Zion and Jerusalem

Many times we see in the Ot. The names Zion and Jerusalem spoken of together.
We know the Prophets would speak of those places and what we could look for in times after they lived.
It appears that most people look at those prophecies as speaking to the earthly Zion and Jerusalem.
We see in Hebrews12, and Gal4,the teaching of the Zion and Jerusalem that are above.
How many of the Ot.prophevies are speaking of the Heavenly Zion and Jerusalem....especially after 70ad.
One example is Isa2:1-4.
The law is now going forth from the heavenly Zion and Jerusalem.
Can you think of others that speak of this heavenly blessing?

Iconoclast said:

How many of the Ot.prophevies are speaking of the Heavenly Zion...

Click to expand...

Born from above:

26 But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother. Gal 4

1 A Psalm of the sons of Korah; a Song. His foundation is in the holy mountains.
2 Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
3 Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah
4 I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon as among them that know me: Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia: This one was born there.
5 Yea, of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one was born in her; And the Most High himself will establish her.
6 Jehovah will count, when he writeth up the peoples, This one was born there. Selah
7 They that sing as well as they that dance shall say, All my fountains are in thee. Ps 87

7 `Thou mayest not wonder that I said to thee, It behoveth you to be born from above;
8 the Spirit where he willeth doth blow, and his voice thou dost hear, but thou hast not known whence he cometh, and whither he goeth; thus is every one who hath been born of the Spirit.` Jn 3 YLT

1 Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Jehovah.
2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not: lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.
3 For thou shalt spread aboard on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.
4 Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth; and the reproach of thy widowhood shalt thou remember no more.
5 For thy Maker is thy husband; Jehovah of hosts is his name: and the Holy One of Israel is thy Redeemer; the God of the whole earth shall he be called. Isa 54

I left off the most important one!:

"..."And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Gen. 3:15).....Here we have the beginning and germ of all prophecy." A.W. Pink

1 And a great sign was seen in heaven: a woman arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars;
2 and she was the child; and she crieth out, travailing in birth, and in pain to be delivered.
5 And she was delivered of a son, a man child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and unto his throne.
17 And the dragon waxed wroth with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her seed, that keep the commandments of God, and hold the testimony of Jesus: Rev 12

Chris Culver sermon notes;

The promise of Yahweh’s kingdom was the promise of His recovery of sacred space, and, within the Israelite context, sacred space was symbolized in Israel’s temple in Jerusalem.

This is the reason the prophetic witness to the kingdom has a primary focal point in the temple concept.

In that day the mountain of the Lord – symbolic of His dwelling place (Exodus 15:17)

17 Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.

18 The Lord shall reign for ever and ever.

– would be the greatest of all the mountains (Isaiah 2:1-3; Zechariah 8:1-3),

2 The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

2 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.

3 And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

zech8:
8 Again the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying,

2 Thus saith the Lord of hosts; I was jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I was jealous for her with great fury.

3 Thus saith the Lord; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the holy mountain.

rising and expanding to fill the whole earth

(Daniel 2:31-35, 44-45; cf.
44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.



also Isaiah 11:9). So Jerusalem (Zion) – the Lord’s symbolic throne – would be the center of the earth with all the nations and peoples coming into it (ref. again Isaiah 2:1-3, also 51:1-11, 62:1-12, 66:19-20 with Jeremiah 3:14-17, 31:1-6; Micah 4:1-7; Zechariah 8:19-23). And more narrowly, that great day would see the erecting of the Lord’s true temple with His glory filling His sanctuary forever (ref. Ezekiel 40-47, esp. 43:1-5 and 44:1-4; also Haggai 2:1-9; Zechariah 6:9-15).

pt2.
This principle became codified for Israel in the law of the central sanctuary (Deuteronomy 12:1-14); whereas all Canaan had been Yahweh’s sanctuary, now His presence resided more specifically on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

Because of his goal for his account, John begins his gospel in eternity past with a direct proclamation of Jesus’ deity (1:1-2). As true God, the Logos is the source of all created things, but He is equally the destiny of all things (1:3-13). The latter implicates His incarnational status as true Man:

The divine Logos became man in order to tabernacle among men (1:14). John’s peculiar word choice was intentional, evident in his subsequent proclamation that, while previously no person had ever seen God as He really is, now that is no longer the case. The “only begotten God” has come to explain (“exegete”) God to men by taking on their humanity in Himself and encountering them on that common ground (1:18).

