In order to create such a perfect world God needs a royal priesthood, a holy city, that can govern the new world, maintaining iron righteousness, fiery holiness, and stern, strict obedience to the Father. Such a priesthood cannot be formed in any manner other than by bringing its members through barrenness, through deprivation, through the removal of reliance on the world for security and survival, through complete purification from sin, and finally through the destruction of self until it is Christ who is living rather than the individual.

The royal priesthood will be God in Christ in the saints governing and blessing the saved of mankind. This is the Kingdom of God.

Notice how God deals with the royal priesthood to teach them dependence on Himself:

Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land that the LORD promised on oath to your forefathers. Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:1-3—NIV)

Notice also that when God is forming the members of the new Jerusalem, the tabernacle of God that will dwell among people on the new earth, He causes them to suffer barrenness. God intervenes in the normal course of their lives, as He did with Abraham and Sarah, Elkanah and Hannah, Zachariah and Elizabeth, so when they bring forth the Glory of God it will not be by human means but Divine intervention. God wants His Glory to be revealed in humans, and this requires considerable pain and stress on the part of the chosen humans!

But the fruit proceeding from the suffering individual is abundant—worth waiting for!

Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband, says the LORD. (Isaiah 54:1—NIV)

Is God dealing with you in this manner? Then rejoice! You yet shall be part of the new Jerusalem if you wait patiently for God and do not break out of the prison He has placed you in.

O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will build you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with sapphires. I will make your battlements of rubies, your gates of sparkling jewels, and all your walls of precious stones. (Isaiah 54:11,12—NIV)

What are we saying? We are saying today the Lord is looking for those who will forget about most of the unscriptural notions of today's Christians and return to the Lord, separating the precious from that which is worthless. Those who do this will be a minority, a Gideon's army. But it is these who finally, through the Presence and Power of God, will win victory for all Israel.

To be continued.