Posted on 10/15/2015 5:19:02 PM PDT by grumpa
The “new heaven and new earth” of the Bible is popularly thought by Christians to be a future world of perfect utopia. In the new heaven and new earth there will LITERALLY be “no more tears, pain, or death.” But watch out on this! We are given clues in the Bible that the popular view may be flawed.
Thesis: The New Heaven and New Earth is a Hebraic metaphor for the New Covenant in Christ. It is not the same thing as heaven itself. The primary texts about this are Isaiah 65/66, Matthew 5:17-18; 2 Peter 3, and Revelation 21. Let’s take a look.
CLUE #1: If the new earth is to be understood literally, we would logically have to understand the new heaven literally also. But, if God lives in heaven, why do we need a new heaven? Hmmm.
CLUE #2: In Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus ties the passing of heaven and earth with the passing of the Law. So, if the Law has already passed away and we are now under Grace, we must be in the new heaven and new earth now!
CLUE #3: In Matthew 24:34-35, Jesus puts the passing away of heaven and earth in his generation, coincident with the destruction of the temple (Matthew 24:2).
CLUE #4: In Isaiah 65/66, we see that God’s enemies are destroyed, but regular human history continues. Houses and vineyards will be built in the new heaven and new earth. We also see that children are born in the new heaven and new earth. There is SIN in the new heaven and new earth. And, indeed, people still DIE in the new heaven and new earth (Isaiah 65:20; 66:24)! So, the new heaven and new earth is not the eternal state—heaven itself.
CLUE #5: In Isaiah 66:19f, we also see that regular human history continues after the “final judgment.” The survivors of Armageddon evangelize those who never heard of God. Get that? There are people on earth who never heard of God in the new heaven and new earth! This is not Utopia-ville.
CLUE #6: An uninformed reading of 2 Peter 3 in some Bible translations would leave one to believe that the earth will be literally burned up and a new earth (and heaven) re-created. But in other places, Scripture specifically says that the earth “will abide forever,” or implies the same with statements about Christ reigning “forever” (Daniel 4:3, 34; 7:14, 18, 27; Ecclesiastes 1:4; Psalm 78:69; 104:5; 110:4; 145:13; Luke 1:33; Ephesians 3:21; Hebrews 13:20; Revelation 14:6). Problematic contradictions with 2 Peter 3 aside, I find it most curious that Christians seem to find hope in the destruction of the planet and a shiny new earth in which even carnivorous animals take up vegetarianism. In 2 Peter 3, Peter was warning the scoffers, who remembered that Jesus promised the culmination of last-days events would be in their generation (Luke 21:22, 32)—that God was not slow to keep his promises. And Peter emphasized the imminence by saying that those in the first century should themselves be looking “the coming day of God” which was hastening (2 Peter 3:12). This was certainly a warning about the impending destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70.
CLUE #7: In Revelation 21:6 we find Jesus saying, “To the thirsty I will give from spring of the water of life without payment.” Are we not drinking of the fountain of the water of life freely right now?
CLUE #8: In Revelation 22:2 we see that the nations are in continual need of healing. Indeed, SIN CONTINUES in the new heaven and new earth per Revelation 22:15.
CLUE #9: All through the book of Revelation we see that the events described were to happen “soon” and “must shortly take place.” We see these imminence statements some 30 times, including BEFORE and AFTER the advent of the new heaven and new earth! See Revelation 22:6, 10, 12, 20. Unless the God cannot tell time or would mislead us, the new heaven and new earth was ushered in soon after Revelation was written.
CLUE #10: In the Jewish mind, heaven and earth came together in the temple (Josephus, ANTIQUITIES, Book 3, 3.6.4 and 3.7.7). But Jesus is the new temple (John 2:19; Revelation 21:3). So his ministry ushered in the new heaven and new earth.
So, what then, is the new heaven and new earth, really? It is an idiomatic expression for the NEW COVENANT brought to its fullest by Jesus during the lifetimes of the biblical writers. The new covenant began with Christ’s first advent. But the old covenant was not fully dissolved until Christ’s coming “in judgment” in AD 70 to wash away the visible fabric of Judaism. The new heaven and new earth is where we are blessed, accepted, loved, and forgiven through the finished work of Christ.
What about the “conquering of death” and “no more tears” promises? Well, Christ has already conquered death for believers (2 Timothy 1:10)! When we die physically, we continue to live—in heaven in a new state. “No more tears” is a reference to the fullness of personal relationship that each believer has with God. It is a reference to Isaiah 25-27 in which God promises to wipe away the tears with his salvation, foreshadowing the Messiah’s completed work in the last days of the Old Covenant. In the New Covenant there is no more consciousness of guilt, so no need to cry or sorrow in a theological, but real sense.
We have to constantly remember that the truths of the Bible are often communicated by way of symbols and Hebraic figures of speech. The new heaven and new earth is a “new creation” similar to how the Bible describes believers as NEW CREATIONS in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Because of Christ’s first century work—the cross, resurrection, and the Parousia—we are in the new world order, so to speak.
Christians, don’t dismay. This is good news! We do not have to fear a coming Great Tribulation, Battle of Armageddon, or a burning of the planet. Christ is victorious, even in the midst of our toil. He is our rock and our salvation—and lives with us now into eternity!
So where does our hope lie? Our hope is in heaven itself. The new covenant is but a shadow of the ultimate rest for believers in heaven. The new heaven and new earth is thus a foretaste of the feast to come. As the hymn says, “In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”
http://prophecyquestions.com/2014/02/01/articles-by-charles-meek
Good article.
bump
bfl
Good article. Bump for later.
More smoke and mirrors from the preterists
LOL! Absolutely!
