Thru the Bible

Steve Schwetz: Welcome to Thru the Bible. Today we'll bear witness to a beautiful ceremony of sorts, when the holy city, the New Jerusalem, will come down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. We're in for a really special study as we look by faith into the future and see what God has prepared for us.

But of everything that we'll look at, nothing is more precious than that promise of the day when we will forever be with the Lord. Revelation 21 says, "God will dwell with us, and we will be His people, and He will wipe away all our tears." How tender is that? Well, these promises, of course, are only for those who know the Lord as Savior.

And that's why we're committed to sharing the good news with the world. We've got a few minutes to tell some stories about how God is answering our prayers, using His Word to change hearts around the world. First, hear from John, who called with this message.

John: This is John from North Carolina. I get you on WBRF FM 98.1 out of Galax, and I've been listening to the Bible. I've been riding this bus pretty regular now for about eight or ten years. I get a lot out of Dr. McGee. It seems like he's always telling a story that's right out of the newspaper today. It just blows my mind. I'm a pretty new Christian. I got saved in 2018. I'd like to have some bus passes if I could get them, and I'll send you a little gas money now and again. Thank you.

Steve Schwetz: Well, it's great to hear from you, John. Thanks for your partnership in taking God's whole Word to His whole world. If you'd like to receive a pack of the bus passes that John mentioned to share this study with your family and friends, call 1-800-65-BIBLE. These cards are about the size of a business card and they're really super easy. They've got a feature that gives you a QR code that links directly to Dr. McGee's teaching, making it a really simple way to invite others to discover God's Word. Next, we’ve got a listener from Kenya who shares this.

Guest (Female): I first tuned in by accident, but now I never miss an episode. Every word speaks to my heart. I have started sharing the teachings with my neighbors, and we have formed a prayer group of women using what we learn from this program.

Steve Schwetz: Praise God for the accident that led this woman to us. And we know it really wasn't an accident, right? Now, our last note is from Samuel. He's in Bangladesh, and he writes:

Guest (Male): I took baptism a long time ago, but at that time I didn't truly understand how to be free from the penalty of sin and experience God's grace. Through the book of Romans, I have learned that God gave His beloved Son Jesus Christ for our sins. He died on the cross to set us free from the penalty of sin, and we receive salvation only through faith in Jesus and by the grace of God. Thank you for helping us to know and grow in God's Word.

Steve Schwetz: To join us in lifting up millions of listeners like these that we just heard from, you can sign up for our world prayer team at ttb.org. And now, let's pray for one another as we dive into Revelation.

Heavenly Father, thank You for this glimpse of what heaven will be like. We can't wait for that day. Thank You, Lord, for Your Spirit teaching us Your truth now. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Open to Revelation 21 as we make our way through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: We come to the 21st chapter of Revelation, and we begin again at verse two. Let me read it, and I'm reading it in my translation. Now, will you hear? "And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband."

I made the statement last time that all brides are beautiful. They may not be before and they may not be afterward, but on that day, God gives them a loveliness. I can't think of a more beautiful picture of the church than this picture that's given to us. Now, this New Jerusalem is the habitation, the eternal home, that is prepared for the church.

The Lord Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you unto Myself." You couldn't have a more lovely and more appropriate picture given because the church, as we saw at the beginning of the millennial period and actually before He came to the earth, we saw the marriage of the Lamb, and the bride is the church.

That brings us to this passage here now, and it actually is the fulfillment of what Paul wrote in talking to the Ephesians. He says in the fifth chapter, beginning at verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word."

And I think that there will be at the judgment seat of Christ the straightening out and the judging of believers. Everything will have to be straightened out in their lives. Everything that's wrong will have to be corrected, and all sin will be dealt with there. Rewards will be given out.

And He's going to do something else. He's going to cleanse the church there with the Word. You know, the Word of God is a mighty cleansing agency, and it is today. "That He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish."

Now, this is the picture we're getting here in Revelation 21, that the holy city, the New Jerusalem, is coming down from God out of heaven and adorned as a bride for the husband. You see, the marriage took place before the millennium, and here we are after the millennium now. This has been a long honeymoon, hasn't it? Well, I think it's one that's going to go on into eternity.

Now, Paul continues to talk about this marvelous relationship of Christ and the church and comparing it to human marriage down here. Verse 28, "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. And for this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church."

Now, this idea that it is a mystery is now being opened up to us. You see, the marriage relationship is the most beautiful and wonderful relationship, and it's the oldest ceremony that God has instituted for man—marriage. It goes right back into the very Garden of Eden, to the very beginning, and it's all-important.

But it's such a profound mystery that even with all these marriage counselors today and all the books they've written, I don't think they've really touched the fringe of how wonderful marriage could be for believers. And by the way, Paul is talking here not only to believers but those that are filled with the Spirit. All of these instructions are for spirit-filled believers here. It's not given to the lost world at all, and it's not given to the average believer. It's given, he says at the beginning of this section, "Be filled with the Holy Spirit." That's the only commandment that you're required to do something about the Holy Spirit.

