Heaven

by Randy Alcorn

  Though I don't believe the case for postmillennialism is strong (either bibli­cally or in light of human history), both premillennialism and amillennialism have many biblical points in their favor. † I personally believe there will be a lit­eral thousand-year reign of Christ on the present Earth (though I'm not dog­matic on this point), but I also understand and respect the strong interpretive arguments that have been made in support of amillennialism.

  Although the Millennium is a subject of interest to many, it's not the subject of this book. I mention it only to point out that our beliefs about the Millen­nium need not affect our view of the New Earth. The Millennium question re­lates to whether the old Earth will end after the return of Christ, or a thousand years later after the end of the Millennium. But regardless of when the old Earth ends, the central fact is that the New Earth will begin. The Bible is em­phatic that God's ultimate Kingdom and our final home will not be on the old Earth but on the New Earth, where at last God's original design will be fulfilled and enjoyed forever—not just for a thousand years. Hence, no matter how dif­ferently we may view the Millennium, we can still embrace a common theology of the New Earth.

  THE PROMISED NEW WORLD

  A dominant theme in OldTestament prophecies involves God's plan for an earthly kingdom of righteousness. This pertains to the earth in general and Je­rusalem in particular. Isaiah, for example, repeatedly anticipates this coming new world.

  The Messiah "will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom . . . for­ever" (Isaiah 9:7). David's throne was an earthly one, with an earthly past and an earthly future.

  In Isaiah 11:1-10, we're told of the Messiah's mission to Earth: "He will de­fend the poor and the exploited. He will rule against the wicked and destroy them" (v. 4, NLT). With the lifting of the Curse, the Messiah will bring peace to the animal kingdom: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat" (v. 6). (This fulfills the deliverance spoken of in Romans 8.) Isaiah says there will be no harm or destruction in Jerusalem (v. 9). The Mes­siah "will stand as a banner for the peoples," and "the nations will rally to him" (v. 10). His "place of rest will be glorious" (v. 10). (This anticipates Revelation 21-22.)

  Where will this happen? Not "up there" in a distant Heaven, but "down here" on Earth, in Jerusalem. As we saw in chapter 9, Isaiah 60 speaks of the city gates always being open, because there are no longer any enemies. In words nearly identical to those of John concerning the New Earth (Revelation 21:24-26), it speaks of nations and kings bringing in their wealth. It tells of God's light replac­ing the sun's and promises that "your days of sorrow will end" (Isaiah 60:19-20)—two prophecies clearly fulfilled in Revelation.

  But Isaiah 60 is not alone in these powerful portrayals of everlasting na­tional and global renewal. "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.. .. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. . . . Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the peo­ple. . . . Raise a banner for the nations" (Isaiah 62:5-7, 10).

  "See, your Savior comes! See, his reward is with him, and his recompense ac­companies him" (Isaiah 62:11). This statement reappears in Revelation 22:12, in the words of Jesus Christ: "Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done."

  The preoccupation with God's establishment of an earthly kingdom couldn't be more clear than it is in Isaiah 65: "'Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. . . . But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jeru­salem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more. . . . They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.... The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,' says the Lord" (w. 1719,21,25).

  Throughout church history, some Bible students have believed that the thousand-year kingdom spoken of in Revelation 20 is literal. Others believe it is figurative. I cannot resolve that debate. My point here is not to say that Isaiah 60 and 65 don't refer to a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on the old Earth. Rather, I am saying that they do refer to the eternal reign of Christ on the New Earth.

  It is common for prophetic statements to have partial fulfillment in one era and complete fulfillment in another. It may be that these passages will have a partial and initial fulfillment in a literal millennium, explaining why the pas­sages contain a few allusions to death, which is incompatible with the New Earth. But, in context, these prophecies go far beyond a temporary kingdom on an Earth that is still infected by sin, curse, and death, and that ends with judg­ment and destruction. They speak of an eternal kingdom, a messianic reign over a renewed Earth that lasts forever, on which sin, curse, and death have no place at all.

  The New Earth will be the setting for God's Kingdom. The New Jerusalem will be where people come to pay him tribute: "'As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,' declares the Lord, 'so will your name and descendants endure. . . . All mankind will come and bow down before me,' says the Lord" (Isaiah 66:22-23).

  Those who insist that Revelation 21-22 should be understood figuratively must then also take all the Isaiah passages figuratively. But Jewish scholars understood them literally. There's every indication Jesus took them literally. The heart cry of the nation was for the Messiah to come and set up his physical Kingdom on Earth.

  [Christ's resurrection] is not a matter of a "spirit appearance," but the utterly unprecedented, unique, world-transforming, heaven-anticipating, sovereign action of the Creator in the first installment of remaking the world.

  BRUCE MILNE

  It’s worth restating that we should expect Isaiah’s prophecies about the Messiah’s second coming and the New Earth to be liter­ally fulfilled because his detailed prophecies regarding the Messiah's first coming were literally fulfilled (e.g., Isaiah 52:13; 53:4-12). When Jesus spoke to his disciples before ascending to Heaven, he said it was not for them to know when he would restore God's Kingdom on Earth (Acts 1:6-8), but he did not say they wouldn't know if he would restore God's Kingdom. After all, restoring the Kingdom of God on Earth was his ultimate mission.

