Neither. You are the last person who should try to tell me what I believe. I will tell you what I believe. And you will misunderstand what I tell you. That's how it has always been with you.
Nope. I'm not saying that at all. We do not yet have immortal bodies like we will in the eternal age to come. I am saying we are now SPIRITUALLY in the new Jerusalem even though we are not yet in it with immortal bodies. Do you have any concept of SPIRITUAL things?
Spiritual means of God, instead of "of sin". Spiritual does not mean symbolic, does not mean the opposite of physical, nor even the opposite of literal. Only Paradise is that heavenly Jerusalem. There is no city, until this current creation is declared over, which you term this current age. There is no New Jerusalem until the next age or creation (reality). Because John did not see this NHNE until after the old has passed (fled) away.
I have never seen you claim that Revelation 21 is just another parallel view, going back to the Cross. You seem to deny that the Cross was a new age distinct from an old age. I don't think any one thinks, heaven and earth fled away in the first century except hard core Preterist, and you deny being one, even though you agree on some points, no?
Jerusalem being the heavenly mother of us all, is a metaphor, as is mount Sion / Zion. The OT saw heaven as a duplicate of what was on the earth, including a heavenly temple. Yet you deny they have physically been enjoying any physical attributes, even if there was an actual city.
"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."
"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city."
Is this a literal physical city that comes to earth? Or does it turn physical once it gets to the earth?
No such thing as immortal bodies. No verse claims humans were created with immortal bodies on the 6th day, nor ever given immortal bodies. But call them what you want. A physical body is still a physical body. In the image of God we are equally a physical body with a covering spirit.
The point is that you deny a physical body now in Paradise, but deny a future physical city as well. Receiving Adam's original physical body was the redemption obtained at the Cross. They physically came out of their graves never to physically die again. Paradise is that heavenly country that contains the physical tree of life. Their bodies don't need to eat from that tree to sustain life. The point is that both are as physical as the day God created mankind and on the day God planted a physical tree of life in the Garden of Eden. That God given body of physical flesh has never changed.
But God changed out that body you call immortal with a body of death many call mortal. I just call it a body of death. That corruptible body of death was passed down to all of Adam and Eve's offspring. But when the soul leaves that body of death, it is made alive by putting on God's permanent incorruptible physical body. That is what 2 Corinthians 5:1 explicitly states.
"For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
The sin covenant with death is dissolved, and the redemption of the body is complete at the moment of physical death for all the redeemed. They now enter that heavenly country of Paradise.
They are physically seated with Jesus, serving God day and night in that heavenly temple. They do have access to the tree of life. God has that New Jerusalem prepared for them, when the time comes, and the entire church descends to the earth. Why is this physical future so hard to accept, when you have no issues with a physical creation in Genesis 1 and 2? Creation is and was equally spiritual because it came directly from God, and could interact with God. Both angels and humans sang and shouted out God praises during that first Day of the Lord.
You call it an eternal age. If you do not see it as a new heaven and a new earth, then that New Jerusalem is a physical creation in eternity waiting for us. But the NHNE has a beginning just like this OHOE started in Genesis 1. Either way, we have no access to eternity, only God exists in eternity. But the physicality of heaven is just as real as the physicality of earth. If God moved Paradise from the earth and it is now a part of heaven, the physicality did not change, but the location changed. The Tree of life started out on earth, but it is now in heaven. It is going to return to earth, but that is all physical aspects of creation, not just some spiritual excuse many use to describe physical reality they deny is physical.
