“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away ... And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away’” (Rev 21:1-4).
Heaven will be on Earth.
The Great White Throne of Judgment (Rev 20:11-15) will be a terrible thing for those who have rejected Jesus. For his followers, though, it will be there that our salvation will be made complete. Those whose names are found in the Book of Life will not have to pay for their sins because Jesus has already paid. Instead our adoption will be fully realized as we reign with Christ in the new Heaven and new Earth.
We talk about going “to Heaven” when we die. And that’s where we’ll be for a while. But we were made to live on Earth, and that is where we will live after the resurrection. Heaven will be on Earth because God will be there. People debate whether the Earth will be replaced or renewed; I fall into the latter camp because “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay” (Rom 8:19-21). But whether the Earth is totally new or totally renewed, we will live on Earth.
What will that Earth be like? Earth. “If we can’t imagine our present Earth without rivers, mountains, trees, and flowers, then why would we try to imagine the New Earth without those features? ... He promises us a New Earth. If the word Earth in this phrase means anything, it means that we can expect to find earthly things there — including atmosphere, mountains, water, trees, people, houses — even cities, buildings, and streets.”1 It will be Earth, but it will be an unfallen Earth.
What won’t be on the new Earth?
“No death, no suffering. No funeral homes, abortion clinics, or psychiatric wards. No rape, missing children, or drug rehabilitation centers. No bigotry, no muggings or killings. No worry or depression or economic downturns. No wars, no unemployment. No anguish over failure and miscommunication. No con men. No locks. No death. No mourning. No pain. No boredom.”2
No boredom? Won’t sitting around playing a harp all day be boring? We have to separate popular culture from the scriptures. There will be worship. And there will be work, responsibility. Believers will judge angels (1Cor 6:3). Jesus’ words about his followers being responsible for things in the Kingdom of God (eg, Matt 25:14-30) should be taken literally. There will be work to be done, but it will be good work, fulfilling work, work without the frustrations created by living in a fallen world.
The new Earth will be Eden restored. The mission of Adam was to enlarge the garden until it filled the whole world. The new Earth will be as if that had been fulfilled. That doesn’t mean we’ll live a primitive existence, though. What would the world be like if we had filled the earth and subdued it (Gen 1:218) without the fall? There still would have been technological advancements. There would still have been cultures. But no pain, no weeds, no wars, no disease. That is the world we will live in. The good things about this Earth will be better, and the bad things will be gone.
And the best part is God will be there. There will be no temple “because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev 21:22). The new Jerusalem will be the holy of holies, and we will all have free access to it and to him. We will no longer be separated from God by sin. We will see his face and live with him and he with us.
Life in this fallen world is hard. Either you die young or you live long enough for your body to fail you. We earn a living by fighting with thorns and thistles and fallen people. Every beautiful thing decays or erodes or otherwise passes away. And God is hidden from us, separated from us by our sin.
Life on the new Earth will be unfallen bodies that never grow old or experience pain. It will be work that is meaningful and fulfilling, never frustrating or boring. It will be gardens without weeds, beauty without decay. It will be getting to know the saints that came before us. And it will be ever growing knowledge of the infinite God who called us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world.
Come, Lord Jesus!
I highly recommend Randy Alcorn’s Heaven or at least the abbreviated Q&A version (a mere 60 pages).
1 Randy Alcorn, Heaven, emphasis in original
2 Randy Alcorn, Heaven: Biblical Answers to Common Questions
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