Religion and faith

 There is a difference between religion and faith. That may be a little hard to explain, but I think it is fair to say that a lot of people have a religion who have very little in the way of faith. Their religion is more a matter of ideas, arguments, positions, creeds, dogmas, and the like than it is about the heart. Churches can easily become the religious equivalent of political parties. They may be conservative or they may be liberal, and theological discussions can involve as much spin as any political discussion. Churches’ creeds can be just a political as any party platform, and heretics are merely people who are out to change the platform. True saving faith is a precious grace, and that not only as it is very uncommon, very scarce, even in the visible church, a very small number of true believers among a great multitude of visible professors (Matt 22 14), but true faith is very excellent and of very great use and advantage to those who have it. 

A New City

 A New City

Revelation 21:10-27

John describes a vision of the holy city Jerusalem coming from heaven from God. A good many Christians today think of this vision as the city plan for heaven that shows where the walls, streets, buildings, river, and vegetation will be located. Such folk look forward to walking the streets of gold.

In quite a different nuance, John uses the image of the city in Revelation 21:10-22:5 as an image of the qualities of life that make up the new heaven and the new earth. John uses the descriptions of walls, streets, buildings, the river, and vegetation to symbolize the characteristics of life in the new Jerusalem. John implies that listeners have a choice. They can choose to live in the city Rome and suffer its fate. Or they can struggle in witness now in order to live in the city of God. In Revelation 21:10 John re-emphasizes that the new community is a gift that comes from God in heaven (see Revelation 21:2). It does not come from Caesar in Rome.