“New Heavens, New Earth”

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. (Revelation 21.1)

Here is another among many confusing statements in the book of Revelation, subject to several different interpretations.  Most of them rely to some degree on the meaning of the “thousand years” in the previous chapter, and some involve a very sophisticated set of expectations built on the language of many prophecies in the Old and New Testament alike.  We can simplify all of this considerably, by focusing just on the topic at hand, and tracing the new heaven and new earth through the Bible.

Revelation is not the only place we find this phrase in the New Testament.  2 Peter 3 describes the destruction of the earth and heavens, and then says, “But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3.13).  The same elements as in Revelation appear here, along with the indication that this is in line with God’s promise.  If Peter was already able to say we await the fulfillment, it’s clear that the promise had already been announced to his people.  But where, and when?  

In the final two chapters of Isaiah, God lists the sins of his people Israel, and passes judgment.  He promises that the punishment will be followed by restoration of the faithful remnant, saying, “my servants shall eat, but you shall be hungry,” and many more such things (v13ff).  Then, he explains how this will occur: “behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (v17).  We could interpret this as pertaining to something still to come in the distant future, but as with nearly everything in Isaiah, there’s an appropriate fulfillment of the prophecy within a reasonable period after Isaiah prophesied in the 8th century BC.  The people of Judah were soon to go into exile, in punishment for their sins.  Then, a remnant would return and rebuild a Jewish kingdom in their ancestral lands, with God’s help.  It remains a mere shadow of its former glory, and so it’s a rather underwhelming fulfillment, but nevertheless, there it is.

But it doesn’t stop there.  In chapter 66, God describes bringing his people together from the corners of the earth, and opening up the priesthood to them.
“For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain. From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord. And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” (Isaiah 66.22-24)

That’s the end of the book, and Jesus quotes the last verse in Mark 9.48, explicitly describing hell in the final judgment.  Sure, this could be construed as simply a prediction of the restoration of Israel’s nationhood, but by this point it’s pretty clear that there’s more to this.  Perhaps the “brothers” mentioned in verse 20 aren’t brothers in the sense of sharing a common physical ancestry, so much as brothers because of a shared spiritual heritage, as Paul describes in Galatians 3.7, “it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.”  Perhaps the eternal priesthood isn’t the one established by Moses, but the one established by Christ.  Perhaps the coming judgment isn’t confined to suffering and death in this life, but an eternal consequence.  If that’s the case, then the new heavens and new earth aren’t just a disappointing fulfillment of a grandiose promise, but reason to expect something far greater in the age of Christ.  Maybe it’s about a reinvented earth, to be Jesus’ kingdom while the Father reigns in heaven; maybe we’d remain in this creation as Christ’s physical, earthly kingdom, forever.  That’s the route some interpreters have gone.  But we haven’t traced this idea all the way back to its source, yet.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Ge 1.1).  These are the original new heavens and new earth.  From the very start, God and his servants have described the entirety of his physical creation by the terms, heaven and earth.  We tend to think of heaven as God’s home, and often that’s how the term is used.  But here in Genesis 1, as it very often does, it just means the sky.  “The heavens and the earth” is just a straightforward way of expressing the entirety of creation.  What God is promising, when he says he’ll create new heavens and a new earth, is a new creation.

There are shades of this in the restoration of Israel’s nationhood; there’s a much greater fulfillment in the spiritual kingdom established by Christ; and we still look forward to the greatest fulfillment of all, a new creation in which we may dwell with God forever after this vain world is dead and gone.  We’ve messed this creation up, with our sin.  But Jesus has redeemed the creation through his perfect self-sacrifice, and begun to re-create his chosen people, the church, as we were originally intended to be: innocent and faithful, walking with God.  In the church, we have the firstfruits of this new creation, but we’re still stuck living in the tainted, fallen world.  We await a final transformation, and the final re-creation, when Christ returns.  Be ready.  Be one of his people.  Be remade in Christ’s image.

Jeremy Nettles

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