It requires a 'very powerful microscope' to see the story of 'future paradise' in Old Testament bible! First of all there is absolutely no story of people 'going to leave in heaven' at all! People read 'prophecy of paradise' into verses that actually talks of just a future 'good world' that is not too difficult at all to attain. It is nothing like the otherworldly 'heaven and hell' that is so entreanched in the modern mindset. According to the OT writters, the so called 'future paradise' is just an extension of this very same world we leave in. As we will see, these 'future paradise' prophecies, looks more like failed prophecies!

The ancient Jerusalemites seemed to have been obsessed with being the 'darlings of the world'! Their ultimate dream was to build a city of jewels. The highways would be made of gold and every utensil in every home would be made of gold! People from all over the world would make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem every year, taking all manner of gifts to that place. Children will be singing and playing harps on the streets with great joy. This would take place throughout the eternity! The Jewish 'messiah' would be the king of all the world. This king will have magical powers, even shinning and lighting the city! The weakest Jerusalemite would be as strong as David, and the strongest, i.e messiah himself, would be just like God himself! This 'glorified' future Jerusalem is what would come to be called 'the new Jerusalem'.

The NT bible is actually unleashing an era of 'spiritulizing' what looks likes 'failed prophecies' of OT. One of them is the very 'city of Jewels' at the heart of Palestine. By the time Jesus came, it had become clear that Jerusalem was not heading to become 'the city of jewels' where everyone on earth would struggle to make a pilgrimage to every year, as the prophets said. On the contrary, it was 'spiralling downwards' into a city of barbarians that murdered 'every righteous person' sent to it! Far from a 'darling of the world', it had become loathsome to the world! Latter, Jesus's desciples would term it as the contemporary 'Soddom and Ghomorra'. What a better term to call a place where the very expected 'messia' was ironically murdered. The ground was fertile for Jesus's otherwise too surprising declaration that not a single stone would be left on top of the other! What would be 'the city of Jewels' would actually become a heep of rubbles one more time! It seemed the prophecies would not come true!

Of course Jesus's prediction of destruction of Jerusalem was surprising even to his close disciples. This is the reason they thought that Jesus was predicting 'the end of the world'! There was no way Jerusalem could be destroyed! The Messiah would come in the mid way and terribly defeat the in comming army. The threat to destroy Jerusalem was actually the beginning of the 'city of Jewels' fulfilment! The 'immediate comming of messiah' misunderstanding is so deep that even Jesus himself seems to have missed it! But according to some people, the prophecy of the triumphant Jerusalem was more like a promise. This was conditional on at least one thing: the Jews had to at least welcome the very 'Messiah' whose reign from the city would unleash the golden era! However, nothing like this is apparent in the OT prophecies. They all seem to be unconditional declarations of what must happen in future.

This is one of the main reasons Jews even up to now rejects Jesus as to have been the promised Messiah. Jesus looks more like a 'defeated messiah', an oxymoron, according to the prophecy, where the 'weakest Jerusalemite' was supposed to be as strong as David. The Jews accuses Christians for quoting the old testament scriptures out of the context, when claiming that Jesus full filled the prophecies. However, when you close exermine them, you find that a contextual reading of the prophesies indicates failed prophecies! In the last parts of Zechariah, we read the triumph of Jerusalem over its enemies, with the help of the ' God-like king' who would dwell there. According to the Jews, this prophecy is yet to be fulfilled. This is true. No such a 'triumph of a city' has ever happened in history. However the historical context of Zechariah's prophecy is clearly the ancient times! In war time, Zechariah sees only swords, horses and spears, nothing even remotely like a modern warfare! He only sees ancient empires like Assyria, Egypt etc. Like all the prophets, he envisions 'Gathering of Jews' only from such places as Assyria etc. In today's world, most so called Jews are in USA, Russia etc. If we were to say Zechariah's prophecy applies to a future event, then we must not read it literally or within the context! We must read it like Christians did! By the way we see the same anachronism in the famous 'they will beat their swords into plowshares'. We now know that before humans did that, they first hammered them into guns, humvees, jet fighters etc. Reading literally, these prophecies seems failed ones!

