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Chapter 8: New Heaven and New Earth
I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away, and the sea is no more—Rev 21-1
The Father gave instruction to His Son, and Jesus raised His eyes and said, “Let there be lights in the heavens, and let the number of galaxies be infinite, much more the stars, planets and moons they contain, and My God will inhabit them all, so the stars will never burn out; He will inhabit your planets that they may support life and moons that they remain in their proper orbits forever. My Father will inhabit each atom and subatomic particle so none of them go awry or take from each other, but give instead.'' Suddenly whole galaxies of stars appeared, and the saints and the angels oohed and awed as though watching fireworks. God created the universe for His angels, made of the stuff of their bodies and the bodies of His resurrected people, who are the first fruits of the new creation (Rom 8,20-23). Jesus was resurrected first of all, His body made of a material that God Himself inhabits, and galaxies that stretched across the universe, made of the same stuff. Jesus spoke the words that His Father put in His mouth; and as He spoke, the Father did His work through Him. Jesus spoke galaxies full of stars into existence. He didn't create these things on a whim; God planned them all from eternity past and decided that all these things should be just as He made them. Jesus turned to His angels and to His people who were all in attendance, who witnessed the new creation being born. They saw their Lord and Master judge the wicked; they witnessed Him destroy the old universe and create a new one in its place. They were all stunned by His awesome power. Heaven was quiet. All creation was looking at Him like His disciples did in the boat on the Sea of Galilee after He quieted the storm; they were coming to the realization that God could do anything, being still astonished at His judgment on the wicked. There was an occasional whisper; otherwise both man and angel were silent in amazement after seeing and hearing all these things. No one spoke to Christ; everyone was too afraid, but later heaven slowly emerged from its dazzled bewilderment. Giving time to absorb these events, the mood transformed to euphoria. Calvin, a brother of the Son, came and bowed before Jesus and asked Him a question: why did you send all those people to hell, and weren't their bodies destroyed in the flames?'' Jesus answered, “They were not worthy to witness My Father's glorious creative power. They were allowed to see Him destroy the creation, the one they were once a part. My Father wanted them to see that nothing they ever did could possibly remain, since everything was destroyed; but they were not allowed to witness His creative power, because they would not participate in it. As for their bodies, let Me ask you a question, could your body be harmed by a flame?''' Calvin said, “No”. Jesus continued, “Their resurrection was no different than yours, in that they are just as physical as they are spiritual, just like you, except that My Father does not dwell in the atoms and molecules that make up their bodies, as He dwells in yours. In all other ways they are indestructible as you are indestructible. Their bodies were made subject to their spirits, and since their spirits are eternal and existed before their bodies, their bodies cannot die and were made subject to their spirits. Sequence matters to God. By reason that their spirits existed first, their bodies had no choice but to take on the contours of their spirits, and for this reason they were grotesque in appearances. Calvin interrupted, “But Lord, if l were thrown into the fire I would not be harmed, nor would I feel any pain; why then were the people screaming as they entered the fire?” Jesus answered, “The sting of death and hell is sin” (1Cor 15-56). Calvin asked another question, why must they suffer forever?'' Jesus answered, “They refused to bow their knee to My Father; should He therefore reward them? To annihilate them would be to renege on making them eternal spirits.'' Calvin persisted, “Then why did He create them in the first place?” Jesus answered, “If He wouldn't have created them, He couldn't have created you, and you are far too important to My Father not to have created you, for He knew you from eternity past and has been thinking about you through the eons and is glad you are here. As for the wicked, when their mothers conceived them, it was the will of their parents that they should exist, and God honored that and placed an eternal spirit within the womb, thus establishing the sequence: the body first, then the spirit, just as God created Adam in the body, and then breathed a spirit into him. The fact that the wicked refused to worship God was none of His doing. Why should God not make man in His own image just because they refused to worship Him?” Calvin was satisfied with the Lord's answers and resumed his place in thoughtful worship. Maribeth stood bowing low and asked Jesus a question: “Lord why did God make hell?'' Jesus