Heaven (19 page)

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 people 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

W
ill 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 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 fully 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.

The cleansing with fire will be more thorough than the Flood in that it will permanently eliminate sin. But just as God'sjudgment
by water didn't make the earth permanently uninhabitable, neither will God's judgment by fire.

The King James Version translates 2 Peter 3:10 this way: "The earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
But the word translated "burned up" does not appear in the oldest Greek manuscripts, which contain a word that means "found"
or "shown." The New International Version trans lates it "laid bare," and the English Standard Version renders it "exposed."
God's fire of judgment will consume the bad but refine the good, exposing things as they really are.

Theologian Cornelius Venema explains, "The word used in the older and better manuscripts conveys the idea of a process that
does not so much destroy or burn up, but uncovers or lays open for discovery the creation, now in a re­newed state of pristine
purity."
¹¹⁴
Likewise rejecting "burned up" as the best translation, Albert Wolters argues that "translations of this text have often been
influenced by a world view that denies the continuity between the present and future state of creation."
¹¹⁵
Venema makes the connection between 2 Peter 3 and Romans 8 when he observes, "Second Peter 3:5-13 confirms . . . the basic
ideal also expressed, though in different language, in Romans 8. The new heav­ens and earth will issue from God's sovereign
and redemptive work. . . . It will involve the renewal of all things, not the creation of all new things . . . [and] it follows
that the life to come in the new creation will be as rich and full of activ­ity in the service of the Lord as was intended
at the beginning."
¹¹⁶

Several prominent ancient theologians acknowledged the continuity be­tween the present Earth and the New Earth. Jerome often
said that Heaven and Earth would not be annihilated but would be transformed into something better. Augustine wrote similarly,
as did Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and many medieval theologians.
¹¹⁷

THE MEANING OF "NEW"

As we've seen, the expression "Heaven and Earth" is a biblical designation for the entire universe. So when Revelation 21:1
speaks of "a new heaven and a new earth," it indicates a transformation of the entire universe. The Greekword
kainos,
translated "new," indicates that the earth God creates won't merely be new as opposed to old, but new in quality and superior
in character. According to Walter Bauer's lexicon,
kainos
means new "in the sense that what is old has become obsolete, and should be replaced by what is new. In such a case the new
is, as a rule, superior in kind to the old."
¹¹⁸

It means, therefore, "not the emergence of a cosmos totally other than the present one, but the creation of a universe which,
though it has been gloriously renewed, stands in continuity with the present one."
¹¹⁹

Paul uses the same word,
kainos,
when he speaks of a believer becoming "a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17). The New Earth will be the same as the old Earth,
just as a new Christian is still the same person he was before. Different? Yes. But also the same.

When a house burns to the ground, the components of the house do not cease to exist, but take on another form. According to
the first law of thermody­namics (conservation of energy), the fire doesn't obliterate the wood but trans­forms it into different
substances, including charcoal and carbon dioxide. What we consider annihilation is not what it appears.

Resurrection, however, goes beyond that. A new house is not made out of the materials of a house that burned, but out of new
materials. Though it may be on the same ground, made according to the same blueprint, it's a different house. Resurrection,
however, is about continuity—the
samebody
that was de­stroyed is reconstructed into the new.

As God may gather the scattered DNA and atoms and molecules of our bodies, he will regather all he needs of the scorched and
disfigured Earth. As our old bodies will be raised to new bodies, so the old Earth will be raised to be­come the New Earth.
So, will the earth be destroyed or renewed? The answer is
both
—but the "destruction" will be temporal and partial, whereas the renewal will be eternal and complete.

The doctrine of the new creation, extending not only to mankind, but to the world, the natural realm, and even nations and
cultures, is a major biblical theme, though you would never know it judging by how little attention it re­ceives among Christians.

In an important essay, theologian Greg Beale argues that "new creation is a plausible and defensible centre for New Testament
theology." He states, "The Bible begins with original creation which is corrupted, and the rest of the Old Testament is a
redemptive-historical process working toward a restoration of the fallen creation in a new creation. The New Testament then
sees these hopes beginning fulfillment and prophesies a future time of fulfillment in a consum­mated new creation, which Revelation
21:1-22:5 portrays."
¹²⁰