Yahweh was now “tabernacling” among men – not in the form of a glorycloud behind a veil, but by His tangible, personal presence in the person of His Son. Thus John could declare that the grace and truth to which the Law pointed as it revealed Yahweh had now been realized in Jesus of Nazareth. Promise had yielded itself up to fulfillment (1:16-17). - This introduction provides the foundation for the rest of John’s account, and so leads immediately to his presentation of Jesus as the man indwelled by the Spirit (1:32-34) and therefore Yahweh’s true sanctuary (2:13-21).

So also John uniquely records the episode Jesus’ self-disclosure to Nathaniel in which He declares Himself to be the fulfillment of Jacob’s dream episode at Bethel (1:43-51; cf. Genesis 28:10-22).

In that incident Yahweh affirmed to Jacob that His covenant with Abraham had now passed to him; Jacob could depart the covenant land for Haran (the place from which Abraham had first entered Canaan at God’s direction) with full confidence that the Lord would go with him, provide for him, and bring him safely back to the land of his fathers. Though Jacob was leaving the covenant land, he wasn’t leaving the covenant God; Yahweh’s enduring commitment to His covenant stood fast, regardless of where His covenant son resided.

This promise to Jacob – who would become Israel – would later provide the foundation of hope for the nation of descendents bearing his name: The man “Israel” could lead his household from the covenant land into Egypt with full confidence that, at the appointed time, the Lord would restore Abraham’s covenant seed back to His sacred habitation (cf. Genesis 46:14, 50:1-13, 24-26; Exodus 3:1ff).

pt 3
[. Clowney observes: “The stairway was a picture in Jacob’s dream. But what the dream promised became a reality in Christ’s Incarnation. God came down in the person of His Son to dwell on the earth. Christ is the link between earth and heaven. He is the true Bethel, the House of God, Immanuel, God with us.” (The Unfolding Mystery) - ]


Because Jesus is the true and singular temple, He is also the fulfillment of the law of the central sanctuary. That law had prescribed a single place which God would claim for Himself (where He would “put His name”) and there alone He would manifest His presence by His Shekinah. If men were to meet with Him, they had to come to Him where He was. Jerusalem had been that place since David’s reign,
but with the coming of the true sanctuary Jerusalem’s status as Yahweh’s habitation had come to an end.

This is the point of John’s account of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman (4:1-26). Recognizing Him to be a prophet, the woman asked Jesus about the conflicting views of the Jews and Samaritans regarding where God is to be worshipped (vv. 19-20). Jesus’ response was that worship was no longer about a place but a spiritual reality. The Father sought worshippers, not at Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim, but in the spiritual “place” defined by Spirit and truth. So Greg Beale:

pt4;
“One need not go to the Jerusalem temple to be near God’s revelatory presence but only need trust in Jesus to experience that presence.
This is why Jesus says that the time was dawning when true worship would not occur at the Jerusalem temple, nor any other holy site,

but would be directed toward the Father (and, by implication, through the Messiah) in the sphere of the coming eschatological Spirit of Jesus.” Addressing the connection between this context and Jesus’ previous meeting with Nathaniel, Beale continues: “A link with heaven would be created by the Spirit wherever there was trust in Christ, and those so trusting would come within the sphere of the true temple consisting of Christ and His Spirit.” (The Temple and the Church’s Mission)


- John advances Jesus’ self-identification with the temple in his account of the Feast of Tabernacles (7:1-53). At the pinnacle of the feast Christ stood and proclaimed that all who believe in Him will find living waters flowing out of their innermost being (vv. 37-39)

This language clearly draws upon the prophecies of Ezekiel, Joel, and Zechariah in which life-giving water is shown flowing out of the Lord’s temple in the day when He comes to cleanse and renew His creation and establish His kingdom (ref. Ezekiel 47:1-12; Joel 3:16-21; Zechariah 14:1-11). Though this “living water” is said to flow out of the believer, it has its source in Jesus from whom the person “drinks” (v. 37). Being the true temple, He is the point of origination of the rivers of the water of life (cf. Revelation 21:22, 22:1-2).

pt5:
The promise of a redemptive and restorative theophany was the promise of the “kingdom of God.”

