Khải Huyền 21

A new heaven and a new earth

¹Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had gone, and the sea was no more. ²And the holy city, the new Jerusalem, I saw descending out of heaven from God, ready like a bride who has adorned herself for her husband. ³Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: “See, God’s dwelling is with human beings! He will make his home with them, and they will be his peoples; God himself will be with them. ⁴Every tear he will wipe from their eyes. Death will be no more, and no more mourning, no crying, no pain.^a The former things have gone.”

⁵And the one who sits on the throne said, “See, I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write it down, because these words can be trusted, and they are true.” ⁶He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To anyone who is thirsty I will give water from the spring of life, free of charge. ⁷Whoever overcomes will inherit these things; I will be that person’s God, and that person will be my child. ⁸But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice sorcery, the idolaters, and all liars, their share is in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. This is the second death.”

The new Jerusalem

⁹One of the seven angels, those who had held the seven bowls brimming with the seven last plagues, came and talked with me. “Come,” he said, “I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” ¹⁰He took me away in the Spirit to a mountain, vast and high, and showed me Jerusalem, the holy city, descending out of heaven from God, ¹¹radiant with the glory of God. It shone like the costliest of stones, like jasper, clear as crystal. ¹²Around it ran a wall, great and high, with twelve gates. Twelve angels stood at the gates, and names were inscribed on them, the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites. ¹³Three gates faced east, three north, three south, and three west. ¹⁴Twelve foundation stones held up the city’s wall, and on them were the twelve names of the Lamb’s twelve apostles.

¹⁵The one speaking with me held a golden reed for measuring, to take the measurements of the city, its gates, and its wall. ¹⁶The city is built as a square; its length is the same as its width. He measured the city with the reed: about 1,400 miles. Its length, its width, and its height are the same. ¹⁷He measured its wall too: about 216 feet by human measure, which the angel was using. ¹⁸The wall was made of jasper, and the city itself was pure gold, clear like glass. ¹⁹Every kind of precious stone adorned the foundations of the city wall: the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, ²⁰the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. ²¹Each of the twelve gates was a pearl: every gate was cut from one single pearl. And the city’s broad street was of pure gold, transparent as glass.

²²There was no temple to be seen in the city: its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. ²³Neither sun nor moon is needed to give the city light; God’s glory lights it up, and its lamp is the Lamb. ²⁴By its light the nations will walk, and into it the kings of the earth bring their glory. ²⁵Its gates will never be shut in the daytime, and there will be no night there. ²⁶Into it people will bring the glory and the honor of the nations. ²⁷Nothing unclean will ever come into it, no one who practices what is detestable or lives a lie; only those written in the Lamb’s book of life will enter.