The Revelation 21:9-16 | Episode # 1182

April 28, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 21:9-16

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening

to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up

his word to you and allow you

to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name

says, now, one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven plates came to me and talked with me, saying, come, I will show you the bride, the lamb's wife. All right? Now, what I love about this is that angel existed to be a part of the ultimate, the ultimate punishment, the ultimate wrath of God against sin. Now that angel is going to show them the bride. Okay, that. That. That's a beautiful picture. The wrath of God exists so that the bride may exist in its fullness. Okay? And so those angels, even though they were. They were a tool of God's wrath in pouring out those vials of his wrath, they're also a tool of his glory. Okay? And don't. Don't miss that. He says, I'm going to show the bride. He says. He says, and he carried me away in the spirit to a great, high mountain. Now, you need to hear this. All right? He is changing places. He's changing locations. Anytime it says, and I was carried away in the Spirit, that's a picture of God taking you to a new level, to a new place. Okay? It's mentioned several times in Scripture. Okay? And, and it's an understanding that you begin to see things spiritually that you haven't seen before. All right? That you understand things in a way you've never understood before. By the way, God desires for you to understand things in a way you've never understood before. That's why Paul all the time is saying, I would that you not be ignorant. Okay? What is ignorance? It's not the lack of the ability to understand. It's the lack of knowledge. Okay? God doesn't want us to be ignorant of what's going on around us. God doesn't want us to be ignorant of his ways. He wants us to see things. And he wants to see things at ever deeper levels. He wants us to understand things as their fullness is. He says, I was carried away in the spirit and a great high mountain. And he showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, Having the glory of God. Now, it is the glory of God, by the way it's made. But having the glory of God indicates that that which glorifies God the most is there. And who is there? The redeemed are there. All right, we're coming out of heaven in this great city. Now, some of y' all are thinking, lawrence, city's kind of flat. And, you know, they got some buildings not that kind of city. He said her light was like the most precious stone, like Jasper stone. Clears crystal. So this city literally has the light of God coming out of. Says also she carried. She had a great and high wall with 12 gates. So there's these huge walls, and the walls have 12 gates. So I want you to notice how he's going to tie these together. He says. He says it says it had great and high walls, 12 gates, and 12 angels at the gates, and the names written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. So on the gates, the way you get in is the twelve tribes of Israel. Notice this. Three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west. So the gates are all around the city. There's access everywhere. Remember that the Tabernacle and the Temple only had, what, one access point. Now there's access for everyone. Everybody has access to the city of God. All right, he says, three gates on the east, three gates on the south on all four sides. Now, the wall of the city had 12 foundations, and on them were the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. So the foundation of the city is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So you have the gates of the city, the entry points. How you actually begin to know about God is the twelve tribes of Israel. The Old Testament covenants. How do you. But the city's foundation is built on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Notice, no sea. The city contains the. The Jews and the Gentiles. There are no more Gentiles. We're all the family of God now. We're all a part of his family. He says it says here. And he who talked to me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates and its walls. So he's got this measuring stick that he's going to measure it with now. It's going to take a little while. Okay? All right. So that's why John had to be carried away in the Spirit, because, you know, he need to be refreshed for the measuring. All right, the city is laid out as a square. So if you're square, it's okay. All right. You're like the city of God. That's a daddy joke. All right. He said. He said, the city is laid out and square. Its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the seeds. He measured the city with reeds. 12,000 furlongs, its length and its breadth and its height are equal. So the city is 12,000 furlongs on all four sides. Now imagine how big those gates are, okay? And you go, well, they got to be pretty big for that city. Does anybody know? Don't look, don't look. Anybody know off the top of your head, how, how. How long is 20? 