So what do you dispensationalist who fancy yourselves as literalists think of the horrendous discrepancies in Ezekiel's and John's visions of the New Jerusalem? Since you believe this to be a timeline of future prophetic events that both clearly come after the Gog and Magog prophecy. You can't possibly say these are different prophecies. Yet in Ezekiel's vision the New Jerusalem is 1.5 miles squared and in Johns vision it is 144 miles cubed. Essentially Ezekiel sees the New Jerusalem about the same size as it was and John see's a city that if you put 10 foot stories in it could hold hundreds of billions of people as it could contain 1.5 billion square miles of floor space. The land area of the earth is only approx. 58 million square miles. That quite a discrepancy if you take this literally. Note* Gingerbeer pointed out my calculations on the size of Revelations New Jerusalem were wrong based on its not 144 miles cubed but 1400 miles cubed. Sorry. If there were 12 foot stories in that it would give it 1.2 Trillion square miles of floor space. Which is about 21,000 times the land are of the earth.Then there are other things like the number of the trees' precisely what are they for etc etc.
So what are you to do with this? Did God change his mind on the scope and size of the city somewhere down the line? Did more people get saved than he anticipated so he decided to make a new dispensation? Does God like the idea of mega churches better than small intimate churches so he decided to go mega? Was ancient Israel all he had in mind at the time but then decided to branch out to the gentile nations? Or is it as the secularists say. This is positive proof that God did not write the Bible because we have a contradiction as big as the east is from the west? O wait I know. The Jews both the believers and unbelievers get the little city as promised to Abraham and the church gets the mega city. Come on now think. There can be only one reasonable and logical answer to this dilemma. Any takers?
What does John say?
17And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred
and forty
and four cubits,
according to the
measure of a
man, that is, of the
angel. (Revelation 21:17)
Let us look at those terms in the Greek.....
Man is Anthropos, meaning humans in general.
So what is a measure of humanity to go by?
444 ánthrōpos –
man, also the generic term for "
mankind";
the human race; people, including
women and men
Angel is referring to the Heavenly host, since New Jerusalem comes from Heaven.
How does humanity measure up to the host of Heaven?
32 (
ággelos) is used 176 times in the NT (
usually of heavenly angels),
Finally the word measure is a marker, where you either fall within or outside that marked point, that is the metron.
3358 métron – properly, a
measure (the actual measure
itself); (figuratively)
the basis for determining what is enough (or not enough), what is
fair (or
not fair), etc.
3358 /métron ("standard, measure")
is the controlling basis by which something is determined as acceptable or unacceptable –
preeminentlyrooting to
the Lord Himself as His being is the only ultimate measure of truth.
Measure is not a specific number, but rather a level marker tyat is used to gauge whether something falls within the mark of what is acceptable as per say.
So, what is the permissible or acceptable mark?
By now, it should be clear, that John is depicting the actual angelic heavenly subjects, as to how they happen to be counted/measured within God's Holy city marker or metron, that is the subjects themselves are the spiritual measure, rather than an animate object with physical dimensions.
144 cubits, has symbolic meaning, just like the 144,000, where 12 x 12 are the......
twelve gates, and at the gates
twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are
the names of the
twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
13On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
14And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the
twelve apostles of the Lamb.
This is also where you get the 12 + 12 = 24 elders who sit as Christ's kingly Jury, who have crowns, hence that is why the King is called the King of kings. These take off their crowns and throw them at the feet of the King of kings.
The 1000 is the timeless eternal millenium reign after the books are opened, at Christ's second coming. 1000 symbolises devine completeness and the Father's glory.
In conclusion, John's depiction is of the subjects themselves, with symbolic numerical meanings tied to the measure of a man, that is of
THE Angel.