April 25, 2024
The most detailed description is couched in apocalyptic imagery that has aroused enormous curiosity and controversy, none more so than that about the Millennium (Rev. 20:1-6). I have always emphasized while teaching Revelation that this reference to the Millennium is a most humbling section of the Bible.
What is clear is that the Return of Christ results in the establishment of His Kingdom on earth, but not before we see how even with Christ in control our Old World is still prone to rebellion.
The spirit of rebellion cannot and will not be controlled or eliminated without a complete transformation! There must be and there will be a reborn heavens and earth. It is the one and only way to have Heaven on Earth!
This is the graphic illustration seen in the Millennium. Utopias have never and will never work on earth until that day when God creates a New Heaven and a New Earth!
Revelation describes the creation of the New Heaven and the New Earth: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away …” (Rev. 21:1). Finally, we shall have the fulfillment of Isaiah 65:17-18: “For I will create a new heaven and a new earth; the past events will not be remembered or come to mind. Then be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.”
This new Heaven and Earth shall be our permanent or eternal home. N.T. Wright says:
“What is promised after that interim period is a new bodily life within God’s new world (‘life after life after death’). I am constantly amazed that many contemporary Christians find this confusing. It was second nature to the early church and to many subsequent Christian generations.
Instead of asking, “What will we do in Heaven?” a more appropriate question might be, “What will we not be able to do in Heaven?”
“It was what they believed and taught … God’s plan is not to abandon this world, the world that he said was ‘very good.’ Rather, he intends to remake it. And when he does, he will raise all his people to new bodily life to live in it. That is the promise of the Christian gospel.”
Perhaps no scholar has better captured the “newness” of this new Heaven and Earth than R.C.H. Lenski when he wrote in The Interpretation of St. John’s Revelation:
“The newness of the heaven and of the earth shall be like our own. We shall be the same persons and have the same body and the same soul that we now have; but these made entirely new. Our newness begins with regeneration. Already the Scriptures call this a creation of God, Ephesians 2:10; 4:24, so that we are “a new creation,” (II Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). After body and soul are glorified, we shall be newly-created, indeed. The same will be true with regard to the new heaven and the new earth.
While the Apostle Peter wrote about the end of our world and the beginning of this new world in II Peter 3:7-18, the most comprehensive description of this new Heaven and Earth is recorded in Revelation 21:1-22:5. N.T. Wright describes how this “new creation will be put into the wise, healing stewardship of those who have been ‘renewed according to the image of the Creator,’ as Paul puts it (Col. 3:10).”
We have Eden and Jerusalem reborn, and we can begin to imagine the “extreme and extraordinary” adventures in store for us in the New Heaven and Earth.
Instead of asking, “What will we do in Heaven?” a more appropriate question might be, “What will we not be able to do in Heaven?”
While we live in an increasingly evil age we are comforted in knowing “the rest of the story” and “we wait for the new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness will dwell” (II Pt. 3:13). And we join John in saying: “Come, Lord Jesus!”
