From The River of God by Kim Cimio — Part IV. Destiny, Chapter 12
Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. (Psalm 87:3)
The new Jerusalem as our eternal home on earth: God’s plan for his people to inherit and rule the world, servant leadership, how everything we do prepares us for eternity, technology and the city in Scripture, and life in the city of God.
Will Christians spend eternity in heaven or on earth?
Most Christians would say we will spend eternity in heaven. But Scripture says the new Jerusalem will be on earth. John saw “a new heaven and a new earth” and “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,” and heard, “the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation 21:1–3). The city descends to earth; it is not a castle in the sky. Nor will eternity be spent floating around singing praise songs. After the resurrection we will have physical bodies that require real activities: cooking, cleaning, washing and countless other pursuits. We imagine otherwise only because we think we’ll be disembodied spirits. If we truly believe in “the resurrection of the body,” as the Apostles’ Creed says, we will do far more than worship alone.
What inheritance has God promised his people?
The new Jerusalem is not a random ending but the fulfillment of God’s vision that runs through the whole Bible: his image-bearers ruling the world as his representatives. Eden was their headquarters, a beachhead from which to spread across the earth (Genesis 1:28). Sin didn’t cancel this mandate; God repeated it to Noah. But humanity built Babel to avoid spreading, so God called Abraham to “Go” (Genesis 12:1). Since then, following God means leaving comfort zones and cultural conformity. Yet God promised Abraham land (Genesis 15:18), and Paul reveals he was actually promised to be “heir of the world” (Romans 4:13). God tells the Messiah, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage” (Psalm 2:8). Jesus tells us how to receive it: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). When we surrender our rights and trust God’s plan, even unrecognized, we become heirs of the world.
Why is raising leaders so important?
God works through leaders, and without them the world becomes barren; Genesis 2:5 says nothing grew because “there was no man to work the ground.” Jesus saw crowds “like sheep without a shepherd,” told his disciples to pray for laborers, and then appointed the twelve (Matthew 9:36–10:1). When we see people suffering, absent leadership is often at the root, so we must pray for leaders and raise them. Paul, though we think of him as an evangelist, constantly traveled with young leaders and taught them to raise others: “entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). He left Titus to appoint elders in every town of Crete, around fifty cities. I especially love working with college students, who are natural leaders. From the Haystack Prayer Meeting to the Student Volunteer Movement, Zinzendorf’s Order of the Mustard Seed and Wesley’s Holy Club, students have led mission movements.
What is leadership the Jesus way?
Many avoid responsibility, saying “I’m not qualified.” But Paul wrote, “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Timothy 3:1), using the same word as the “good works” we are to be zealous for (Titus 2:14). We often think aspiring to lead is un-Christian because we’ve seen so many bad examples. We should start instead with Jesus: “the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant… even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:25–28). Desiring leadership means desiring to serve through personal sacrifice. So ruling doesn’t require an official position; whenever we serve others with Jesus’ meekness, we fulfill God’s command to rule. Christian leadership must never oppress those who disagree. We will rule the nations when Jesus returns; until then, we lead by serving.
How does everything we do on earth prepare us for eternity?
David “shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them” (Psalm 78:72). Leadership needs both character and skill. Integrity without skill leads to stagnation; skill without integrity leads to corruption. Character is rarely formed in comfort but forged through trials: “if we endure, we will also reign with him” (2 Timothy 2:12). Our suffering, struggles and even death are part of the curriculum for reigning with Christ, because a leader who has not suffered cannot empathize. Skill comes from excelling in whatever we do. Many national leaders came from other careers: Zelensky was a comedian and filmmaker, de Gaulle a general, Merkel a physicist. So everything we do on earth, not only Christian activities but education, careers and even hobbies, prepares us for eternity by building character and skill. This is life’s ultimate meaning.
Is technology part of God’s plan or a danger?