In this kingdom the Lord would at last fulfill the principle of life out of death – not physical life out of a barren womb or physical deliverance of a people from temporal bondage, but the recovery of spiritual life through the vanquishing of Creator-creature alienation and the recovery in perpetuity of true and full communion.


As it had been in the first creation, the prophets revealed that this work of bringing forth life into a “dead” world was to be accomplished by the Lord’s Spirit. At the appointed time, the Spirit would breathe life, not only into the dead bones of the house of Israel (Ezekiel 37:1-14; cf. 36:16-29), but the whole of Adam’s dead race (Joel 2:21-32; Micah 4:1-7).

More than that, He would renew the estranged and cursed creation in its entirety; what had been portrayed in the abundant splendor of Eden would be realized in consummate perfection (cf. Isaiah 32:9-20, 35:1-10).

pt.6:
But God’s intention in the incarnation wasn’t primarily revelatory; it was redemptive and restorative.

The eternal Son became man not simply to reveal God and man, but to reconcile God and man; the divine Word came into the world as a new Adam in order to be the foundation of a new creation and fountainhead of a new humanity.
The Father sent His Son for the express purpose that, through His redemptive work, He would reconcile to Himself all things in His creation, making peace through His self-sacrifice (Colossians 1:19-20).

At the same time, that universal reconciling work has its focal point in man, the image-son. The Father’s goal in having all His fullness dwell in His incarnate Son was that mankind should enter into its own created fullness by sharing in His likeness (Colossians 2:8-10, 3:9-10; cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18; 2 Peter 1:2-4).

Stated differently, God’s eternal design was that, through the unique Living One, His own life would flow out to the being created to be imageson. The Father’s goal is the obtainment of sons in the Son – a work of consummate renewal and reconciliation in which Christ would be the firstborn among many brethren (Roman 8:28-29; Hebrews 2:5-17).

His intent was that, as He lives, they, too, should live. But men enter into His life solely by faith in Him (John 5:24-27): They come to Him as the “resurrection and the life” (John 11:5-27) and feed upon Him as the “bread of life” (John 6:47-58).

The recovery of life first pledged in the protoevangelium has come in the Living One (Revelation 1:12-18).

He holds the power of life and death and confers life upon whomever He pleases, but He does so through the life-giving power of the Spirit – the Spirit who now operates in the world as the Spirit of Christ: “The first Adam became a living soul; the Last Adam a life-giving Spirit” (ref. 1 Corinthians 15:45-49).

God has recovered sacred space in the One who is the fulfilled sanctuary, but He has done so in order that humanity should become His everlasting dwelling in the Holy Spirit (ref. Ephesians 2:11-22; cf. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 2 Corinthians 6:14-16; Revelation 21).

pt.7
Yahweh would recover what humanity could not, but, just as He had sworn that day in the garden, He would do so through a man. Peace was to be recovered through a chosen descendent of Eve – a man later revealed to be the covenant Seed of Abraham and royal Branch of David.

This connection is most explicit in Isaiah’s prophecy, but extends through the other prophets as well (ref. esp. Isaiah 9:1-7; also 11:1-9, 42:1-13, 32:1-20, 53:1-55:13, 61:1-7; cf. Jeremiah 33:1-26; Ezekiel 34:1-31, 37:1-28; Amos 9:11-15; Micah 4:1-5:5; Nahum 1:11-15; Haggai 2:1-9; Zechariah 6:9-15, 9:9-12).

The prophets proclaimed that the promise of the kingdom was the promise of everlasting peace, and this kingdom was to be inaugurated by the Davidic king who is the Prince of Peace. For this reason, the gospel writers are careful to emphasize the theme of peace in their presentation of Jesus and His purpose in coming.

One aspect of this fulfillment that is often missed is related to Jesus’ role as the true Israel. As Yahweh’s chosen “son,” Israel was to live with Him in the intimate, unqualified devotion due a Father.