Now, we find here that there's something that is difficult to understand, and this gives us another sidelight here on marriage. Now, if the wife is the same flesh as the man, somebody says, "How can that be?" Well, have you ever seen a child, a beautiful child that looked like the mother and had a mean disposition like the father? Well, that's where they come together. That's where they're one flesh.

But listen, it's deeper than that. When a man loves his wife, he actually loves himself. And that's true of her. When she loves the husband, she's actually loving herself, and you can't have it anymore intimate than that. It's perfect nonsense today if I injure my foot. I actually don't ignore it. I do all I can to doctor it. I go to the doctor and I have it maybe put into a cast. It's all maybe not very pretty and I'd like to leave my foot at home, but it's part of me.

Well, my wife is part of me. She's my flesh. We're the same flesh. That's so difficult today, but that's how intimate it is. And that takes us back, of course, to creation. Now, I can't go into detail today, but you have here in the second chapter of Genesis—let me just read the last three verses. "And Adam said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.' Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh."

And it says they both were naked, the man and wife, and were not ashamed. Now, the important thing is about this matter that they were naked, they knew each other. It was an intimate and a very personal relationship. And my feeling today is that one of the great problems in marriage is, especially after a couple gets married, is that they have their first fight, and she turns over maybe in bed and he is in a huff and he turns over or gets up and goes to the sofa and lies there. Then they wonder why this disintegration in the marriage relationship.

Well, listen, when that foot gets sick, you don't ignore it. You don't get angry with it, and you don't kick with it. If you do, you're in deeper trouble. The thing that you're to do with the flesh is to do everything you can—doctor it and try to get it well again. And that's the reason that young couples ought never to have a squabble without sitting down and talking things over.

And I, very frankly, think that the wife ought to be very frank with her husband, tell him everything, how she feels, how he offends her, and what she thinks is wrong, and he ought to do the same thing. You see, they're the same flesh. They are one. They've been brought together in this very intimate, this very wonderful relationship where a man leaves his family—his father and his mother and his brother and sisters where they've all just had a close relationship—and that has ended now. And he has now been joined to a woman and they're one flesh. They've started a new creation, if you please.

And that is what the marriage relationship should be. And how wonderful it is to see a family where a man and his wife just don't have anything that is between them. She knows him like a book and he knows her like a book. They just know each other and they love each other. Now, until that kind of a relationship is established, you're going to have trouble in the marriage relationship because God made us that way.

In other words, marriage is more than an arrangement to live together and sleep together. When a man chooses a woman and a woman accepts a husband, be sure that you understand that you're one flesh and you wouldn't hurt yourself willingly for anything in the world. Oh, if we could only get that over.

Now, this is a great mystery, but he says, "I'm talking about Christ and the church," and here it is in heaven. We're going to be like Him, we're told. It says, "Beloved, it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him." We're going to have glorified flesh like He's got. We're going to be one with Him. We're part of His body.

And we're going to be joined to Him. And He said, "I go to prepare this place, that where I am, there ye may be also." That we be with Him throughout eternity. That, my friends, is going to be the most glorious thing. And as far as I know, no other creature, including the angels of heaven, are going to have that personal and intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's going to be the most glorious day. And you talk about celebrating Christmas, why, we're going to celebrate throughout eternity the very fact that we are with Him and that we've been joined to Him. Now, I must move on here because this is a very wonderful section that we're looking at here, and I want to read now verses three and four.

And I must read them in my translation, which I don't recommend. And someone has asked me—in fact, they said, "You don't seem to approve of any of these new translations." May I say to you, you can say that again. I don't. My feeling is that most of them, in fact, all of them, are bland, flavorless mediocrity. And I don't like that to replace the pungency of genius that's in the Authorized Version.

And don't tell me you can't understand it. It's just simply because you don't study it. You don't read the Bible like you read the funny paper. Don't misunderstand me, I read the funny paper. However, it's not funny anymore. They've always got something complicated going on, and I try to pass those by. But I love cartoons that give you a good laugh. But when you're reading the Bible, you're reading God's Word, and that's the reason it should be different.

Now, I'm not a scholar enough. I've had nine years of Greek. I taught it two years, but I don't feel capable of translating. And I find some of these today that are on these committees that are doing translation—why, they do not know enough Greek to read the menu in a Greek restaurant in Athens. Now, let me read. "And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, 'Behold the tabernacle (skene, it is, the tent) of God is with men, and He shall tabernacle with them, and they shall be His peoples, and God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore. The first things are passed away.'"

Now, here is something that's going to be quite wonderful. The tent of God is with men. What is the tent? Well, we're told the Word was made flesh and pitched His tent here among us. That's what John says in the first chapter of his Gospel, verse 14. That flesh was crucified on the cross and He was raised in a glorified body, and we're going to have that kind of a body. And we're going to live with Him in the New Jerusalem.

