In Revelation 21:10-12 the apostle John says “And he …showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God….It had a great and high wall and had twelve gates.” Our natural, fallen man is excluded from New Jerusalem by the wall, and our entrance into the city is through the death and resurrection of Christ. By our inclusion in His death and resurrection, our old man was terminated and buried, the created part of our being was redeemed and justified, we were made alive by being born of the Spirit, and we were raised up in Christ to walk in newness of life. All this together is our entrance into New Jerusalem.
Revelation 21:21a says, “And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; each one of the gates was, respectively, of one pearl.” New Jerusalem is full of spiritual signs. The pearl signifies the death and resurrection of Christ, through which we enter New Jerusalem. Note 2 on Revelation 21:21* says, “Each gate of the holy city is one pearl, signifying that the entrance to the city is unique and is once for all; that is, we can enter the city only through the once-for-all regeneration accomplished by Christ’s overcoming death and life-imparting resurrection.”
The pearl gates as the entrance to New Jerusalem are not physical. They portray the death and resurrection of Christ as our entrance into the new creation. This is much more precious than any physical pearl.
* in The NT Recovery Version Online, © 1997-2012 by LSM
New Jerusalem - the Consummation 
Pearls
/ January 25, 2016I always thought it was odd that the gates were of pearls because pearls are things that man values and earthly things and like you I thought there was a symbolic meaning, but then I saw the movie, “Interstellar.” In that movie there is a wormhole that they use to travel from one universe to another, and they explain why a wormhole is a sphere. If you wanted to travel instantly from one place to another, in Einstein’s theories; if you could bend time and space in half like a piece of paper and make a hole through it from one point to the other then you could instantly travel to a place that was greatly separated by time and space, and what is a circle in 3-dementions; a sphere. If the gates are a portal from our world into a higher dimension of pure light it makes perfect sense scientifically that they would be white spheres. So the pearls might not be just a spiritual representation, but actual portals into the city. This explains the science of it; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXDHwCv5rhQ
Awesome movie too, my favorite. I highly advise watching it.
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Pearls
/ January 25, 2016The new Jerusalem is a heavenly place, its in another dimension, but it will have gates from this world into it. 12 of them. The pearls are the portals to that higher dimension.
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