answered, “Hell is a place for the wicked, and 'wickedness' is defined as: refusing to worship God. Should God annihilate those who do not worship Him? That would be rewarding them, and what would that communicate to His creation? Refusing to worship God does not give our Father a reason to annihilate them. He made them eternal spirits, and He made them so that if they oppose Him, they should become His opposite. They become sin, and sin needs a place to dwell separate from Him and His kingdom. There is no place for them except under My feet, where I can keep an eye on them. Let's say He gave them a beautiful planet of their own where they could live; they would just turn it into hell, so God saved them the trouble and made it Himself. Whoever rebels against good is evil; whoever rebels against right is wrong; whoever rebels against truth is false; whoever rebels against light is darkness. This brings us back to a discussion about the Father. He never asked you to do anything that I personally would not do. He placed you in a world of evil, and then sent me to that world to rescue you, and I showed you how to live, and in the process died for your sins. You exist; therefore, so do they. You could not exist without them. They are your counterpart, the other side of the proverbial coin. He wanted a people who were free, who knew about sin, and He knew that many would choose sin over the righteousness of faith. Recall that whenever My Father visited mankind, He dwelled in smoke and fire, such as appearing to Moses in the burning bush and appearing to Israel on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-18,19; Exodus 20:18,19; 1Kings 8-10,11; Isaiah 13,9-13; Joel 2,28-32; Joel 3,14-16; Mat 24,29-31; Rev 6,12-14; Rev 8-12). This was to warn the wicked that if they continued to rebel, they would end up in a place of smoke and fire. The Father is not suffering or in pain, because He is without sin, and sin is the sting of death and hell (1Cor 15-56).'' After His dissertation, the people worshipped the Father and the Son as Creator of the new heavens and the new earth and as the judge of all creation and of His coming kingdom. They worshipped Him for what seemed a long time, which in eternity refers to billions of years. It was a long party where everyone got to know each other before God would unveil His purpose for them. People of the New Jerusalem worshipped God for billions of years, and the angels alongside them worshipped God with their whole hearts, and it made Jason wonder what travesty they suffered that made them so thankful to be in God’s grace. It must have been as tragic as man suffered. The angels were created eons before man; their worship revolved around the Father and the Son, as it was for man, including the cherubim and seraphim, the greatest of all the angels. Their inheritance was the entire universe, and their purpose was to serve both God and man. Man’s inheritance was initially the earth only; God called Adam and Eve to rule over the plants and animals and to subdue the curse, making the earth a garden planet, but after the fall of both angels and man everything changed: man has now become magistrates of His kingdom and rulers of the entire universe with Christ (1Cor 3,21-23), and angels are their helpers. Perhaps the aspect of heaven that Jason found most intriguing was that there was no class distinction between man and angel. God didn’t have to think long and hard about how to build a kingdom that would last forever; it came naturally to Him: He exalts servants above leaders. The angels were honored for their service, not pretentiously, but sincerely appreciated. Therefore, when Lucifer rebelled and took many angels with him, seeking to unseat Jesus from His throne and putting himself in His place, he was behaving opposite the way God created him, which defines the mystery of lawlessness. God cursed Lucifer and removed him from heaven and cast him to the earth, his rank pulled as the lead cherub. The greatest of all the cherubs, and cherubs the greatest of all the angels, he lost his inheritance (the entire universe), and God tarnished the universe with a curse. The curse is defined as God removing Himself from the the creation. When He did that, entropy and chaos immediately rushed in to fill the void. The angels who stayed with Christ were delivered from Lucifer’s appalling deception. This was a great angelic culling, and those who were spared from so great a peril worshipped God fervently as man, and have been worshipping Him ever since. They have fashioned musical instruments that fill heaven with wonderful sounds of victory over the monstrous creature that tempted them to revolt against God who loved them. Some of these musical instruments are very loud, like thunder, yet it doesn’t hurt their ears. There are stringed instruments and wind instruments of all kinds. Many angels have perfected the art of music and can do some rips on guitar-like instruments that cannot be matched, stirring the inhabitants of heaven to worship God. The cherubim and seraphim who stand before God’s throne fall on their faces and worship God who