And we're going to get a picture of that New Jerusalem later on. The golden streets are not really important. What difference does it make to you what kind of asphalt you walk on down here? It's important to know the psychological and spiritual values that are going to be there. Now, we're told we shall be His people and God Himself shall be with them, be their God.

Now, will you notice here? This is a very wonderful thing that we're told here, and that is certain things that certainly are prominent today are going to be removed. Do you notice what he says here? First of all, God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. A columnist years ago wrote, "For every light that burns on Broadway, there is a broken heart."

Well, you can say that of Hollywood out here today. And when you go up and look at that great blanket of light when you go up into the Hollywood Hills, which I've done several times and look down on that blanket of light, I said to my wife once, "For every light down there, there is a broken heart." And today on this day, there's many a sad and lonely person.

Now, in the New Jerusalem, there are not going to be any more tears, my friends. And that's going to be a radical change, let me tell you. And there's not going to be any more death. That's going to be a very marvelous improvement. Why, while we've been on this program today, there've been several funeral processions. Dying all the time. It's a continual march to the cemetery.

And this earth is nothing in the world but a cemetery. An engineer that had in the early days a great deal to do with planning and plotting these great freeways that go across the country today—the divided highways and all of that—I asked him one time, I said, "Is it getting over the mountains or going down through the valleys across the rivers that's the big problem for you?" He says, "The big problem is missing cemeteries."

I never thought of that one. But this earth is a great cemetery, but all of that's going to stop. There will be no burying ground in the New Jerusalem. The undertaker will be out of business, and even the doctors are going to be out of business because there's not going to be there any crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.

And then he says in verse five, "And He that sat upon the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' And He said unto me, 'Write, for these words are true and faithful.'" Now, He says He's going to make all things new. Now, that's more meaningful to me than anything else. I do not know about you, but I have never really been satisfied with this life. I found myself frustrated. I found myself hemmed in. I've never been able to accomplish what I want to accomplish.

I've never been the man I wanted to be. I've never been the husband I wanted to be. I've never been the father I've wanted to be. And I've never preached the sermon that I've wanted to preach. I just don't seem to have arrived. And all of the accomplishments seem to have a blot on them. And He says to me, as He says to you, "I'm going to make all things new. You're going to be able to start over again."

Well, I'm waiting for this day when all things are going to be new and I can start over. Have you ever stopped to think about the potential of starting out all new again? Learning all over again and never ceasing, just go on into eternity. Oh, the potential and capability of man. You remember yonder at the Tower of Babel, God says, "I better go down. Nothing will be withheld from man." Man can go to the moon. It was very foolish for some even scientists and preachers to say that man couldn't go to the moon.

I think he's going farther than that. Man is a clever being that God has made. But oh, the potential. Death ends it all for him down here. But with eternity ahead of him, oh, the prospect. My friend, I'd love to start on that trip today, wouldn't you? It'd be a glorious holiday to start to this city where He is and where we'll be with Him through eternity. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.

Steve Schwetz: What a great expectation we have ahead when either through the rapture or through our death we'll be with the Lord throughout eternity. Until then, let's stay faithful to the Lord Jesus and let's stay in His Word, which reminds me soon the Bible Bus begins its 12th trip through the whole Word of God. It's really an exciting day and I'm going to tell as many people as possible about this new five-year journey. Do that with me, won't you?

And maybe tell your pastor or your friends at work or your neighbors. Maybe the Lord will even put you right next to someone on a bus or a plane that He's drawing to Himself and you get to be the one to introduce them to God's Word like they've never heard it explained before. Ask the Lord to provide these types of opportunities for you and He will. God is faithful. Just share what these studies have meant in your life. It's simple. That's really the best way to interest others.

And while you're at it, would you share your story with us too? How many trips through God's Word have you been on? What's keeping you coming back? Well, you can leave a note in the feedback section of our app. You can email us at biblebus@ttb.org or write to Box 7100, Pasadena, California 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario N6C 6B1. You can also call and leave a message at 1-800-65-BIBLE.

And when you're in touch, please mention the call letters of your radio station, or if you listen by app, online, or by other method, tell us that too. We'd love to know. And as we prepare to begin a new five-year cycle in God's Word, be sure to download Dr. McGee's Notes and Outlines that are available in our digital book, *Briefing the Bible*. To set yourself up for success on our journey, actually I suggest two main things.

First, read ahead in God's Word before each study, and as you do, ask Him to prepare your heart for all that we're going to learn. And then second, download Dr. McGee's Notes and Outlines and refer to them as we go along. It's really that simple. So again, to get your free copy of *Briefing the Bible*, check out the resources section of our app or ttb.org. Or to get an abbreviated paperback copy by mail, call us 1-800-65-BIBLE. I'm Steve Schwetz, encouraging you to read all of Revelation 21 and meet me back here next time as we continue to make our way through the Bible.