The New Jerusalem has been a puzzle to Bible readers and teachers throughout the twenty centuries of the Christian era. There have been two main schools of interpretation. One school says that the New Jerusalem is a physical city. It will be part of the new heaven and new earth and will be on the earth as a literal city. The second school, which is very shallow, says the New Jerusalem is the heavenly mansion.
However, we should not think of this city as being merely physical, nor as a heavenly mansion. Let us put aside these different schools, which come from human understanding.
It is very significant that the New Jerusalem stands at the end of God's entire revelation and occupies the final two chapters. We need the whole Bible to understand, interpret, and designate what its meaning is. The conclusion of a book must be the final word concerning its contents. This is a principle. Any book which is meaningful surely has some proper, definite contents and also a proper, definite conclusion. Let us come to the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We must consider its contents and then look at its conclusion.
The Bible is a complete revelation of God's dwelling place. This dwelling place is for Him to rest, to be satisfied, and to be expressed.
Genesis 1:1 says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then, after all the things in the universe were created, God made Adam on the sixth day. God wanted to have man. He prepared the heavens, the earth, and everything else for this man whom He made in His own image and after His likeness.
This is a strong indication that God wanted an expression. He wanted something living and organic to bear His image and to have His likeness. Image refers to something inward, while likeness refers to something outward. Inwardly we all have the intellect, the will, and the emotion. Outwardly we have the likeness, the body form.
In Genesis 1 we are told that God created the animals after their kind and the plants after their kind. The horse, for example, is after the horse kind, while the peach tree and the apple tree are each after their kind. Kind means a family, a biological genus. Man, however, was not made after man's kind. Man was made after God's kind. We men are of God's kind. We are one family with God because we bear His image and have His likeness. Even though man at this time didn't have God's life or His nature, he did have His image and likeness.
This indicates that God wanted an expression. Genesis 1:26-27 shows that man was not just a single person. Verse 27 says, "God created man in his own image...; male and female created he them." This indicates that the man here is something corporate. J. N. Darby says man in Genesis 1:27 means mankind, man as a race. In God's creation He did something according to His plan to have an expression. Mankind was to express God. This is the beginning of the Bible.
Then the Bible goes on to talk about eight great men: Adam, Abel, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Including Adam, these are the eight giants in the first book of the Bible.