created heaven and earth crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, who is, and who is to come,” and their worship sweeps over the congregation and inspires both man and angel to worship God, being profound witnesses of His glory. God created the angels first, and then He created man in His own image. Most people say that angels are mere messengers and servants, which is true, but angels also know good and evil, which exceedingly bumps up their importance to God. Angels were given one choice: to continue following God or to follow a new leader, Lucifer. In the same manner, Adam and Eve were given a single choice: eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or don't eat from it, as they were commanded. The heavenly angels sided with God, and the Luciferian angels (fallen angels) were immediately condemned as reprobate creatures without hope of redemption. The same was true with Adam, who personally knew God and rebelled against Him, but not Eve, who indirectly knew about God through her husband. Adam’s descendants did not rebel in the same way, but sinned in the likeness of Eve, indirectly, and for this reason they were given the opportunity of redemption. Heavenly angels know about good and evil, based on a single choice they made, but have never done evil, whereas people have done both good and evil and have made dozens of choices every day, accumulating thousands of decision points throughout their lives, and in that way increased their understanding of good and evil, thus emphasizing the fact of being made in the image of God, who values this one characteristic above all others. Amazingly, God values the knowledge of good and evil above His ability to create an infinite universe, and He values it above His omniscience. Therefore, the working definition of “good” is: worshipping God; and the working definition of “evil” is: coveting His throne. In other words, God values His knowledge of good and evil above all else, so no one rises against Him and seeks His throne. That is a snapshot of God’s creation of man, but what about His creation of the heavens and the earth? Jesus said, “When Lucifer sinned by organizing a rebellion and made a physical attempt to dethrone the Most High, My Father cursed Him by removing His Holy Spirit from Lucifer and his inheritance, that is to the entire universe, from stars, planets and galaxies to atoms: electrons and subatomic particles that compose the nucleus of each atom. Before the curse, atoms freely gave their electrons to other atoms in order to bond with them and form substances that we use every day, but after the curse (removing His Spirit from creation), the opposite occurred. Instead of atoms freely giving their electrons to other atoms, larger atoms took electrons from smaller ones, sometimes violently. Bigger atoms dominated over smaller ones, and by that they bonded with each other to create the substances of the natural realm. After God removed His Spirit from the creation, it went from a giving universe to a taking one. The entire creation went to war with itself, from the miniscule atoms that form the basis of all things to stars and galaxies. Instead of peace and love, there was war. These forces had a bearing on every living thing; but now He has done away with the old creation and created a new one, and since then the Holy Spirit has come to inhabit the universe from atomic and subatomic particles to stars and galaxies. Now it has become a giving universe instead of a taking one. He has returned it to its original state, and now He is set to fulfill His original plan. After He made the earth, He created a new universe with galaxies, stars, planets and moons, and God Himself inhabited them. Both angels and man celebrated the end of the old and the beginning of the new (Rev 21-5), dwelling in the New Jerusalem with His people and with the holy angels. Normally you hear of a party lasting all night, sometimes all weekend and occasionally all summer, but this party lasted billions of years. People and angels worshipped God, though many were coming and going. No one was required to remain there; they could get an idea and embark on an adventure, leave without having to check-out, and they could go anywhere they wanted in the universe and stay as long as they wanted. They would eventually return and enter the chorus of worship, and other people would leave. Some explored deep space in far reaches of the universe and visited galaxies billions of light-years away. They found planets and explored them to see what life forms existed there. The Lord provided a stellar map of the new universe, which would never change, and every person memorized the map and had a beacon that always pointed the way home, no matter how far they wandered or how lost and turned-around they got. We think the present universe doesn’t change, but it does, just very slowly on a timescale far greater than our own. There are changes to the universe happening all the time, but with the new creation nothing ever changes. We can still use the North Star to guide our way at night, just like people did in ancient times, yet