They Have Not Come Up in Man’s Heart

Revelation is a book of signs, physical symbols with spiritual significance (Rev. 1:1). This principle is true throughout the description of New Jerusalem. The city is not physical, it is heavenly, but it does “come down out of heaven” to be on the new earth.

We should not make any attempt to describe New Jerusalem based on our current world. First Corinthians 2:9— “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have not come up in man’s heart; things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” The commentator and Greek scholar Richard Lenski wrote:

Stop imagining. Eye hath not seen what God has prepare for those who love him! All is intended to be humanly unimaginable. All of this language [describing New Jerusalem] is human symbolism, which means that the half has not been told. All of this is only a dim shadow of the reality; it multiplies beyond conception the precious created material of which we have bits on this old earth, multiplies it beyond all bounds in order to give us at least a faint inkling of the infinite reality of what the Eternal City or union with God in the new world means.*

Rather than imagining how New Jerusalem appears, we should concentrate on loving God and praising Him for what He has prepared.

* R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. John’s Revelation, The Augsburg Publishing House, Minnesota © 1943, digitized by the Internet Archive (2025), https://archive.org, p. 638-9.

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Posted by Don on August 26, 2026

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