12,000 furlongs, huh? It's 1400 miles. That's exactly right. All right, so you go, well, tell me exactly how big that is. Well, if you started in Panama city, you go, why not start here? Because I don't have a place in Canada. Everybody in Canada's all along the. The border of the United States. They. They don't want to be a part of us, but they want to be real close. If you start at Panama City, then the. And you go due north all the way up through the upper peninsula of Michigan and you go about 50 miles into Canada, that's where one side would be. And if you went west all the way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then came south just a little ways, maybe 20 or 30 miles into Mexico, that's how far west it would go. And obviously it go north all the way into. It would go north all the way into Canada near. Near the Montana, Idaho border. And then it would come across the southern part of Canada about 50 miles north of there. That's how big the city is. But remember, it's not just the sides of the city. It's the height of the city also. So it's. It's a giant cube. A giant cube that goes 1400 miles into the sky. All right. Jesus said, I go and prepare a place for you, so I'm going to come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, you may be also. Notice he didn't say, I'm going to prepare a place for everyone. He says, I'm going to prepare a place for you. Okay? Which means he's not. And remember, the mansions, when he says, in my father's house are many mansions, he's preparing a unique dwelling place for you. Everyone that's a part of the kingdom gets a unique dwelling Place. Well, I've already explained to you that inside the, inside the boundaries of Jacksonville, Florida, which is. I can never remember the name of that county when I need to. And then, huh, Duval county in Duval County, Florida, within the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida, which are both the same. Duval county and Jacksonville are Jacksonville's. The whole county of Duval County. Every human being on the face of the earth today could stand with three meters around, nobody touching them. Every human being on the face of the earth could stand in Duval County. I'm going to tell you that Duval county don't get close to big as this new Jerusalem is not even close. And there's 8 billion people on the earth. Does anybody know the estimates? I'm not talking about the Christian estimates. I'm just talking about the overall estimates of how many human beings scientists believe have lived on the Earth. The number is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 billion. Okay, that's a high number. Most scientists will tell you that the number of humans that are alive today on the Earth equal the number of humans that have already died. Most population scientists believe that the human race has only been somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 to 18 billion people. Meaning that half the people that have ever lived are alive today. Now if I tell you that, and that the gospel, the Bible says that he's going to pour his spirit on all, all flesh and that he will win someone from every tribe and nation, tongue and language. If he won a big prize right now, he would win a huge percentage of those people that lived on the earth. Huge percentage. In fact, the number of Christians that are believed to have lived on the Earth is somewhere in the neighborhood of three to three and a half billion people, that's 20% of the population that's ever lived. If all the people, which would be half the people that have ever lived can stand in Duval county and not be able to reach out and touch anybody near them, then how big is your dwelling place? And maybe, maybe the King James Bible is right. It's a top of the line mansion. I'm talking about a top of the line mansion. I'm talking about huge. For every Christian that has ever lived, every believer that's ever been a part of the kingdom of God. Huge. It's going to emanate light. It's going to give its own light, the light of God, pure light, unadulterated light, perfect light. And it's going to be 1400 miles on each side as a cube. By the way, if you measure out the boundaries that God gave the Jews for the promised land. And you're sitting there going, they just got a little sliver on the coast. No, they didn't. No, they did. If you read what God said he had given them, it starts in what is southern Turkey. It goes all the way down to what is central Egypt. It comes all the way across into the Arabian Desert. It goes all the way up into the Levant or into the. Into the area between the Tigris and Euphrates river and comes all the way across to the starting point in Turkey. Just to let you know, it's about 1400 miles on every side, If you ask me. Well, how big is it compared to the United States? The United States is three. He was toe up about it. Now the United States is 3.2. The continental United States is 3.2 million square miles. The new heaven and the new Earth are going to be somewhere around 1.9 million square miles. So the new heaven and the new Earth are two thirds the size of the continental United States. The new, not the new heaven, new Earth, the new Jerusalem. Can you imagine what that's going to be like? Can you imagine walking the city streets of the new Jerusalem? Can you imagine exploring all that God has made? You could spend eons upon eons exploring just that city. But there's not going to be any seas. And so the old Earth's going to be available. The whole earth is going to be made like it was back then. There's going to. There's going to be no more sun to give light, only the pure light from God. We're going to live in that city. And people ask, well, what about, Is anybody else going to be there? Yes. The people who are not killed, the people who are not destroyed in the great tribulation, they're going to be there and they're going to be having children. They're going to be continue on. That's how God made us to be. We're going to. We're going to continue on as a civilization, a great civilization. As you go today, I pray that

the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.