Ezekiel 48:35

. And the name of the city from that day shall be, ‘Yahweh is there.' ”

This finalises the whole message of the book. It began with the arrival of the heavenly temple and finishes with the city, finally restored. It has become the place of the presence of Yahweh with His people. It is now the new earth. It is the end to which all was moving from the moment that the heavenly temple descended on the anonymous high mountain. All is due to the arrival of the heavenly temple well outside the city and its being filled with the glory of God. ‘Jerusalem' could not be restored from within, it required the divine power acting continually upon it from without.

Did John have this picture in mind when he wrote, “and the word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14)?

It is John also who firmly places this city in the new heaven and earth, combining the gates of the city representing the elect of Israel (21-12-13), with the twelve foundation stones of the Apostles (Ezekiel 21:14), the representatives of the elect Israel and the new Israel. The city had now been prepared by God and was ready for her marriage with her husband. She will be united with the heavenly Lamb, and God and the Lamb (Jesus Christ, crucified, risen and enthroned) will be its temple (Ezekiel 21:22). And all the redeemed of all the nations will be there, those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life (Ezekiel 21:24).

May God grant that many who read these words be among that number.