"Then I saw "a new heaven and a new earth," for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea."

– Revelation 21:1

This verse has always bothered me. Off and on again throughout the years I was frustrated and sometimes annoyed to learn that God would apparently be removing the seas in the great re-creation of the heavens and the earth. One of my struggles was that I assumed a faithful literal reading required one to accept that the seas would disappear. That’s what it says right there in Revelation 21:1 and one could not avoid it. Still it seemed incoherent and somehow against the tone and tenor of God throughout scripture.

Of course my first error had been my poor understanding of what it means to interpret scripture literally. To literally interpret scripture is not to take the text as it has been translated into your chosen mother tongue and transliterate it onto your current understanding of things…this is a poor reading of the text. A truly literal understanding of scripture (or anything for that matter) means to have a firm grasp of the truth that was intended to be communicated by the author of the text. After all if we are after anything from scripture we are after truth (for I am the way, the truth and the life…). Let me give you an example…Jesus says in John 4:10 –

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

A literalistic (not literal) understanding of this would suggest that Jesus in someway had access to some sort of physically alive water (H2O) that one could drink and it would remove all thirst forever. Something perhaps like Hebrew Gatorade. It sounds ridiculous does it not? Of course Jesus is using a metaphor (symbolic imagery) to speak of God himself who is described in Jeremiah as "a spring of living water". If one were to read the Jeremiah description of God literalistically one would then assume that God, was wholly and truly an actual spring of actual living water (H2O)…once again we know this to be descriptive of God’s offer of eternal life and his life giving nature in general.

If we take these concepts and a better understanding of what literal means and apply it to Revelation 21:1 we are still a little stumped are we not? We need to understand the truth the author was trying to communicate with that verse and the removal of the seas in the new creation. To gain a sense for this one needs to understand how the seas were understood by the ancients. What did the sea represent to the audience who originally received this text in the first century AD?

Well according to Psalms 69 and 148 the seas were made to glorify God as part of the created order. We also know from ancient sources that the sea represented disorder and chaos…things which were seen as against God who represents order. Further to this the sea in heaven (why no sea on earth and only in heaven?) is described in Revelation 4:6 and 15:2 as "a sea of glass". A sea of glass is a sea which is perfectly still, completely under control and the only kind of sea that would be ordered. We should also remember that Revelation is written in the style/genre of apocalyptic literature which delivers truth in a highly symbolic way.

In essense then what we read in Revelation 21:1 in light of these other verses and the symbolism of sea (thalassa in Greek) is not the disappearance of the seas in the new order but rather the disappearance of chaos and disorder for this is what the sea represents to the original readers. While one could argue that if the sea of glass in heaven represents order why would God not have simply transitioned the earthly seas to seas of glass. I can only imagine that it is because God wants to ensure the reader understands that chaos and disorder are not simply reworked but completely destroyed.

At any rate I am pleased that the seas will continue in the new creation and that chaos and disorder will disappear.