The gates are pearl because pearl is created in response to suffering. The "pearl" in our nature is built layer upon layer as we patiently bear the cross that has been assigned to us. As God sends the grace to bring us through the day in victory, another layer is added to our pearl.

The pearl in us is hard material, not easily changed, because it is formed at the deepest level of consecration—the secret place of the heart of the saint where God and he work out the transformation day after day. The gates that control entrance into the city are of the highest quality pearl.

It is only by prolonged patience in tribulation that we become capable of serving as a door through which the poor and needy can be admitted to the Presence of God and the Lamb.

The new Jerusalem is the eternal resting place of the Ark of God's Presence. The city is perfectly proportioned and of incredibly immense size. The light of God and the Lamb fills the city and the whole earth.

The pure light, the beauty of holiness, the Glory of God, renders unnecessary the light of the sun and moon, as was true during the first three days of creation.

The Bride of the Lamb will be perfect in every detail. No longer will God be required to compromise His deepest wisdom and desires in order to dwell among His children. The Church will have been so wrought upon by the Holy Spirit of God that it will be a suitable dwelling place for the Lord God Almighty and His Son, Christ.

No adjustment will be needed. God will be perfectly at home in every area of His Temple. As the billions upon unnumbered billions of eternities go by, the house of God will become increasingly imbued with all that God is until God and His Temple are indivisible—one magnificent Divine Entity.

God will be in His house, and His house will be in God, to the degree that separation no longer is possible. This is true marriage. Physical marriage is a type of the one true marriage, which can exist only between the Lamb and His Wife.

The reason for the delay in God coming to us and dwelling in us, in accordance with His eternal purpose in Christ, is that we have not as yet been fully prepared. We are being brought to maturity in the present hour.

Our service to God and mankind throughout the thousand years of the Kingdom Age will result in an ever-increasing refinement of our nature because of our close contact with Christ. One fact is certain—the new Jerusalem will not descend in radiant beauty until after the thousand-year Kingdom Age, the Millennial Jubilee, has been completed.

We are being prepared today for the abiding of God in Christ in us.

God dwells in Christ in His fullness because Jesus is a perfectly prepared place for God. In all of Jesus' ministry on the earth we see God the Father. Jesus always is perfectly at rest in the Father, and through Him the Father is able to dwell among men.

To be continued.