On mansions, streets, and levels:
On the levels I was thinking maybe the twelve foundations represent 12 levels one foundation per level. (in full disclosure I did see this somewhere on the internet and I think it makes sense as I was already wondering about multiple levels given the height of 1380 Miles) most seem to think it is 12 foundations on one level but that seems a bit odd and how would you know it was twelve foundations each with one type stone and not one foundation with 12 different stones??
As to mansions in the bible he mentions in John 14:2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. Now some will correctly point out that mansions is the word abode which referred to any where you might live and often at that time was just a room in a house owned by someone else. Thus they try to reduce this to God giving you a room. Some even argue that a the father’s house is one gigantic house in the New Jerusalem and that since having houses inside a house makes no sense that we have rooms instead. BUT they both fail to translate the word for house in the fathers house is the word for dwelling. so they passage would look like this:In my Father's dwelling are many abodes: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. Well since his DWELLING is the New Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem is a CITY it makes perfect sense that the ABODES in that DWELLING would be HOUSES. Take this for example as a possibility:
1.75 billion kids raptured 1.70 billion kids raptured
2.50 billion kids aborted or miscarried 2.67 billion kids aborted or miscarried
34.32 billion dead since creation 33.10 billion dead since creation
1.00 billion tribulation saints 2.10 billion tribulation saints
0.85 billion Christians raptured 0.85 billion Christians raptured
2.50 billion kids aborted or miscarried 2.67 billion kids aborted or miscarried
34.32 billion dead since creation 33.10 billion dead since creation
1.00 billion tribulation saints 2.10 billion tribulation saints
0.85 billion Christians raptured 0.85 billion Christians raptured
——————————————————————————————————
40.42 billion total population
with that population each person, given a 12 level NJ, could have 0.30 acres of land and with multiple people in a house you could have perhaps several acres per household. Like for me and the 18 boys God will give me to raise and love and care for in the NJ we would have a 5 acre estate although we could have unto 5.7 based on a 0.30 per person amount. Even just over 0.26 acres each, 11,464 ft2, could give you 54,369,825,281 people in it.
2.50 billion kids aborted or miscarried 2.50 billion kids aborted or miscarried
48.26 billion dead since creation 48.31 billion dead since creation
1.00 billion tribulation saints 0.85 billion tribulation saints
0.85 billion Christians raptured 1.00 billion Christians raptured
————————————————————————————————
54.36 billion total population
I use a public-private formula to distribute land:1st – 1,170,063,360 acres private/ 48,752,640 acres public = 96 to 4 ratio (76,176 mi2 public)(just under the size of the state of South Dakota) 2-12 – 1,194,439,680 acres private/ 24,376,320 acres public = 98 to 2 ratio (38,088 mi2)(between Maine+Kentucky) T12 – 14,308,899,840 private/ 316,892,160 public (495,144 mi2 just under the size of the nation of Chad) = 14,625,792,000 total. Public would be like parks, schools, shops, etc. anything not private houses and the land they are on. These numbers are for illustration purposes only! I am NOT trying to say how many people there ACTUALLY are in the NJ. I put that in because before I have had someone get quite upset at me for using numbers of people to describe the size of the NJ and this very issue of houses.
So you can see a bunch of people there and we know that over the years most people never made it past age 12 many never past age 8 so most of the people in heaven are children. That would go with the scripture "such is the kingdom of heaven". (yes I imagine it also is about being childlike in faith but it could have a dual meaning. It could also refer to children making up the majority of the population there.) (I image God would let them stay children as a great gift to them. I imagine that he would age babies and those under maybe 2 to various ages. I ADMIT I HAVE NO PROOF OF THIS AND CAN NOT PROVIDE ANY VERSES FOR THIS).
As far streets while the word in revelation is translated only as street in all other books it is plural and even as street with no s it can be plural. If I say “Independence is a wonderful town the street is made of asphalt and the sidewalk is made of concrete” you wouldn’t think I was talking about only ONE street or ONE sidewalk would you?? Of course not you would know I meant ALL the streets and ALL the sidewalks. The same could be said in this case.