  The angel Gabriel promised Mary concerning Jesus, "The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Ja­cob forever; his kingdom will never end" (Luke 1:32-33). David's throne is not in Heaven but on Earth. It is God's reign on Earth, not in Heaven, that is the focus of the unfolding drama of redemption. That earthly reign will be forever established on the New Earth.

  God has a future plan for the earth and a future plan for Jerusalem. His plan involves an actual kingdom over which he and his people will reign—not merely for a thousand years but forever (Revelation 22:5). It will be the long-delayed but never-derailed fulfillment of God's command for mankind to exer­cise righteous dominion over the earth.

  THE MESSIAH'S EARTHLY KINGDOM

  God's people were right to expect the Messiah to bring an earthly kingdom. That's exactly what God promised: "All kings shall fall down before Him; All nations shall serve Him" (Psalm 72:11, NKJV). An explicitly messianic passage tells us, "His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth" (Zechariah 9:10).

  God promises that he has a great future in store for Jerusalem, in which, he says, "I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream" (Isaiah 66:12). Nations at peace will bring their cul­tural treasures into a healed Jerusalem, precisely as Revelation 21:24 por­trays.

  Every time Jewish people greet each other with Shalom, they express the God-given cry of the heart to live in a world where there's no sin, suffering, or death. There was once such a world, enjoyed by only two peo
ple and some ani­mals. But there will again be such a world, enjoyed by all its inhabitants, includ­ing everyone who knows Christ.

  Isaiah 66 says that peace will come to Jerusalem and Jerusalem will become a center of all nations. " 'I . . . am about to come and gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory'. . . As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,' declares the Lord, 'so will your name and descendants endure.... All mankind will come and bow down before me,' says the Lord" (Isaiah 66:18,22-23).

  This prophecy, like the others, is clearly fulfilled in the later chapters of Revelation. Jerusalem will again be a center of worship. Because this Jerusalem will reside on the New Earth, wouldn't we expect it to be called the New Jerusa­lem? That's exactly what it is called (see Revelation 3:12; 21:2).

  Scripture's repeated promises about land, peace, and the centrality of Jerusa­lem among all cities and nations will be fulfilled. If a millennial reign on Earth precedes the New Earth, it could offer a foretaste. However, regardless of the proper understanding of the Millennium, the ultimate fulfillment of a host of Old Testament prophecies will be on the New Earth, where the people of God will "possess the land forever' (Isaiah 60:21, emphasis added).

  † l highly recommend studying the various views of the Millennium from the perspective of their advocates, not their detractors. An excellent resource is The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views, Robert G. Clouse, ed. (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity, 1978).

  CHAPTER 15

  WILL THE OLD EARTH BE DESTROYED . . . OR RENEWED?

  In his redemptive activity, God does not destroy the works of his hands, but cleanses them from sin and perfects them, so that they may finally reach the goal for ivhich he created them. Applied to the problem at hand, this principle means that the new earth to "which we look forward will not be totally different from the present one, but "will be a renewal and glorification of the earth on "which we now: live.

  Anthony Hoekema

  Will the present Earth and the entire universe be utterly destroyed, and the New Earth and new universe made from scratch? Or will the original universe be renewed and transformed into the new one? At first glance, some Scriptures seem to answer "utterly destroyed":

  In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heav­ens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded. (Psalm 102:25-26)

  [Jesus said,] "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." (Luke 21:33)

  The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. (2 Peter 3:10)

  Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. (Revelation 21:1)

  In contrast, there are passages that speak of the earth remaining forever (Ecclesiastes 1:4; Psalm 78:69). However, the same Hebrew word translated "forever" in these passages is used elsewhere in ways that don't mean forever (e.g., Deuteronomy 15:17). It is clear that the earth as it is now will not remain forever—but what does that really mean?

  BURNED UP OR REFINED?

  Scripture says that the fire of God's judgment will destroy "wood, hay or straw," yet it will purify "gold, silver, [and] costly stones," which will all survive the fire and be carried over into the new universe (1 Corinthians 3:12-15). Similarly, the apostle John notes that when believers die, what they have done on Earth to Christ's glory "will follow them" into Heaven (Revelation 14:13). These are earthly things that will outlast the present Earth. "Those purified works on the earth," writes Albert Wo Iters, "must surely include the products of human cul­ture. There is no reason to doubt that they will be transfigured and transformed by their liberation from the curse, but they will be in essential continuity with our experience now—just as our resurrected bodies, though glorified, will still be bodies."108

  As we have seen in a number of passages that use words such as renewal and regeneration, the same Earth destined for destruction is also destined for resto­ration. Many have grasped the first teaching but not the second. Therefore, they misinterpret words such as destroy to mean absolute or final destruction, rather than what Scripture actually teaches: a temporary destruction that is reversed through resurrection and restoration.