the North Star is moving. All the stars are moving, and so are all the galaxies, but they are so far away that their movements do not make a noticeable difference. New stars are being born and old stars die. Occasionally stars explode in a supernova, and galaxies sometimes run into each other over a course of billions of years, but in the new creation none of these things happen. Stars in the new creation never burn out, because the Father inhabits them; He fuels the stars and all things, and He is inexhaustible. As they are now, so they will be. Stars continue in their existence; Galaxies don’t run into each other, quasars don't pulsate destructive rays. God’s new creation is full of life. Go to one planet and find life; go to another planet and find completely different life forms, but there are no humans on any of them, not yet. Jason wasn’t interested in other galaxies or solar systems in deep space; He wanted to know more about his own solar system, and especially about the New Earth, and so he visited his future home planet with some friends. The earth was positioned at the center of the universe, though the New Jerusalem was still disconnected from it, knowing that God would one day bring them together, and they were greatly looking forward to it. They found waterfalls on the New Earth and crystal clear lakes, tropical areas and forests that filled millions of square miles, and they saw amazing creatures. The air was fresh with the fragrance of flowers blooming on the forest floor, some on vines creeping up tree trunks thirty feet wide. There were animals everywhere, and they came right up to us. They didn’t didn't know fear; they were neither wild nor tame; they were free, and they didn’t have enemies. We met some friends who were also exploring the New Earth, and we discussed the differences between it and the old one. There were so many interesting and beautiful places to visit, rivers and lakes but no oceans, and they discussed particularly how much bigger the New Earth was than the old one. Life was everywhere, and it would only get better. One of the rewards of heaven is that every gifted person received a planet of their own, according to the design that was in each person’s heart, but those who were complacent in their former lives regarding their faith in Jesus were unable to visit their planet. That is, they didn’t know how to disappear and then reappear in a different location irrespective of distance (teleport). They never learned how to pray, so they had to get in line and speak to the Lord in person. The owner of their planet could do whatever he wanted with it; Jason built a humble abode next to a waterfall and invited friends to sit and chat and explored his personal island in space, and others invited him to their retreat planet. Jason visited a few other planets in the solar system and a couple moons, but nothing compared to the earth. Jason returned to the New Jerusalem and there joined in songs of praise to God. He met some friends he made earlier, and they shared stories of their latest adventures and shared some of the most recent things they had come to understand about God, helping each other come to a fuller knowledge of Him. There were billions of people, and they had billions of years to become acquainted with each other and form relationships. Most Christians remained babes in Christ throughout their former lives, who barely grew in their faith, rarely read their Bible, rarely prayed and scarcely served the Lord, but were only interested in squeezing through the pearly gates into the Holy City. They didn’t know how to travel by thought to other locations, visiting other lands on planets in distant galaxies, but were limited to the New Jerusalem, which was everybody’s home and where everyone spent most of their time anyway. Their lives in heaven resembled their former lives in the flesh, except that they never got old or tired, and they couldn’t die, and they lived in paradise and looked upon the face of their Lord and Master, and they witnessed God sentence the wicked to eternal damnation in the lake of fire, and most importantly they bore witness to God creating the new heavens and the New Earth. They worshipped the Creator for saving them from such a peril of death, who offered them forgiveness of all their sins through the blood of His Son, which they all gladly received. They worshipped God who sat on the throne in an environment of smoke and fire and sounds and peals of thunder (Rev 4-5). The The Father orchestrated all things and divulged His vision to His Son, and His Son implemented His plans through His word and brought about the worlds and all living things (Jn 14,10-15). They worshipped God for His justice, righteousness and truth, and for his compassion and mercy, and for His power to create an endless universe. The Cherubim and Seraphim led the chorus of worship, continually crying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and who is to come,” and they drew the rest of the assembly into continual worship of God for billions of years. In the process of worshipping Him and sharing their faith with