Also there was no more sea.The Nonconformist minister Alexander Maclaren interprets "a new heaven and a new earth" as meaning "a renovated condition of humanity" and suggests that "and the sea is no more" is "probably ... to be taken in a symbolic sense, as shadowing forth the absence of unruly power, of mysterious and hostile forces, of estranging gulfs of separation".

Referring to the island of Patmos where the writer experienced his vision, Maclaren continues, "The sad and solitary and estranging ocean that raged around his little rock sanctuary has passed away for ever".

[5] Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.The name John appears in the King James Version and New King James Version but is generally omitted in other English translations.

[6] 9Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, "Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb's wife."

[15] But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.The description of the New Jerusalem in many ways is in agreement with the models in the Old Testament and apocryphal literature (Isaiah 52:1; 54:11–12; 60; Ezekiel 40:2–5; 47:1–12; 48:30–34; Zechariah 14:6–21; Tobit 13:16–17), except for the absence of a temple in the new city.