The ruined city Babylon is a city where things that used to happen don’t happen anymore. John’s description is under the rubric “no longer” (ou eti, used 6x in Revelation 18:21-24). In Babylon, music, crafts, milling, light, and weddings have ceased. The old has passed, the new has come, but the new isn’t something to celebrate.
Revelation’s other city is also a place of novelty, identified with the new heavens and new earth (21:1), the city over which the Lord speaks, “Behold I make all things new” (v. 5; the lovely, rhyming Greek phrase is Idou kaina poio panta). In chapters 20-22, ou eti again appears 6x, as the first things come to an end and new things appear. For new Jerusalem, the first things are not missed: Satanic deception of nations (20:3); the sea (21:1); death (21:4); mourning, crying and pain (21:4); curse (22:3); night (22:5).
In Revelation, as in the rest of the Bible, the city is a center of innovation. Whether novelty is good or bad depends on what “first” or “old” things are ending and what “new things” are coming to be.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