Jews are mistaken in reading the last parts of Zechariah etc! Christian's view is better and in fact a way of saving it from being a failed prophesy! Zechariah does not mension a 'defeated Messiah', yes. He mensions only a triumphant one crashing the enemies of Jerusalem. But neither does Zechariah mensions the defeated Jerusalem! Reading Zechariah literally, and considering its historical context, it seems to be saying that the just built Jerusalem will never be destroyed again, just as it seems to be saying that the in comming Messiah will always be triumphant! But we know that Jerusalem felled miserably in 70 th AD and no 'Messiah' came to save it. To rescue Zechariah from being a failed prophesy, one must insert some over 2000 years of ruined Jerusalem that the prophet never saw! What is the difference between reading Zechariah this way and reading its 'messiah' prophecy as to have too included an over 2000 years of a 'defeated messiah' not mentioned in Zechariah?

Revelation chapters 21 and 22 is supposed to describe the 'heaven' often talked about by Christians. However we note that as described in Revelation, and also other parts of the bible, the 'heaven' differ significantly from the Christian story. The first glarring difference is that, it is not 'heaven' but the earth that is being described! Take a close look at this verse:

"24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it.27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life." Revelation 21:24-27

Obviously this is not 'heaven'. This 'city of jewels' is nothing but the continuation of the same Jewish dream of erecting a glittering city in Palestine! He (a Jew, of course) is talking about 'kings bringing splendour to it', which means the yearly pilgrimage during the 'feast of the tabernacle'. People from all over the world, so the writter says, will eventually bow to a Jewish kingdom ruled by their messiah! This is their ultimate dream! 'The Jews will rule all the world'. The people from all the world will visit Palestine to take gold, Jaspher, diamonds and all other 'splendours' to that place! If you don't do that, it will not rain in your country! This is not 'heaven'. This is almost the ordinary earth. There are still those who 'rule' (the nowJewish Christians) and the 'ruled'. There are still the 'impure' ones throughout the earth. It is only that they are not allowed to get to the city. So it is the ussual earth with the usual Jews/Gentiles (i.e 'the nations)! This worship of Yahweh, together with adoration of the Jews in a paradisic 'new earth' will go on for ever and ever! Eventually the whole universe will be centered around Jews and their God!

The other point that indicates that this is earthly city is the 'walls' and 'gates' anachronism. The 'wall' means we are still trying to prevent some notorious guys from breaking into it. This is anachronistic because the author did not envision our modern world of bombs, jets etc! In our world, cities nolonger have walls and gates. Secondly cities no longer invoke some sense of joy etc. mension 'city' nowadays and what comes to mind are vehicles, noise, smocks, stress etc. A city is a place where everyone is looking for money, everyone fear another person, everyone is selfish etc. In modern times, nothing is more absurd that saying that a city can possibly model some 'paradise'. It far more symbolizes some 'hell'! An idea of 'leaving forever' inside our cities sounds like an eternal torment!

This brings about another stark difference between the 'New Jerusalem' as written about in Revelation and the modern Christian's teaching about one. Notice that nowhere in Revelation is it written that the city is 'beyond human description' or 'no pen, no pensil or no mind' can describe the joy in the city. Or 'the city is beyond comprehension'. Infact the other does not even say that there is any Joy in the city! Modern Christians reads into it what they want to believe. The author only says there is no more pain, cry or death or mourning, period. He negates existence of 'negatives' without affirming any 'positives'. There is a reason for this!

Clearly 'comprehension', 'understanding' or 'description' is not a 'negative' on the same par with 'death' and 'mourning', yet modern 'spirituality' is so obsessed with them that it no longer comforts people with a promise of a world wherein there is no more death and mourning etc. Infact they say we will leave forever 'incarnating' in such miserable worlds! What promise do they offer to us? a world 'beyond comprehension' that one might breifly obtain by sitting cross legged or puffing some heavy dose of marijuana before you get back to the world of suffering. To modern man, 'understanding' is the problem! To modern man, 'heaven' is a 'place' of mental acribatics! It is a 'place' where all what you enjoy is seeing something happen that seems impossible to the mind, even if it means watching your child spirals into a black hole! He says 'hail, what a great experience! It reminds me of limitations of my mind'! What about the child? Er,..er, that might be karma, er,..er,,... who knows, 'it is beyond comprehension',... Modern man is lost, and this is one point I agree with these ancient guys whose ultimate dream was never experiencing 'something incomprehensible' but living in a golden city and dancing forever!