When a book ages or is damaged, a book restorer can give the book new life. This professional book restorer takes viewers through the process of restoring a 120-year-old book of fairy tales (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYRXX0ykJMs). An online search will also list videos of book lovers creating custom covers for favorite books, turning worn-out paperbacks into unique hardbound books or hand-painting designs on the outer edges of the pages to create an image that is unique to the story.
As we read through Scripture, we see that God’s plan for redemption isn’t a plan to destroy and begin from scratch. It’s a restoration process that brings about something that is both familiar and brand new. Alexander MacLaren writes, “Into this renovated world the renovated city floats down from God. It has been present with Him, before its manifestation on earth, as all things that are to be manifested in time dwell eternally in the Divine mind, and as it had been realized in the person of the ascended Christ. When He comes down from heaven again, the city comes with Him. It is the ‘new Jerusalem,’ inasmuch as the ideas which were partially embodied in the old Jerusalem find complete and ennobled expression in it” (Alexander MacLaren, “The New Jerusalem on the New Earth,” https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/maclaren_alexander/expositions-of-holyscripture/revelation/the-new-jerusalem-on-the-new-earth.cfm).