The covenant nation’s relationship with God was to be shalomic, but was instead characterized throughout its history by distrust, disloyalty, and lovelessness. Israel responded to Yahweh’s faithful husbandry with unashamed and unrepentant adultery; in every way, Israel failed to be Israel. In contrast, Jesus came as a truly devoted son, living the shalomic life Israel could not.

pt.8;
What the prophets intimated regarding the end of the second temple the New Testament gospel accounts explicitly proclaim. The arrival of David’s Branch indicated the passing of Zerubbabel’s temple, a truth that Jesus Himself affirmed by His words as well as His redemptive work. - After introducing Jesus as the incarnate Word who is the tabernacle of Yahweh among men (1:1-18), John records Jesus’ own declaration that He is the true sanctuary (2:18-22). So it was that, when a Samaritan woman later questioned Him regarding the place where men are to meet with God, Jesus explained that, with His coming, the worship of God was no longer a matter of geographical proximity, but authentic spiritual intimacy.
Jesus’ presence in the world meant the fulfillment of sacred space, and this meant the obsolescence of the temple in Jerusalem (4:1-24).
And what Jesus implied by His identity as the true sanctuary He made explicit by pronouncing Jerusalem’s coming destruction. The temple would indeed pass away, but not strictly by fulfillment; it, too, was to be torn down (Mark 13:1-2; cf. Luke 19:41-46). 188 - Jerusalem, as the “city of the great King,” and the temple, as His throne, were to be destroyed because of unbelief and rejection. Not recognizing the day of Yahweh’s redemptive visitation (cf. Luke 1:68-69),

Jerusalem was to again be made desolate, never to be restored to its former glory.

The reason was not the seriousness of her sin, but the fact of fulfillment. By virtue of Christ’s atoning death, resurrection, and enthronement as the Son of David, sacred space had at last been fulfilled. Zion was now to be restored, but as a spiritual dwelling and sanctuary rather than a physical one (ref. Isaiah 52:1-54:17).

The physical sanctuary – which had served to separate God and man as much as bring them together – had served its pedagogical purpose; true intimacy had been secured in connection with the true sanctuary, putting an end to the veil of separation between divine Father and image-son (Matthew 27:51).

Iconoclast said:

Many times we see in the Ot. The names Zion and Jerusalem spoken of together.
We know the Prophets would speak of those places and what we could look for in times after they lived.
It appears that most people look at those prophecies as speaking to the earthly Zion and Jerusalem.
We see in Hebrews12, and Gal4,the teaching of the Zion and Jerusalem that are above.
How many of the OT prophecies are speaking of the Heavenly Zion and Jerusalem....especially after 70ad.
One example is Isa2:1-4.
The law is now going forth from the heavenly Zion and Jerusalem.
Can you think of others that speak of this heavenly blessing?

Click to expand...

In the OT, we see that Mount Zion is a physical place, with a hill to the east of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and a hill to the west of Jerusalem all being thought of as Mount Zion. Broadly speaking people used the term to refer to the location where God existed, hence the "City of God."

Putting all that aside, let us consider the OP question, where can we find in scripture references using Mount Zion as the "Spiritual" location of God. The three periods are (1) where the saints who have passed away are now located, Hebrews 12:22, then when Christ returns (2) the Millennial location of Christ, Isaiah 2:2-3, and finally (3) the Eternal location, Micah 4:7.

Van said:

In the OT, we see that Mount Zion is a physical place, with a hill to the east of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and a hill to the west of Jerusalem all being thought of as Mount Zion. Broadly speaking people used the term to refer to the location where God existed, hence the "City of God."

Putting all that aside, let us consider the OP question, where can we find in scripture references using Mount Zion as the "Spiritual" location of God. The three periods are (1) where the saints who have passed away are now located, Hebrews 12:22, then when Christ returns (2) the Millennial location of Christ, Isaiah 2:2-3, and finally (3) the Eternal location, Micah 4:7.

Click to expand...

Good input Van.
I find it edifying as time permits to list on a legal pad all verses and see which are physical on earth, and which are speaking of the new Jerusalem, and Zion.