Everything “fulfilled” in AD 70....
So Israel being a nation again and things getting so hairy in the ME that Psalm 83/Ezekiel 38/Isaiah 17 might actually be played out before our very eyes soon.
Don’t be too hasty. Either Jesus said “this generation will see it all” or He did not. In Rev 1 either He said “I’ve come to tell what shall come to pass shortly” or He did not. And either He was speaking truthfully or He was not.
Be careful - be very careful.
Funny....
The Book of Revelation was written about 2 decades AFTER the Temple & Jerusalem were destroyed.
The Tribulation is right around the corner actually.
Preterists don’t understand Daniel 9:25-27 nor the lesson of the Fig Tree in Matthew 24
We’re really gonna’ need a new heaven and a new earth by the time Obama and his filthy islamonazis get through.
Agreed. :-)
How in any universe can you argue the new heaven and the new earth is really the New Covenant ... and then not even mention the prophecy OF the New Covenant as given in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36?
Preterism is the easiest eschatological position to immediately dispense with ... but we must be ever vigilant because they scream the loudest.
http://www.worldwithoutend.info/wwe321wp/charles-s-meek-the-personhood-view-of-the-resurrection/
to see he is horribly wrong. He goes as far as denying the physical resurrection of the dead. Apparently the continuationists now have their own view of preterism called Sovereign Grace Preterism.
You can't make this stuff up ...
They believe Revelation was written BEFORE 70 AD, and in actuality, it is required for them to maintain their position. Preterism is the only eschatological position whose main arguments teeter on the date of a book. Hitchcock answered the preterist belief in the early date ... you can download his work for free here ...
http://pre-trib.org/data/pdf/hitchcock-dissertation.pdf
Christ characterized his Olivet Discourse by the word "watch," which discourse the preterists tell was fulfilled in 70 AD.
Concerning the events leading up to his coming, Christ commanded us to watch. But, no, the preterists tell us we are mistaken, we don't have to watch, the discourse was fulfilled in 70 AD. I choose to obey Christ, you choose to disobey.
It is you who had better be careful, be very careful.
"And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch," Mark 13:37.
agreed, God’s wisdom and ways are beyond our understanding, man is very foolish to think God does not create new many things, why not new heaven, new earth, perhaps as we grow as children we are given the opportunity to create, thus a new Heaven and a new earth to raise souls, as Christ did with this world. we being one have all the love and power that Christ has once we are complete and understand what a supernatural reality is, the birds of the field do not sow or reap for food why does man, for an example..this is how God sees life.Mankind today kills everything trying to live in a world we are dying in. How sensible is that? It is the demon mentality that rules the world from the fear of death.
God can do anything he wants, man tries to study to learn him through the Bible, all others are false, but without walking the path we become weak, diseased, full of fear, and live hidden in that reality until folks wake up and realize this world is not home, stop living for it, live for God through Christ.
He denies the physical resurrection; i.e. “in the flesh” of Jesus?
Spooky. These preterists have to have some other agenda at hand for them to constantly be rewriting reinventing reinterpreting the NT timeline.
Preterism=Animal Farm of the Bible
Grumpa, It is amazing to me that so many people will look at what you wrote here and discount it without checking it out. These clues are ABSOLUTELY VALID and it would be nice if these critics had some substance behind their posts. They would rather send you to a website somewhere where someone has a lot of false information posted.
LOOK AT THESE CLUES PEOPLE....THEY ARE VALID. Or would you rather continue believing the antics of false prophets like John Hagee who is an embarrassment to the Christian community.
The ‘Israel’ over in the ME is a fake. The real regathering will not be done by places like the UN. And there won’t be Islamic mosques there.. Have people been paying attention to the middle East lately? Seems like the same old earth and Satan at work to me.
The ‘Jesus’ the world has learned and worshipped from Rome with things like December 25 and good Friday and Easter sunday- is a fake.. We can tell that by scripture. A false Christ with a Roman bent.
Revelation 13 goes on this very day and people are jumping to Revelation 21..
And people are going to say Christians are living in a new heaven and earth? Scripture has clues that it (Christianity) has been a vessel for the polluting of His Kingdom with things like their own roman wordly kingdom. His Kingdom of Heaven does suffer violence and the violent take it by force.
But it was forseen.
There are clues that this Kingdom ‘age’ of the Church was to be 3000, not 2000 years, but the time will be cut short. Christianity has leavened the Kingdom.
The gospel of Mark best represents the 2000 year period of the Kingdom called Christianity.
People live in a counterfeit world and have no clue.
Satan deceives the whole world.
The clues are there but it would mess up ones world view if they realize everything they were ever taught and have faith in were really inherited lies, like Jeremiah 16:19 says.
It isn’t an accident Eve came out of a deep sleeping Adam’s body.
That is prophetic that the last Adam’s Bride must also come out of a sleeping Body.
Christianity will wake up from its sleep and see His Bride (which came out of His sleeping body) in a glorified state. And just like the first thing our Savior did when He came down the mount of Transfiguration (with the 3 Disciples) was cast the demon out of the boy that His Disciples couldn’t.
That is a picture of what happens to Satan when the King returns from His mountain and casts Satan in His hole for 1000 years.
Only a remnant of His went ‘up’ the mount of Transfiguration.
Satan has been here since the church’s ‘childhood’ and nobody has been able to deal with him.
It helps to stop accepting Satan’s lies..that is a work the Holy Spirit will do for us.
And the Kingdom can be lived here in each believers life. Without the leaven. The call to come out of her by the angel in Revelation may not be one people are hearing yet.
Some appear to skip over Revelation 12,13,14 - the center of the center of the battle on this earth.
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