No More Sea

"I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea." (Rev.21:1)

More than once has it been asked if this text implies that in the Millennial world of the future, when Christ reigns as king and evil is progressively eliminated from the hearts of men, the seas will disappear and the entire planet become dry land?

A little thought shows that such cannot possibly be John’s meaning here. Without the literal sea all life, human, animal and vegetable, would vanish from the earth. No terrestrial life can exist without water. The rain comes down from the clouds, supplies man and beast and plants as it disappears into the ground, runs into streams and rivers which eventually fall into the sea, which is the great reservoir of water, is then evaporated by the heat of the sun and rises to form clouds which are carried by the wind and falls as rain again. This process must go on as long as the earth endures and there will always be sea, and no less in extent than it is at present.

The writer of Ecclesiastes knew this; "All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again." (Eccl.1:7 NKJV)

The mistake is in supposing that John in Rev.21 is describing the actual Millennial earth. He is not; he is describing a vision which is a symbolic picture of the Millennium in which each detail has a meaning. He saw a new heaven and a new earth, the old heaven and earth having passed away, and a wonderful city descending out of that new heaven, to settle on that new earth, made to look like a bride ready for her husband. Such a conception would be a bit difficult to translate into literal reality. What we have here is the fulfilment of God’s promise through Isaiah (65:17‑25) quoted and confirmed by the Apostle Peter (2 Pet.3:13) to the effect that the old world order dominated by evil, "this present evil world" as defined by Paul, (Gal.1:4) pictured by the old heavens and earth, is to be superseded by a new world order again as Peter says a "new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." (NKJV) It is this new world order, this Millennium headed and governed by Christ, which is to have "no more sea." What is the meaning of that allusion?

Peter’s expression "in which righteousness dwells" affords the clue. That world is one in which evil is quickly banished and will be no more. The Devil will be "bound" and powerless (Rev.20:2) and the evil forces of this present world order overthrown and destroyed. (Rev.19) There is no more any evil force or influence to deceive and injure humanity. Now the ancients from earliest times believed in a monster, the personification of evil, which dwelt in the depths of the sea, and to them the sea became the abode of evil. An allusion to this belief is found in Isa.27:1, where in the time of judgment the Lord will "slay the dragon that is in the sea." This is what John is thinking of. In that new world which he was seeing in symbolic vision there was no place for the Prince of evil, no sea from which he could rise up to ravage the world and worry mankind. The power of evil will find no place in the new heavens and new earth of the future.

May / June 1982 Issue