There are actually many references in the Bible that support this idea, and up until the Earth was proven to be a sphere, those references were commonly used by the faithful, and especially by the clergy, to 'prove' that those heretics that proposed a spherical Earth  were 'Flat-Out' wrong, as God Hisself had done spelled it out quite plainly in His Holy Book for all to read and understand.

     Eventually, of course, all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't squish the Earth down flat again, and that was pretty much that.  Except...

     Those doggone verses in the Bible that cannot ever change.  They still plainly spell out "Flat-Earth" per God's only literary work to date, which is, per most fundamentalist Christians, incredibly infallible, even when it's absolutely, obviously wrong.  

     Of course, there are volumes and volumes of apologetics that attempt to dismiss it all away with semantic word games, but in the end, common sense and the history of the use of these passages by devout, authoritative, religious clerics over the centuries should give you enough understanding to see through the ruse pretty easily.

     After being tormented by the Church and the Bible for centuries, Copernicus and Galileo can finally rest easy.  I believe the rest of us should continue to remain a little nervous though.  I say that because I don't want you to lose sight of why I'm putting these pages together in the first place.  

     There are many, many, MANY people that would like very much for the United States to base it's laws on the writings of the Bible.  My first question is: How much truth does the Bible contain, that we should even consider such an option?  What happens if we really take a close look at it?  Can it stand on it's own?  Does it really have merit?

     This doesn't even touch on the fact that our government was intended to serve ALL American Citizens in a way that guarantees ALL of us may remain entirely FREE from ANY religious persecution, and that includes the persecution of those of any faith or even no faith at all, such as those who consider themselves agnostics, free-thinkers or even (gasp!) atheists.  But I digress...

     On this page, we'll explore just one of those little Biblical flat-Earth problems, called The New Jerusalem.  The story in Revelations goes like this:     

"One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, 'Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.' And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.

"It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

"The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls.

"The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia [1,500 miles] in length, and as wide and high as it is long. He measured its wall and it was 144 cubits [200 feet] thick, by man's measurement, which the angel was using.

"The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass." (Revelation 21:9-21)

     According to John, The New Jerusalem will descend from Heaven and land on Earth. But this giant city is supposed to be in the dimensions of a perfect, Godly cube that measures 1,500 x 1,500 x 1,500 miles.

     "How could a cube with 6 flat sides that's 1,500 miles wide, deep and tall land on the surface of a spherical planet that's only 8,000 miles across?" you might ask.  (I did...)  Either the cube or the planet would have to be seriously deformed, wouldn't it?!  

     Or...  Maybe...  Possibly... 

     John thought that the Earth was flat when he dreamed the whole thing up.  It's not really a big deal, other than the fact that the information in the Bible is supposed to have come through the writers from God Hisself.  Of course, if it came from God Hisself, that in turn begs the question, "Why didn't God know the Earth is a sphere, like a ball - not flat, like a pancake?"  (This same little problematic pop-quiz for God comes up with each of the Flat-Earth Bible dilemmas you'll find if you follow this LINK.)

     But wait, it gets just a little worse.  If each side of the cubical New Jerusalem is a full 1,500 miles in length, then we simply apply Pythagorean Theorem and find the hypotenuse between it's opposite base corners thus:

 1500² + 1500² = 2121.32²

    Let's simply round it off to 2,121 miles from corner to corner to make it simple, eh?

     At those dimensions and measurements, the corners of The New Jerusalem are some 15 miles up in the sky when it's center is touching the Earth unless, of course, the thing crushes and compacts the living hell out of everything under it to a depth of 15 miles deep!  Ouch!!  If it somehow were to manage to uniformly squish the Earth even half that much though, the corners are still some 7 and a half miles above the planet, while the middle edge area between the corners is still some 4 miles high.  

     Got your ladder handy?  The really tall one?  Cause the 12 doors to the place are up along there somewhere.  Three on each side, one for each Hebrew goat-herding tribe, remember?  By the way, if you're a Christian, which Hebrew goat-herding tribe are you from?  You wouldn't want to go to the wrong door.

     The problem reminds me of the story of the building of the Verrazano Narrows  Bridge in New York City.  It involves the curvature of the Earth, though on a much smaller scale.  It's still relevant though as an engineering problem dealing with structures that involve such large areas of the Earth's curved surface, and may help to demonstrate the problem a bit.

