Tag Archives: New Heavens and New Earth

“The wrath of God drove us out of paradise, but the grace of God invites us to return” by Jonathan Edwards

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“‘Tis proclaimed in the gospel

  • that God is willing again to receive us into His favor, to pardon all our sins, to quit all enmity, to bury all former difference and to be our friend and our Father;
  • that He is willing again to admit us to sweet communion with Him, and that He will converse with us as friendly and intimately as He did before the Fall;
  • that God is willing to receive us to paradise again, to a like freedom from all grief and trouble;
  • that He will wipe away all tears from our eyes, and that sorrow and sighing shall flee away;
  • that He will make us to forget our former melancholic, forsaken, and doleful state;
  • that we may be again admitted to as great a fullness of blessings, to as pleasant and delightful a dwelling place as the garden of Eden, as full of those things which tend the delight of life, to pleasures as refreshing and satisfying;
  • that we shall be as free from want, and the curse shall be removed, and all frowns and tokens of displeasure. The world shall again smile upon us and congratulate us.

God will be our friend and the angels shall be our friends, and all things shall be at peace with us, and we shall enjoy as great and uninterrupted a pleasure in mutual society. The wrath of God drove us out of paradise, but the grace of God invites us to return.

The Son of God in the name of His Father comes and calls to us to return from our banishment. He ceases not to call us. He beseeches us to return again. He is come forth on purpose to make known those joyful tidings to us.

Christ calls us away from this cursed ground that brings forth briars and thorns, to a better country. Our first parents were driven away very loath and unwilling to go, but we are invited back again.”

–Jonathan Edwards, “East of Eden,” in Sermons and Discourses, 1730–1733, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 17, Ed. Mark Valeri and Harry S. Stout (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1999), 17: 342–343.

“News of a better world” by John Newton

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“Blessed be God for the news of a better world, where there will be no sin, change, nor defect forever. And let us praise Him, likewise, that He has appointed means of grace and seasons for refreshment here below, for a throne of grace, a precious Bible, and returning ordinances: these are valuable privileges; and so they appear to us when our hearts are in a lively frame.

Then everything appears little and worthless, in comparison of communion with God. Oh, for a coal of fire from the heavenly altar to warm our frozen spirits! Oh, for a taste of love and glimpses of glory, that we might mount up as with eagle’s wings! Let us pray for each other.”

–John Newton, Letters of John Newton (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1869/2007), 62.

“Sitting down at one table” by Herman Bavinck

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“The blessedness of communion with God is enjoyed in and heightened by the communion of saints. On earth already this communion is a wonderful benefit of faith.

Those who for Jesus’s sake have left behind house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields already in this life receive houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and fields—along with persecutions—(Mark 10:29–30), for all who do the will of the Father are Jesus’s brother and sister and mother (Matt. 12:50).

Through the mediator of the New Testament, believers enter into fellowship, not only with the militant church on earth, but also with the triumphant church in heaven, the assembly of the firstborn, the spirits of the righteous made perfect, even with innumerable angels (Heb. 12:22–24).

But this fellowship, though in principle it already exists on earth, will nevertheless be incomparably richer and more glorious when all dividing walls of descent and language, of time and space, have been leveled, all sin and error have been banished, and all the elect have been assembled in the new Jerusalem.

Then will be fully answered the prayer of Jesus that all His sheep may be one flock under one Shepherd (John 10:16; 17:21). All the saints together will then fully comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ (Eph. 3:18–19).

They will together be filled with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19; Col. 2:2, 10), inasmuch as Christ, Himself filled with the fullness of God (Col. 1:19), will in turn fill the believing community with Himself and make it His fullness (πληρωμα, plērōma; Eph. 1:23; 4:10).

And sitting down at one table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt. 8:11), they will unitedly lift up a song of praise to the glory of God and of the Lamb. (Rev. 4:11; 5:12)”

–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, Vol. 4, Ed. John Bolt, and Trans. John Vriend, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 4: 722–723.

“We all long for Eden” by J.R.R. Tolkien

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“Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’.”

–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Ed. Humphrey Carpenter (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 110. Tolkien penned these words in a letter to his son, Christopher Tolkien, on January 30, 1945.

“The re-creating power of Christ” by Herman Bavinck

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“All that is true, honorable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable in the whole of creation, in heaven and on earth, is gathered up in the future city of God– renewed, re-created, boosted to its highest glory. The substance of the city of God is present in this creation.

Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as carbon is converted into diamond, as the grain of wheat upon dying in the ground produces other grains of wheat, as all of nature revives in the spring and dresses up in celebrative clothing, as the believing community is formed out of Adam’s fallen race, as the resurrection body is raised from the body that is dead and buried in the earth, so too, by the re-creating power of Christ, the new heaven and the new earth will one day emerge from the fire-purged elements of this world, radiant in enduring glory and forever set free from the ‘bondage to decay’ (Rom. 8:21).

More glorious than this beautiful earth, more glorious than the earthly Jerusalem, more glorious even than paradise will be the glory of the new Jerusalem, whose architect and builder is God Himself. The state of glory will be no mere restoration of the state of nature, but a re-formation that, thanks to the power of Christ, transforms all matter into form, all potency into actuality, and presents the entire creation before the face of God, brilliant in unfading splendor and blossoming in a springtime of eternal youth.

Substantially nothing is lost. Outside, indeed, are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood (Rev. 22:15). But in the new heaven and new earth, the world as such is restored; in the believing community the human race is saved.

In that community, which Christ has purchased and gathered from all nations, languages, and tongues (Rev. 5:9), all the nations, Israel included, maintain their distinct place and calling (Matt. 8:11; Rom. 11:25; Rev. 21:24; 22:2). And all those nations– each in accordance with its own distinct national character– bring into the new Jerusalem all they have received from God in the way of glory and honor (Rev. 21:24, 26).”

–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 720.

“The story is not over yet” by Thomas Schreiner

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“The story is not over yet. Believers still await the consummation. They await the new creation, the completion of the new exodus, and the final fulfillment of the new covenant. Jesus will come again and transform the universe.

There is a new world coming, a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth. In that coming world God will be all in all, and Jesus Christ will be honored forever and ever. And the paradise that was lost will be regained—and more than regained, it will be surpassed.

And we will see His face (Rev. 22:4), and His glory will be magnified through Christ forever and ever.”

–Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 866.

“We will be brought into the feast” by Tim Keller

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“Jesus, unlike the founder of any other major faith, holds out hope for ordinary human life. Our future is not an ethereal, impersonal form of consciousness. We will not float through the air, but rather will eat, embrace, sing, laugh, and dance in the kingdom of God, in degrees of power, glory, and joy that we can’t at present imagine.

Jesus will make the world our perfect home again. We will no longer be living ‘east of Eden,’ always wandering and never arriving. We will come, and the father will meet us and embrace us, and we will be bought into the feast.”

–Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God (New York, NY: Dutton, 2008), 104.

[HT: Of First Importance]