QUESTION: I have read that Rev. 21:1-8 refers to the eternal state, and the remainder of the chapter to the millennial state. It does seem like it, but the last few verses rather puzzle me: "no night there." Will there be no night in the millennium, and does the last verse mean that all will be saved?
ANSWER: Rev. 21:1-8 is a continuation of the subject taken up in the latter part of the previous chapter, that is, the eternal state of the lost and saved that succeeds the millennium. Then in verse 9, the Spirit of God reverts to the millennium for the special purpose of showing the place that the Church, as the bride, the Lamb's wife, holds during that period. A description of it is given, as previously that of Babylon had been given.
One of the seven angels shows the prophet this scene as in the previous case. "No night there" has reference to the city, and not, we understand, to the earth. It seems from other scriptures there will be night and day on earth during the millennium. (See Gen. 8:22; Isa. 66:23; Jer. 33:20; Ezek. 46:1.)
In the last verse the inhabitants of the city are in question, and their title to be there is that their names "are written in the Lamb's book of life." As to the inhabitants of the earth, we are only told that they "walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it," as owning the heavens and the heavenly kingdom, the source of it all.
“The nations of them which are saved" refers to salvation from the temporal judgments on earth, not that they are individually saved from eternal judgment; on the contrary, the masses of these very nations, thus saved, apostatize at the end of the millennium. (See Ch. 20:8.)