     The bridge's monumental 693 foot high towers are 1 & 5/8 inches farther apart at their tops than at their bases because the 4,260 foot distance between them made it necessary to compensate for the earth's curvature.  Picture gluing two tacks to a ball, points up.  Each MUST point in a different direction in space.  No choice in the matter.

     At 2,121 miles across the base's opposite corners, The New Jerusalem engineering problem to accommodate a spherical Earth to the flat base of the structure (ignoring the fact that it is also 16,160 times taller than the bridge) is 2,629 times greater than the bridge problem engineers had to overcome for Verrazano Narrows!

     The apologists will no doubt inform us that even the biggest engineering problem is nothing to God, but keep in mind that this particular engineering problem amounts to making a concave spherical cube or a cubical concave sphere; a square circle with a giant bubble or a round square with a huge dimple; a straight curve maybe - get it?  Even for a god, this is a logic problem that seems to be without a valid answer within the laws of physics and certainly within the 3-dimensial world we live in where this is all supposedly going to take place.

     Other problems involve the mass of the object itself.  At the Bible-given dimensions, including thickness of the walls and materials used, the mass involved would cause it to deform in upon itself into a somewhat spherical nature, like a ball or a moon - not the cubical description given by John.  

     On top of that, the effects of The New Jerusalem's mass interacting with the mass of the Earth would cause global destruction through world-wide earthquakes, not to mention putting a SERIOUS wobble effect into the Earth's rotation that would change climates and cause untold chaos with the Earths magnetic fields, relationship with the moon and possibly even circumnavigation of the sun.  Because of it's sheer mass, it's a global killer, even if it settles slowly and softly onto the Earth's crust.  With that much mass, the madness would begin before it even touched down.

     Using dimensions to scale, allow me to demonstrate the sizes and relationships of the objects graphically with a couple illustrations that will allow you to visualize just how BIG this Biblically proposed block of stone and gold is in comparison to planet Earth:

     Let's put The New Jerusalem right smack in the middle of America; The Religious Right's Christian God's very most favoritest country in the whole, wide, evil-infested world.  The following map shows, to scale, just how much land mass it would take up at 1500 miles on each side.  Note that I crushed Bush's ranch, but spared Detroit.  Not that it probably matters much anyway.  He was probably in the White House at the time, choking on a pretzel while routing for Pat Robertson in a Celebrity Death Match Tournament on The 700 Club and continuing his re-write of the Dictionary.

     Of course, it's corners are still either 15 miles up in the sky, or it's crushed every hill, mountain, valley, stream, lake, fish, tree, human, building, town, and cow flat as a flit, while driving them all into the Earth's crust a staggering 15 miles deep which, by the way, is only a max in SOME places on the Earth of 30 miles deep to begin with.  The deepest ocean is 6.78 miles deep, to give you some idea.

     To provide a little more perspective, Mt. McKinley is the tallest mountain the U.S. has to offer with it's peak at 20,320 feet above sea level.  That's 3.8 miles high.  The New Jerusalem, at 1,500 miles tall, would be nearly 400 times the height of our tallest mountain.  Does that sound even remotely realistic to anyone, or do you think John simply had no idea what kind of problems physics, geology and square balls would present, since he thought the Earth was flat, and no god ever told him otherwise?

     Feel free to use your brain in this exercise, instead of the brains of the guys that are trying to get their religion into our politics, while relieving us of our money to support their crutches... um... I mean churches.

     Come to think of it, maybe we don't even need New Jerusalem to do us in.  Maybe our freedoms are already about to be crushed just as badly by our own politicians.  But don't you worry...  It'll be for our own good, and we'll eventually learn to love it.  Right after the Right gets rid of all those pesky, malcontented evil-doers that don't agree with them and God.

This essay generated an email discussion from a reader named Lisa.  
Her emails and my responses are below.

Hi,

I am a believer in God. I respect your opinions though. I hope not to offend you.
 
It is interesting, your theory on the New Jerusalem being shaped like a cube. This summer, as I was traveling with my husband, I began studying this exact thing. I was very puzzled at what John had said about New Jerusalem myself. I even mentioned to my son that I could not understand why New Jerusalem would be a cube. That is what it appeared John was saying. I wondered where this New Jerusalem would come from? Because it appears that the Bible says this Earth would be destroyed by fire. But, why a cube-shaped New Jeusalem? Why not a round planet, which would fit the design of the rest of the universe? I just didn't get it.
 
