Soon shall we reach that happy land where partings and changes and storms shall be ended! Jesus will always keep us above water there. No tempest howls along the peaceful shores of Paradise. In this mortal state we have too much of this Earth is constant only in its inconstancy, but in the heavenly state all mournful change shall be unknown, and with it all fear of storm to wreck our hopes and drown our joys. Slave of the fickle winds and the moon, its instability is proverbial. The sea is the emblem of change with its ebbs and flows, its glassy smoothness and its mountainous waves, its gentle murmurs and its tumultuous roarings, it is never long the same. In this sense there shall be no more sea. Leagues of rolling waves lie between us and many a kinsman whom tonight we prayerfully remember, but in the bright world to which we go, there shall be unbroken fellowship for all the redeemed family. To John in Patmos the deep waters were like prison walls, shutting him out from his brethren and his work there shall be no such barriers in the world to come. In the new dispensation there will be no division-the sea separates nations and separates peoples from each other. Is not the text to be read as a metaphor, tinged with the prejudice with which the Eastern mind universally regarded the sea in the olden times? A real physical world without a sea is mournful to imagine it would be an iron ring without the sapphire which made it precious. The new heavens and the New Earth are none the fairer to our imagination, if, indeed, there is literally to be no great and wide sea, with its gleaming waves and shelly shores. “And the sea was no more.” Scarcely could we rejoice at the thought of losing the glorious old ocean. In my book We Shall See God, which contains 50 devotionals with insights on Heaven from Charles Spurgeon, he writes: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Revelation 21:1-4 He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. “Diarrhoea, chicken pox, measles, typhoid fever, and cholera are currently spreading across Iraq because of the water crisis, and the government no longer provides vaccines to its citizens,” Naseer Baqar, climate activist and field coordinator at Tigris River Protectors Association in Iraq, told the BMJ.If you’ve ever spent a leisurely day on a golden beach or sailed across the vast ocean or observed the beauty of God’s underwater creatures, you may be surprised that John, taken in a vision to the far future, says that on the New Earth “the sea was no more.” But when we take a closer look, we see that perhaps there will be great bodies of water there after all. A recent report published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) investigated how a myriad of health emergencies are building in Iraq because people are struggling to get their hands on clean water. Parched for water, these countries could also be facing a looming public health crisis. These arguments have also prevented governments from effectively reaching any solution to the problem. As the rivers start to struggle, international disputes over access to water are already heating up. Millions of people across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq rely on the Tigris-Euphrates for water. The strain is already starting to show, but a total collapse of the river system would spell disaster for the region. Meanwhile, demand for freshwater continues to rise, and the region does not coordinate its water management because of different interpretations of international laws," explained Famiglietti. "The rate was especially striking after the 2007 drought.
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