Jacques Ellul observed that history begins in a garden and ends in a city, a world shaped by technology, and that even technology has a place in God’s vision. Even the Amish don’t reject technology entirely, only what came after their founding; farming and horses were once revolutionary, and Scripture warns against trusting in horses (Psalm 20:7). As Douglas Adams said, whatever existed when you were born feels natural. But technology is not neutral. It develops its own momentum. Einstein’s E=mc² led to nuclear weapons he never intended. AI grows powerful because we all write so much online. Collins and Pinch compared science to the golem, powerful but clumsy; Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice shows a tool slipping out of control. We should treat technology with vigilance, not veneration.
What does the Bible say about the origins of technology?
Technology has been part of human life from the beginning. After the Fall, Adam and Eve “sewed fig leaves together” (Genesis 3:7); sewing is technology, and early humans survived European winters by sewing clothing. Then God himself “made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins” (3:21), a far better technology, teaching them to survive in a fallen world. Even in Eden, caring for the garden required tools: a broom instead of collecting leaves by hand, a bucket to carry water, which needs a saw, which needs smelted iron. By placing them in the garden, God expected technological development. After Eden, Cain built the first city; Jabal pioneered herding and tents; Jubal invented the lyre and pipe; and Tubal-cain forged bronze and iron (Genesis 4:17–22). Notably, these pioneers descended from Cain, as many tech leaders today are not Christians. Technology isn’t evil, but it easily becomes a tool of rebellion.
Why does the Bible, which is suspicious of cities, end with a city?
The first city was founded by Cain after murdering his brother, out of a desire for safety. As Ellul shows in The Meaning of the City, cities in Scripture express human self-reliance: Nimrod built Babel and Nineveh; Israel built cities as slaves in Egypt; Solomon relied on fortifications like the Millo, and God gave ten tribes to Jeroboam, the man in charge of building it. Yet Scripture ends with the city of God. This is one of the Christian worldview’s paradoxes: God loved the world, yet we must not love the world; we live in tents, yet we will inhabit a city forever. If history ended in a garden, engineering, art, literature and law would have no place in eternity, and our lives now would be meaningless. In a city, all human ingenuity finds its place. The new Jerusalem is about 2,220 km on each side (12,000 stadia), nearly the size of the Roman Empire, and we will be its rulers.
Why is the new Jerusalem a cube, and what will life there be like?
I love big cities; as Samuel Johnson said of London, there you find all that life can offer. The city of God will be, first, the place of God’s presence. God walked with Adam and Eve in Eden, met Israel in the tabernacle, and in Jesus the Word “tabernacled” among us (John 1:14). At the end: “the tabernacle of God is with men” (Revelation 21:3). The city’s length, width and height are equal (21:16), a cube, the shape of the Most Holy Place (1 Kings 6:20). There we will worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23), which is more than songs. Second, it will display the fruits of the nations: “They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations” (Revelation 21:26). Every nation’s culture, from Italian food and French fashion to German craftsmanship and American movies, will be brought into the city of God and not wasted.
What does it mean that the leaves of the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations”?
Living in a fallen world means being wounded, and nations are wounded too, by other nations’ injustice or their own people’s sins. Hurt nations hurt nations; this is humanity’s greatest source of misery. I worked with refugees from eastern Ukraine, and now Ukraine faces full-scale war. Germany, where I live, still struggles with its past, and many avoid national pride altogether, but as Walter Wink said, “The only cure for the evil of nationalism, paradoxically, is genuine love for one’s nation as a creature of God.” Africa still carries the wounds of colonialism. We bring healing now, but complete healing is impossible, so we hope in Revelation 22:2, where the river flows from God’s throne and “the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” In the Bible the tree often represents God’s people. We bear fruit, and our leaves bring healing. In God’s presence, bearing fruit and healing the nations, we are already living in the city of God.
Source: Kim Cimio, The River of God (Vision & Logic, 2025), chapter 12, “The Cube.” Answers are condensed from the book in the author’s words.