Here is a head-scratcher for you ... where was Jerusalem before the first day? I'll give you a hint, there are many earthly towns named after the metacosmic Jerusalem, even one of them in New York State, USA ... even one town in Israel. The heavenly Jerusalem that I am talking about is not a part of this cosmos. It is beyond the seven days of creation, and even beyond this universe.

Revelation 21
... the former sky and the former earth had passed away (vanished), and there no longer existed any sea. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, ...
Revelation 3:12
... the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which descends from My God out of heaven, and My own new name.

I understand our fascination with the material cosmos, I really do. It is easy to think of something real only in terms with how we can see, touch, taste, or smell it.

When a physical blade scraps through our physical skin, we hurt. We are flooded by our senses that are only in tune with the material (and blind to spritual reality), and so it calls to us with the deception of true substance and reality, when it is nothing more than a figment of time in constant flux ... revealing its identity as transitory and fading. That physical blade, was space dust, then magma, then ore, then a fender, then a can, then a bullet, then a brake-pad, and finally made into a blade. What will it be 100 years from now? 1000 years from now? Its identity is only founded on the figment of temporal illusion. In other words, its identity changes over and over throughout time. When this planet is enveloped by the next supernova, or a blackhole churns this corner of the galaxy again, that physical blade, that seemed so real ... will cease to impress from the grand scope of time. Even less impressive is the creation, with revelation of the Eternal.

Psalm 90:2
Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.

The deluge of sensitory input through our five senses, convinces us that only what is physical is what is real. Our minds are given over to materialism, to the point that we begin to think of God's Spirit as something that is less than what is physically apparent. Our materialistic minds lend Spirit less credit as a substance than a faint vapor. Only because it is not seen, nor felt, not touched, nor tasted. Spirit is merely subtle to our senses, it is completely invisible to us ... inaudible ... and immaterial. Yet the mystery is that it is far more substantial than anything that is visible, material, or audible. The Great I AM is that He is that He is. And the creation simply comes and goes ...

So, understand that I can't go along with theology that deminishes God's promises to something as trivial and faint to me as a merely physical material hope and promise, something for our eyes to behold, and hands can touch, and our nose can smell. To me that would tarnish the surpassing luster of what I know of Spirit that is far surpassing what is detected by our physical senses. I view those notions as materialisticly pandering, and carnal invention, and spiritually blind.

2 Corinthians 4:18
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

1 Corinthians 2:7-11
No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"— but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.

If an idea of the Kingdom is what I can see with my eyes (like a physical city on a physical planet) then why would I want to gaze at something that cheap and temporary? What is "revealed to me by His Spirit" are things that "eyes cannot see," "nor ears hear," "nor minds conceived." The glory that I am destined for is "before time began" ... even Eternal Life - God's own Life.

Jerusalem, Israel as a residential town, seen with physical eyes, yet it is perisible and transitory, not eternal and absolute as God's Kingdom. The "heavenly Jerusalem" where my hope lies does not have a population of a million, nor billion, nor trillion. The population is 1, for it is the "City of God" and the glory of the nations will be brought into it.