The Book of Revelation ends with a description of the new, transformed world, whose spiritual center becomes the heavenly Jerusalem. Evidently, the transformation of nature and the appearing of the heavenly Jerusalem turn out to be two sides of one and the same spiritual process, by which the first stage of the history of the Kingdom is completed, a Kingdom that fully includes the world transformed by the breath of God. Apparently, this is precisely the first stage, after which another, new one will follow, the content and meaning of which still remain a mystery for us. It is clear only that with the coming of the Kingdom, life by no means stops developing; it only takes on certain new forms that are still little understood by us. One thing is clear: the "new heaven" and "new earth" mentioned by John imply the complete renewal of creation, a qualitative change in the very nature of our world. The apostle's mention of the sea, which "is no more" (v. 1), testifies to the same thing.

In biblical books the sea usually symbolizes chaos, as well as the forces behind it and that generated it, forces opposing God and striving to destroy the world God created. It is no surprise that in the new, transformed world there is no longer any place for these forces. And Jerusalem turns out to be the center of the new world, which is no surprise: after all, it is precisely with Jerusalem and the Temple that the Presence is connected, the Presence that made the Hebrew people the people of God. It is not by chance that in John's visions the Throne often takes on the features and forms of the Temple or the Tabernacle. Now, after the transformation, the Throne becomes the spiritual center of transformed creation, its meaning and focal point. The "new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God" (v. 2) becomes the symbol of this focal point.

In the new world, at last, what had been partly revealed in the visions of the great prophets of Israel has been fulfilled: the abyss that previously separated God from His people has disappeared, an abyss connected not so much with the incomparability of God and man, which is surmountable for God, as with human sinfulness, which only the person himself can overcome through repentance and conversion. And now, when human sin and the evil of the world have disappeared, nothing any longer hinders that fullness of communion with God which the righteous and God's witnesses so desired (vv. 3-4).

This communion with God, evidently, now includes not only the human being but all creation, which has become far more receptive to spiritual influences. Before, the world, permeated by evil, barely reacted to them; now it has evidently become more responsive to God's will, and at the same time more dependent on His influence. "I make all things new" (v. 5) applies, perhaps, not only to the fact of creation's renewal and transformation, but also to its very existence: now even more than before, it is determined by that breath of God with which the Kingdom is permeated. The world exists by being constantly renewed under the influence of its Creator, and if before this was hidden, now the spiritual freshness and newness of creation, revealed to everyone, testify to God no less brightly than the righteousness of the faithful testified to Him before. Thus in the new, transformed world, human testimony merges with the testimony of nature renewed by the action of God's breath.

John's words that God will "wipe away every tear" can be understood to mean that now, when the world has been completely transformed and there is no place for evil in it, the faithful have nothing left to cry about: now, in the fullness of the Kingdom, they are no longer threatened by any loss or any separation from those who are close and dear to them. Yet this is probably not the whole truth. After all, any utopia, even the most radiant and shining one, any project of the most wonderful and most just society, has never answered the question of what is to become of those who did not live, and will not live, to see the triumph of that very utopia.

In practice, fighters for a "bright future" quite often proved to be selfless enthusiasts, often ready to give not only all their strength but even their lives to accomplish something they themselves would never have any chance of seeing during their lifetime. But such enthusiasm itself testifies that the people who had it drew strength and inspiration not from that "bright future," which did not yet exist, but from some other source.

When it comes to the Kingdom, the problem, at first glance, is solved by the universal resurrection: through it everyone receives the opportunity to share in the Kingdom to which he was faithful in life. And yet: tears that have been shed cannot be taken back; what happened, happened, and past evil remains real to the same extent that our past is real to us at all. What, then, can be done about this? The answer here, strangely enough at first glance, may be the forgiveness and liberation of a repentant sinner from every sin, including sin committed consciously, which is given to everyone in the Kingdom.

Earlier, before Christ came into the world, it was possible to repent of any sin, but to be cleansed from it, to be freed from the consequences of what had been done, was possible only if the sin was not voluntary, if the will of the one who sinned had not spiritually fed the sinful act. In any other case the consequences of the sin weighed on the person who committed it throughout his life, and even after death the evil he had done did not disappear, sometimes affecting the people connected with the sinner, or the descendants both of the one who sinned and of the people connected with him.

This situation could be changed only by recreating the world anew. Or by bringing into it the Kingdom, which by its breath is able to transform it. But such transformation, which fully frees from the power of any sin, also means that Christ has the power to change not only the future, but the past as well. This is not surprising: in the Kingdom, it appears, past, present, and future relate to one another in a way that is not as linear as in the untransformed world.

But if that is so, then on the day of the Kingdom's triumph evil will remain neither in its eternal present nor in that past where evil still had a place before the Kingdom was revealed in all its fullness. It will not remain because the past itself will not remain: there will remain only that underside of the new world, where the evil that once possessed the world is driven out, that outer darkness of which the Savior speaks, which in John's vision is revealed as the "pit filled with fire," and the eternal present of the Kingdom, where there will be no place for any evil, whatever time it belonged to by the measures of the former world.

The end of time today appears to many people as some final catastrophe, after which, even if anything remains, it will certainly be unfit for any kind of life. The word "apocalypse" itself has come to mean the beginning of something terrible and at the same time endless and hopeless. But John, meanwhile, speaks of something else.

He speaks of a new age and of a world renewed by God's breath. Of a new heaven and a new earth. And this new world appears not somewhere in the cosmic distances, on another planet or in another dimension, but here, on our earth, beside us and around us. Nature does not disappear; it changes, acquires a new quality, and begins to function according to different laws.

One of the consequences of this changed functioning is the fact that neither illness nor death will have any place in the renewed world. This is not surprising: human nature is also changing. It is being renewed. And the main meaning of the changes taking place is that this renewed nature is no longer subject to evil. In spiritual life, evil manifests itself as sin; in natural life, as entropy. There is no place for either one in the renewed world. But if this is so, then there can be no place in it for sickness or death. Both are precisely typical examples of the triumph of entropy, disintegration, and degradation.

Of course, when the matter concerns a human being, one must speak not only of nature, but also of spirit. The human being is the only creature in nature whose life is determined not by the natural component, but by the spiritual one. Even in his present state, the human being as a natural creature depends strongly on his spiritual state. And in the new quality, after the transformation of human nature, this dependence becomes even stronger.

Now a person's physical state is completely determined by his spiritual state. And the spiritual state of a person living in the Kingdom is by definition full and whole. In other words, he lives a full life. The life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. This means that the physical life of such a person on the new earth under the new heaven will also, by definition, be full and whole. Without illness and death. In all fullness.