The Garden has become a City

"In the Bible, God's people are given great hope. God's people being in a garden (Gen. 2-3) but end in a city (Rev. 21-22). The garden is Eden, and God created it to be a perfect environmental for those made in his image. It had everything humans would need, form food to work to companionship. Most of all, the garden enjoyed God's own presence, and God enjoyed unbroken fellowship with his people in the garden.

Sin destroyed the fellowship between God, man, and creation. But the destruction made way for an even grander display of God's glory in the church. In another garden Christ faced Adam's choice--to follow his own will or the will of his heavenly Father. In God's mercy and grace, Christ-, the second Adam, chose to follow God's will and to take him at his word. What followed was the most terrible suffering by the only person ever undeserving of such suffering. Then, after he had borne the sins of his people as a substitute, and after he had exhausted the claims of God's wrath against them, Christ was raised in victory over sin and death. He then poured out his Spirit and created his church. 

From there, God's people have spread around the world to share the good news of Jesus Christ. The mission of the church will succeed. Jesus promised his disciples that the gates of Hades would not prevail against his church (Matt. 16:18). Christians may wonder at God's patience with the church and fear for our own poor stewardship of the church, but we cannot be anything other than confident about the church. It will succeed. The church is God's plan and purpose.

The culmination of history is pictured in the end of Revelation as a heavenly city, an eternal society of light in which God himself is personally present. The fellowship of Eden has been restored. Only this time the number of inhabitants has been multiplied many millions of times over, as has the intimacy of fellowship since God's own Spirit inhabits all those who trust in Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins. The garden has become the city."

-Mark Dever, The Church 

  http://www.amazon.com/The-Church-Gospel-Made-Visible/dp/1433677768/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335618347&sr=1-4