After being shown the beautiful New Jerusalem in our passages of the last several days, John says, "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations." (Revelation 22:1-2)
This river is going to contain the purest water man has ever drunk. These trees growing along the sides of the river will provide the finest food man has ever eaten. I don't think we will have to eat in eternity, but we will be able to eat just as Christ was able to eat in His resurrected body. (Luke 24:42) I don't know about you, but it comforts me to know we are still going to eat in eternity. Human beings tend to celebrate the things of life with food. This is one of the ways we observe holidays and birthdays and weddings, by gathering together for a meal. It seems fitting that we will still be able to gather together to eat and celebrate our perfect and eternal existence with the One who made all of this possible.
There was a tree of life in the Garden of Eden, but after Adam and Eve sinned against God, their access to the tree was blocked. Perhaps only the thing worse than being a sinner is being a sinner who lives forever in an unregenerated, unredeemed human body. The Lord cut off their access to this fruit and, although they lived a very long lifespan as did many of their early descendants (Adam lived to be 930 years old according to Genesis 5:5), eventually the effects of the fruit of the tree of life wore off. As the eternal kingdom begins, all of us who have put our faith in the Lord will have bodies like His, and I don't think we will have to eat in order to live. But we will be able to eat and enjoy it in a celebratory way.
John says the leaves of the trees are for the "healing" of the nations. The word translated into English is the Greek "therapeian" from which we derive the word "therapy" or "therapeutic". No one is going to be sick in the eternal kingdom; the Lord has already said so. If no one is sick, then no one needs to be healed, so the English translation of the word "therapeian" is a bit misleading. The leaves of the trees are going to be therapeutic for the nations of the world. Something about these leaves is going to enhance life on earth, and John doesn't explain to us how and why. Dr. John Walvoord, one of the leading experts on the book of Revelation, says of this passage: "The leaves of the tree promote the enjoyment of life in the New Jerusalem, and are not for correcting ills which do not exist." (From The Revelation Of Jesus Christ, page 330.)
The earth will be a perfect world, as if the entire planet has become a Garden of Eden, because the world won't be polluted by sin anymore. "No longer will there be any curse." (Revelation 22:3a) The ground was cursed because of Adam's sin. He introduced something into the environment that wasn't present before, and after his fall from grace he had to toil to make crops spring up from the ground. He had to work hard in order to eat and in order to provide food for his family. But here in Revelation 22 sin no longer exists. Where there is no sin there is no curse.
"The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and His servants will serve Him." (Revelation 22:3b) We won't have to work in order to eat but we will have things to do. When I was a child I used to worry about what eternity would be like because I could only imagine myself being bored if I had to sit forever on a cloud playing a harp. I'm not sure where I got the idea that that's what it would be like, but the idea didn't appeal to me. We are going to have duties to perform in eternity, but those duties will be pleasant. They will be a joy. We will take delight in serving our Lord. John doesn't describe for us what our duties will be, but we can be certain we won't ever feel like we sometimes do now when we drag ourselves out of bed on Monday morning to go to a job on an unrestored earth that is still under the curse of sin. Whatever our tasks will be, they will be enjoyable and we will feel honored to perform them.
"They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads." (Revelation 22:4) We have seen several instances in Revelation of people having names or seals on their foreheads. The Tribulation saints were given the seal pf God on their foreheads. The followers of the Antichrist could take his mark on their foreheads. We don't know what it means when John says we will have Christ's name displayed on us in this fashion, but in the Old Testament the priests wore a golden headband that said, "Holy to the Lord." This marked them as being consecrated for His service. Since we have been promised we will be a kingdom of priests for our God (1 Peter 2:9, Revelation 1:6) what is indicated here may be that we will be adorned with a beautiful headband that proclaims us to be forever consecrated for the Lord's service.
"There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign forever and ever." (Revelation 22:5) Night on the earth has so often been a lonely time or a frightening time. More crimes are committed during the night. Sick people are more likely to die during the night. The troubles of our lives seem worse during the night. No matter how difficult our problems are, we can get a better handle on them during the daylight hours. It's the nighttime hours that are the hardest to get through. In the kingdom of our Lord, night will never fall again. No dark deeds will ever be done. No one will ever again slip from life at the midnight hour. No lonely tears will ever fall again between sunset and dawn. We are going to be living in an eternal day on a world where nothing bad ever happens. This alone ought to make us want to give our allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. As my pastor is fond of saying, it would be worth following Christ just to experience this paradise for two weeks. How much more will it be worth following Him to experience this for eternity?
John doesn't go into a lot of detail when he describes what eternity will be like for those who have placed their trust in Christ. I think he didn't have the words to describe what he saw. Have you ever had something so wonderful happen to you that you felt you couldn't tell someone about it in a way that could make them picture it? I think that's what has happened to the Apostle John. No words he can think of are able to do justice to what he's seen. He leaves a great deal of things "undescribed" because he simply can't describe them.
The Apostle Paul either had a vision of heaven or actually went to heaven after he was attacked in the city of Lystra and then dragged outside the gates and pelted with stones until he was either dead or near death. He himself said he wasn't sure if he actually died or just experienced a vision. I tend to believe he had what we refer to in our day as a "near death experience" in which his soul actually left his body for a few seconds or minutes. He never went into detail about what he saw and I think that's because he couldn't. He had no words capable of adequately describing it. Anything he said about heaven would have fallen so far short of what he actually experienced that instead of trying in vain to tell us what he saw, he said that the human mind can't conceive the things God has prepared for those who love Him. (1 Corinthians 2:9) I'd be willing to bet John felt the same way when he observed Eden restored on the earth with the Lord ruling over the world. No human mind could picture the things he saw. No human tongue could put them into words. We can try to imagine what eternity with our Lord will be like, but it will be so much more than anything our minds can envision. After all, we are dealing with the One who "is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine". (Ephesians 3:20)
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