In verses twenty-five and twenty-six the vision represented the gates of city as being always open: for there shall be no night there. The gates of the ancient cities were closed at night, and there was no admission to strangers without the city. But the gates of New Jerusalem should not be shut at all by day, therefore entrance to the city was always accessible. The vision was based on the destruction of the beasts of persecution which had been cast into the brimstone lake, and there were no enemies remaining to threaten the citizenry of the city. In the period of persecution the church had been hindered in the propagation and the proclamation of the gospel, but the night of tribulation had ended. The figure was related to the motion of the globe in orbit; its diurnal revolution causes the daily and annual changes in the sun which produce the alternation of light and darkness. But spiritually there would be no such rotation, for the night of the tribulation had come to end; there was no longer the hindering power of the heathen persecutors in the spreading of the light of the gospel--the darkness had been dispelled and the day had dawned for the church. It can be seen again that the literal application of these figures of speech would demolish the beauty of the vision as well as its truth in the spiritual application of the symbols. In the twenty-sixth verse the Seer saw the Gentile world entering into the church through its open gates under the world-wide commission: Go ye therefore, and teach all nations; and, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. (Matthew 28:19; Mark 16:15) And the stipulated terms upon which men of all nations should enter into the spiritual refuge of the city of the Lamb are included in the commands of the commission itself: He that believeth (the gospel) and is baptized shall be saved; and, Baptizing them in (into) the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost (Spirit). The vision represented the inclusion of the nations among the blessed saved in the church. The glory and honor of the nations, of verse twenty-six, as in verse twenty-four, referred to the conversion and Christianization of the heathen world. The fact that the vision represented that these kings would still be kings is yet another indication that it was not a vision of heaven. It meant that the heathen would find their way out of the darkness of paganism into the light of Christianity under the sway of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. The New Jerusalem would co-exist with the nations as “ all nations flow unto it” ; and accept Him who came to fulfill “ the desire of all nations” (Haggai 2:7) for the glory of God. The kings of the earth contributed to His glory in the conversion of the people of their nations to the Christ of this apocalypse.