What Actually Is the New Jerusalem? .

The biblical story begins in a garden of delight, and then it focuses on our embodied God who physically died, rose again and is remembered in the material symbols of the bread and cup. Our hope is equally physical. We long for our resurrection, when we will live as whole people—body and soul—in the new Jerusalem on the new earth. This ending may be surprising, but it is a fitting climax to the story God has been telling all along. If we back up, we’ll see how the story began—with a…