who grab hold of Your life and say, “O Lord, You have this upward call, the prize, the goal in Christ Jesus. We want to take hold and move toward it.”
We want to serve Your purpose in this generation. If there is something to be recovered, Lord, we want to see it and discover it. We want to be those pioneers who discover, and those finishers who can do the job well.
Forgive us for leaving things undone. Forgive us for our opacity. Forgive us for our lack of vision. Forgive us for quitting. But Lord, we want to lay hold in these days of the reason for which we were laid hold of.
Thank You for our salvation. Thank You for things that are so secure because the Lamb sits in the midst of the throne, absolute Victor. We thank You that we have that kind of confidence, that we can step forth by faith and do things that matter.
Oh Lord, shake us out of smallness. Shake us out of complacency. In these last days, do that shaking in our lives that builds the house of God and hastens the coming of the day of God.
We pray in Jesus’ precious name.