Unbelievably, I would get my answer in the next few days. What happened is... I took my children to a science museum in Atlanta. While we were there,we began to read the history of Physics they had displayed. We came to a startling article which revealed that Physicists had determined that the inner core of the Earth (which was already known to be solid) was 1500 miles across, wide and deep. A light bulb went on in my head. Just maybe what had been measured in the book of Revelations was a sphere.
 
No matter how you measure the sphere it would come out 1500 miles.  Even more interesting, the inner core seems to have its own rotation that is slightly faster than the outside of the Earth. Therefore, a lot of Physists refer to it as a planet within a planet. Another interesting point, the Physists seem to believe this iron core may be in crystal form, which is how it is described in Revelations.
 
My end result is... who knows? Maybe the inside of this Earth is New Jerusalem waiting to burst forth at the end of the ages and reveal a new and glorious planet that has spent years being fired under the molten iron inside the Earth. Thus when the Earth is destroyed by fire (maybe earthquakes from the molten lava inside of its ownself), maybe what would be left is that big rock inside.
 
The one question I did for sure get answered is that when the New Jerusalem is measured at 1500 miles wide long and deep it still can fit the description of a perfect sphere. Well, it something to think about and ponder anyway.  It really gave me personally an even stronger faith. Yet my faith does not really lie in proving the Bible, it lives in my heart. I believe that God's greatest law is love and to treat others the way you want to be treated. That would be true religion. How many of us ever trully lives that out. Our world would be so different if we did.
 
If you wanted to check it out about the inner core of the earth, you can just look in the internet under something like (Physics and center of the earth and 1500 miles).
 
Thanks for reading this. It is really interesting stuff to talk about I think.
 
Lisa

The Jews and Christians embraced this idea related to the cube, in particular, because a cube has 6 'perfect' sides, just as God created the Earth in 6 days, according to Genesis.  This idea of 'perfection' (as something fitting of 'Godly') in application to the 'perfect' New Jerusalem as a cube, seems to be in continuity with John's vision as described in Revelations.
 
You mentioned that, "No matter how you measure the sphere it would come out 1500 miles." True enough.  However, John specifically says "And the city lieth foursquare and the length is as large as the breadth" (KJV).  The NIV version, translated directly from the Ancient Greek in which it was written, says: "The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide." (NIV)
 
Your assertion, "The one question I did for sure get answered is that when the New Jerusalem is measured at 1500 miles wide long and deep it still can fit the description of a perfect sphere." is simply flawed in that:
 
1. John specifically describes it as square (or 'foursquare', depending on Bible version) and gives measurements and dimensions to support the description as a cube.
2. Spheres are measured by radius, diameter and circumference, not 'wide long and deep'.
 
You also speculated that, "Maybe the inside of this Earth is New Jerusalem waiting to burst forth at the end of the ages and reveal a new and glorious planet that has spent years being fired under the molten iron inside the Earth."  However, John says in 21:10, "And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God", contrary to bursting forth from the Earth itself.
 
For these and associated reasons, I find it most rational to take John's description, without embellishment, as a cube, just as described.
 
You might also find interest in this take on the whole thing: http://www.gate.com/~zardoz/heaven.htm
 
Nonetheless, I found your take on it very interesting from another perspective I have been exploring that has to do with 'apologetics'. 
 
Apologetics is the branch of theology that sets out with the predefined goal to 'prove' the veracity of the Bible (by any means) in order to allow the faithful to continue to believe it, contrary to any obvious problems (which is what it sets out to address).  This method seems to include twisting it just as far as the imagination can stretch in order to reach that predefined goal, whether the resultant answer makes sense or not.  I find that to be particularly fascinating in light of verses like Hebrews 11:1, as well as those that advise not to add to nor take away from the Bible, lest they corrupt it in doing so...
 
In this case, it seems a pretty far stretch to turn John's detailed description of a descending cube into one of a bursting sphere, in order to try to get around some of the apparent problems.
 
Thanks again for the interesting perspective!
 
All the best to you and yours, 
 http://www.buckcash.com/opinions/nj.htm

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