197. Revelation 21 gives the following description of the New Jerusalem: In it there was a light like a highly precious stone, such as a jasper stone, that looked like a dazzling crystal. The New Jerusalem had a wall that was great and high and had twelve gates and twelve angels by the gates, and the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel were written there. The wall was 144 cubits high, which is the measure of a human being, that is, of an angel. The construction of the wall was of jasper, and its foundation was made of every precious stone: jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprase, jacinth, and amethyst. The gates were twelve pearls. The city itself was pure gold, like clear glass. It was square. Its length, width, and height were equal: twelve thousand stadia. And so on.

All these details need to be understood spiritually, as we can see from the fact that the New Jerusalem means a new church that is going to be established by the Lord, as I showed in Revelation Unveiled 880.

Since "Jerusalem" here means a church, it follows that all the things that are said about it as a city - about its gates, wall, foundations under the wall, and their measurements - contain a spiritual meaning, since the attributes of a church are spiritual.

In Revelation Unveiled 896-925 I have shown what these things mean. It is unnecessary, therefore, to demonstrate their meaning once more. It is enough for us to know that there is a spiritual meaning within all the details of this description like a soul within a body. Without that meaning we would understand nothing about the church from the details written here: for example, the city being made of pure gold; its gates, of pearls; its wall, of jasper; the foundations of its wall, of precious stones; the wall being 144 cubits high, which is the measure of a human being, that is, of an angel; and the city being twelve thousand stadia in length, width, and height; and so on.

People who know correspondences and who therefore recognize the spiritual meaning understand these details. For example, the wall and its foundations mean the teachings of that church that are based on the literal meaning of the Word; and the numbers 12, 144, and 12,000 mean everything about that church, that is, all that is good and true in it combined.

The Bible generally uses two different terms for large groups: “people” and “nations.” When it uses “nation,” it is talking about a group with the desire for good as its ultimate underlying motivation; when it uses the term “people” it is talking about a group whose deep motivation is to seek true ideas and concepts. As with all symbolism in the Bible, this can be also used in a negative sense, to describe groups with the lust for evil or those driven by false concepts. It can also be used in the abstract, with “nation” representing desires for good themselves and “people” representing true ideas themselves. In a way, these meanings make sense if we look at the two words themselves. “People” brings to mind a collection of individuals, and that is somewhat how it is with ideas -- you can have many of them that inter-relate, but also stand somewhat on their own, individually. “Nation” is a more unified term, reflecting the way that a desire for good tends to unify other feelings.