As tall as wide as long

 

 "And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal."  

Rev 21:16 KJV

In this scripture, John describes the place we call Heaven as being "foursquare," a city that was as wide as it was long.   In today's measurement, standards (12,000 stadia or furlough) are considered 1,400 miles.

1,400 miles by 1,400 miles. Wow, that's a vast area! 

But here's what gets my head spinning, all of the translations I've read also say it's height was the same.  1,400 miles high.

Have you ever heard anyone give dimensions to a town, state, country, etc, that included how tall it was?   I've never!

1,400 miles high!   Written by a man who had never left the ground.  Never flew in a plane - never glided above the clouds in a Boeing 747.  John was merely a ground man in a ground era.

The tallest mountain point in the Middle East is the peak of a volcano called Damavand, which is an impressive 3-1/2 miles high.  Yet, that's still relatively short in comparison to 1,400 miles high.

According to NASA, outer space begins about 50 miles above Earth.   Yet John's vision was of a city 1,400 miles by 1,400 miles by 1,400 miles. 

That's a vision that had to come from above.  I doubt John ever traveled 1,400 miles in his life. (The equivalent of traveling from Atlanta Ga to Albuquerque NM.) Those dimensions had to exceed his mortal thinking, as well as did many of the other things he wrote about in his visions from the Island of Patmos. 

So why was mentioning the height so important? As I said, I've never heard anyone give city dimensions that included height.  As a matter of fact, nowhere else in the Bible does height get mentioned as far as a city's description is concerned. 

After pondering this for a bit, I've concluded that God was giving us some insight as to how different things will be in Eternity - a place where our spirits live forever.   In a place where we'll no longer be mere Ground men, but as far as our freed Sprit men are concerned, height certainly becomes significant.  

"But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life."

Rev 21:22‭-‬27 NKJV

What a place that will be!!!!