Revelation 22:1-2

Revelation 22:1: “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

Given that this river has trees beside it, I would venture to guess that this is a real river and not a metaphor for something. I’m sure that there are people out there that ascribe some kind of allegorical interpretation to this passage, but I don’t think that is warranted.

The problem with interpreting Scripture allegorically is that you can make it mean whatever you want it to mean. After all, since you are the one that is assigning the meaning you can just pick whatever meaning you like. It could mean one thing to you and something different to someone else, and there is no way to resolve the dispute because the interpretation is imposed from the outside. In fact, once you start doing that the passage no longer has any meaning at all. It is just a blank piece of paper that you can use to say whatever you wish to say.

If the Bible does not come out and say “this is symbolism and here is what the symbolism means”, then I am extremely reluctant to apply an allegorical interpretation. Interpreting the Bible allegorically is almost always a very bad idea.

What we see in this passage is pretty simple: in the New Jerusalem (which is a real city) there is a river. In that river flows the water of life – which is actual water that you can drink. Beside this river is the Tree of Life, which is the very same tree (or the same type of tree) that was in the Garden of Eden. The Lord promised that those who overcame (meaning those who trusted in Him) would be allowed to eat of it, and there it is.

This tree bears fruit on a monthly basis. Each month it bears a different kind of fruit, which is interesting. The verse says that “the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations”. I don’t really know what that means, but it’s obviously important. That may be something that we don’t understand until the time comes.