This has been true since Jr High.
I find the other books rather tedius and full of speculations. Sometimes that's interesting to a point but usually anoyingly full of man's opinions.
I prefer to take Scripture at face value and see how God confirms it. That alone is pretty amazing.
I find that God has appeared to bend over backwards making very explicit enormous numbers of verses predicting very literal future events, factors etc in very measureable, tangible terms. It is as though He went to great pains to throw a long list of Scriptures in the face of the ideas you postulate.
Given how literal a long list of prophecies have ALREADY been fulfilled from Christ's life, death, resurrection etc. on . . . I have every confidence that He will continue to fulfill HIS word far more literally than many of a certain mind-set would dare imagine in their wildest fantacies.
I suppose God could have done it any number of ways. But HE SEEMS TO HAVE A FASCINATION OR HOBBY OR HABIT of doing it literally.
He takes great pains to predict things literally almost in specific petty terms that appear to not be worth that much detail in some of the areas and factors. THEN, HE DELIGHTS in fulfilling such incredible predictions amazingly to the tiniest detail--LITERALLY.
I'm sorry you haven't been paying enough attention to history and Biblical prophecies before to have realized that.
Well Mr. Literal, it's going to be awfully interesting to see how He's gonna fulfill what you say on an earth that doesn't exist. ;)
2 Peter 3:
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,
12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!
Yep! It's gonna be awfully interesting to see how He destroys the earth and then reigns on it. :D
P.S. The Bible is the only resource I used to formulate my positions on this. I began the effort back in the late 80s arduously, earlier than that 'less arduously', and came to my final conclusions only several years ago.
Sooooooooo funny.
You assume that you know precisely what each phrase in such sentences mean! You are braver than I on such scores.
I don't have any trouble, however, believing that God is well able to give us a new heaven and a new earth JUST AS HE SAID HE WOULD.
It's not very clear at all, to me, when He plans to do that. Nor is it crystal clear who, precisely, He will populate the new earth with.
I have a suspicion that it is after satan is fianlly locked up after the 1000 years of Peace. But that's just conjecture.
I try to avoid flat, arrogant assessments so popular with some.