From Eden to the New Jerusalem uniquely captures the Bible stories that tell us who God is, while presenting to its readers a “meta-story” that captures what God is doing from beginning to end. It is this bigger story that answers questions like “why am I here?” or “does god really care about us?” or even “how’s this all going to end?” In From Eden to the New Jerusalem, T. Desmond Alexander takes us on a journey through the overarching meta-story of the Bible—God’s plan of redemption.
I especially loved Dr. Alexander’s first chapter, which deals with how God creates a garden temple in Eden. The author then follows this same theme throughout the Bible, until the book’s ending in the great garden city of the New Jerusalem. The Holy of Holies becomes the golden city that Abraham and the patriarchs had hoped for and died looking forward to. Readers—DTS readers in particular—will note that the author also emphasizes the church as being built into the new temple along the way.
Even so, the huge strength of this book are the hundreds of connections it finds between Bible passages. More often than not the author saw things I had missed in my own personal studies over the years, even while being a seminary student myself. As the author covers themes of sovereignty, evil, salvation, and the people of God, this meta-story of God’s grand plan seems so obvious and apparent that I wonder why I hadn’t seen it all along. Dr. Alexander has written a book that will help most of us add a greater dimension to our own Bible studies.