each other and going on distant journeys and adventures together, they came to know each other. Individuals met groups, and groups met other groups that merged to become larger groups, and they met other larger groups. People were making connections, talking about Jesus and spreading their knowledge far and wide and worshipping God for all the things He has done, and for judging the wicked. Those assembled in heaven slowly and steadily came to a single realization that anybody who refuses to worship God belongs in hell. That is how great an infraction it was to refuse to worship God, a crime punishable by eternal damnation, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power (2The 1,5-10). They steadily came to realize these things, though they didn’t fully understand them at the time; and the more they came to know God, the more they believed in Him. His viewpoint is at the pinnacle of Truth, which defines His throne, who created the heavens and the earth. God’s view is the Truth, for no one is bigger or lived longer than Him, and no one can prove Him wrong in any of His ways. When Jesus lived in the flesh, many people challenged His views, but in heaven, His views are unchallenged; instead, everyone in heaven comes into agreement with Him. The citizens of heaven instinctively know that He is right about everything; and what they don’t understand they trust, because they see Him in all His glory and power. Every week Jesus gave a sermon to the saints and used His weekly sermons to keep in touch with His people. Everyone stopped what he was doing, sat at His feet and listened to His word. Afterward, they broke into groups and talked about what they heard, and it stimulated vibrant conversation throughout the week. Jesus kept the minds of His people busy digesting the word of God. The knowledge of God came naturally to them, expanding His sermon a million times over by their ’s ponderous thoughts. “Belief” involves trust through limited knowledge, whereas God is all-knowing, but it is not the same with Jesus. He only knows what the Father tells Him, which is a lot, but it is not everything, so even with Jesus there is an element of trust involved. He is confident in His Father’s ability, knowledge and perspective and fully trusts in Him, and in this way He is like His brethren, who also trust in the Lord through limited knowledge. The heavenly assembly steadily took on His perspective regarding all things over a course of billions of years, and this knowledge continued to increase throughout the eons in the recognition of His love and acceptance of them and in the understanding of their own need to worship Him. Their divine worship defined them as His children, but monsters lived under their feet, who considered themselves as gods. Slowly and steadily the people were weaned off their immediate family members: their mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles of their former lives, and they began to cleave to their new family, considering each of them equally important. They were all brethren, and the people networked together in an environment of love, harmony and worship, and the fruits of the Spirit weaved their lives together to become a single people, the wife of the Lamb. They became united, so they could share their thoughts even with those who were not be in proximity of each other. They could be a hundred miles apart, or a million miles, and be able to carry on a conversation with each other in the Spirit, because of their unity. They became as it were one person. However, the influence of their former lives, which acted as their critical period, made certain people forever special to them, for just as the memory of childhood followed us throughout our adult lives, so our former lives from beginning to end will follow us throughout eternity. Jason went to his house in the New Jerusalem, pulled the rock from his pocket that he found in his former life at the age of three on the day the Lord came to visit him, that He recovered from his house on earth during the Millennium where he once lived. The Lord let him keep it as one of his only possessions. He opened the top dresser drawer that was in his room and dropped it next to the stone with His new name written on it that he received from the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ. It occurred to him that he was poorer than he was in his former life; in fact, if he were still in the flesh, he would be the poorest person on earth, because technically he didn’t own anything, except this giant house that he never used and these two silly rocks. Then again, he didn’t need anything. His only real possession was his body. However, if he counted the New Jerusalem, Jesus, the Father and all his friends as part of his possession, he saw that he possessed all things, just as the Bible said (2Cor 6-10). He didn’t need to eat or sleep, and he didn’t get cold or hot. “What do I need this house for?” he thought to himself. He closed the dresser drawer, ran out the house, swinging the door closed behind him and joined his friends in praise and worship of God. Return to chapters