About 'no more sea' and the oceans in the Eternal Earth:
As seen below in Richard C. Trench’s synonyms the word Thalassa used in the Revelation 21 passage is most often used of the sea as contrasted with the land i.e. the smaller seas, it is especially used to designate the Mediterranean and Red seas, where the word Pelagos is not used of such seas but only of the deep seas such as the Atlantic. So I would venture to say that the oceans will be in the eternal earth so the only question will the smaller seas still be there or not. Will only the Red or Mediterranean seas be removed?? Or given Israel is the location marker for the bible could the Levantine Sea be the only part of the Mediterranean be meant???
Also the sea is often symbolic of the heathen so it could be that there are no more unbelievers.
Emphasis Added in the below.
xiii. θάλασσα, πέλαγος.
The connexion of θάλασσα with the verb ταράσσειν, that it means properly the agitated or disturbed, finds favour with Curtius (p. 596) and with Port (Etym. Forsch. vol. ii. p. 56). Schmidt dissents (vol. 1. p. 642); and urges that the predominant impression which the sea makes on the beholder is not of unrest but of rest, of quietude and not of agitation; that we must look for the word’s primary meaning in quite another direction: θάλασσα, he says, ‘ist das Meer nach seiner natürlichen Beschaffenheit, als grosse Salzflut, und dem Sinne nach von dem poetischen ἅλςdurch nichts unterscheiden.’ It is according to him ‘the great salt flood.’ But not entering further into this question, it will be enough to say that, like the Latin ‘mare,’ it is the sea as contrasted with the land (Gen. 1:10; Matt. 23:15; Acts 4:24); or perhaps more strictly as contrasted with the shore (see Hayman’s Odyssey, vol. 1. p. xxxiii. Appendix). Πέλαγος, closely allied with πλάξ, πλατύς ‘plat,’ ‘plot,’ ‘flat,’ is the vast uninterrupted level and expanse of open water, the ‘altum mare,’1 as distinguished from those portions of it broken by islands, shut in by coasts and headlands (Thucydides, vi. 104; vii. 49; Plutarch, Timol. 8).2 The suggestion of breadth, and not depth, except as an accessory notion, and as that which will probably find place in this open sea, lies in the word; thus Sophocles (Oed. Col. 659): μακρὸν τὸ δεῦρο πέλαγος, οὐδὲ πλώσιιμον: so too the murmuring Israelites (Philo, Vit. Mos. 35) liken to a πέλαγος the illimitable sand-flats of the desert; and in Herodotus (ii. 92) the Nile overflowing Egypt is said πελαγίζειν τὰ πεδία, which yet it only covers to the depth of a few feet; cf. ii. 97. A passage in the Timoeus of Plato (25 a, b) illustrates well the distinction between the words, where the title of πέλαγος is refused to the Mediterranean Sea: which is but a harbour, with the narrow entrance between the Pillars of Hercules for its mouth; while only the great Atlantic Ocean beyond can be acknowledged as ἀληθινὸς πόντος, πέλαγος ὄντως. Compare Aristotle, De Mun. 3; Meteorol. ii. 1: ῥέουσα δ᾽ ἡ θάλαττα φαίνεται κατὰ τὰς στενότητας [the Straits of Gibraltar], εἴπου διὰ περιιέχουσαν γῆν εἰς μικρὸν ἐκ μεγάλου συνάγεται πέλαγος.
It might seem as if this distinction did not hold good on one of the two occasions upon which πέλαγος occurs in the N. T., namely Matt. 18:6: “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (καὶ καταποντισθῇ ἐν τῷ πελάγει τῆς θαλάσσης). But the sense of depth, which undoubtedly the passage requires, is here to be looked for in the καταποντισθῇ:—πόντος (not in the N. T.), being connected with βάθος, βυθός (Exod. 15:5), βένθος, perhaps the same word as this last,Etym. Note. 9 and implying the sea in its perpendicular depth, as πέλαγος (==‘maris aequor’), the same in its horizontal dimensions and extent. Compare Döderlein, Lat. Syn. vol. iv. p. 75.
Paul Wilson
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