  A variety of theologians take this view of temporary, not final, destruction. Wayne Grudem, in his discussion of 2 Peter 3:10, which speaks of "everything" in the earth being "laid bare," suggests that Peter "may not be speaking of the earth as a planet but rather the surface things on the earth (that is, much of the ground and the things on the ground)."109

  Anthony Hoekema says, "If God would have to annihilate the present cos­mos, Satan would have won a great victory. . . . Satan would have succeeded in so devastatingly corrupting the present cosmos and the present earth that God could do nothing with it but to blot it totally out of existence. But Satan did not win such victory. On the contrary, Satan has been decisively defeated. God will reveal the full dimensions of that defeat when he shall renew this very earth on which Satan deceived mankind and finally banish from it all the results of Satan's evil machinations."110

  John Piper argues that God did not create matter to throw it away. He writes, "When Revelation 21:1 and 2 Peter 3:10 say that the present earth and heavens will 'pass away,' it does not have to mean that they go out of existence, but may mean that there will be such a change in them that their present con­dition passes away. We might say, 'The caterpillar passes away, and the butter­fly emerges.' There is a real passing away, and there is a real continuity, a real connection."111

  My wife, Nanci, and I will never forget driving home from church on May 18, 1980, and seeing a cloud of volcanic ash billowing overhead. It was the eruption of Mount Saint Helens, seventy miles from our home. For weeks, ash fell so thick every day that we repeat­edly had to hose off windshields and driveways. Many people in the Portland area wore surgical masks to keep from choking. The destruc­tion of the once-beautiful moun­tain and its surrounding area was catastrophic. Great trees were charred and had fallen like giant matchsticks. The devastation appeared comprehensive. Experts predicted that it would certainly be decades, possibly centuries, before the area came back to life. Yet within only a few years it had begun to be restored, demonstrating healing properties that God has built into his creation, evident even under the Curse.

  According to Scripture the present world will neither continue forever nor will it be destroyed and replaced by a totally new one. Instead it will be cleansed of sin and re-created, reborn, renewed, made whole. While the kingdom of God is first planted spiritually in human hearts, the future blessedness is not to be spiritualized. Biblical hope, rooted in incarnation and resurrection, is creational, this-worldly, visible, physical, bodily hope. The rebirth of human beings is completed in the glorious rebirth of all creation, the New Jerusalem whose architect and builder is God himself.

  HERMAN BAVINCK

  After seeing such utter devastation replaced by new beauty—even apart from God's supernatural intervention—I have no trouble envisioning God re­making a charred Earth into a new one, fresh and vibrant.

  As we saw in chapter 12, Romans 8:19-23 inseparably links the destinies of mankind and Earth. As such, the earth will be raised to new life in the same way our bodies will be raised to new life.

  REDEMPTION MEANS RESTORATION

  Even if the term New Earth appeared nowhere in Scripture, even if we didn't have dozens of other passages such as Isaiah 60 that refer to it so clearly, Acts 3:21 would be sufficient. It tells us that Christ will "remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets." When Christ returns, God's agenda is not to destroy everything and start over, but to "restore everything." The perfection of creation once lost will be fu
lly regained, and then some. The same Peter who spoke these words in Acts 3 wrote the words about the earth's destruction in 2 Peter 3—apparently he saw no conflict between them.

  Albert Wolters says, "Redemption means restoration—that is, the return to the goodness of an originally unscathed creation and not merely the addition of something supracreational. . . . This restoration affects the whole of creational life and not merely some limited area within it."112 It will be as if an artist wiped away the old paint, stained and cracking, and started a new and better painting, but using the same images on the same canvas.

  Still, many cannot reconcile the idea of redemption through restoration with the statements of 2 Peter 3:10 that "the heavens will disappear with a roar," and "the elements will be destroyed by fire," and "the earth and everything in it will be laid bare."John Piper says of this passage, "What Peter may well mean is that at the end of this age there will be cataclysmic events that bring this world to an end as we know it—not putting it out of existence, but wiping out all that is evil and cleansing it by fire and fitting it for an age of glory and righteousness and peace that will never end."113

  I think the key to understanding the qualified meaning of these images of destruction in 2 Peter lies within the passage itself. The passage draws a parallel between the earth in the time of Noah, which was "destroyed" through the Flood, and the time to come when the present world will be destroyed in judg­ment again, this time not by water but by fire (2 Peter 3:6-7). The stated refer­ence point for understanding the future destruction of the world is the Flood. The Flood was certainly cataclysmic and devastating. But did it obliterate the world, making it cease to exist? No. Noah and his family and the animals were delivered from God's judgment in order to reinhabit a new world made ready for them by God's cleansing judgment. Flooding the whole world didn't destroy all the mountains (Genesis 8:4). Though many people believe that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers near Eden (Genesis 2:14) weren't the same rivers as those we know today, the fact that they were given the same names as the originals suggests some continuity.