Heaven On Earth - 50 Days of Heaven

Heaven on Earth

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

— Revelation 21:1, 3

The “new Jerusalem” . . . does not remain in a “heaven” far off in space, but it comes down to the renewed earth; there the redeemed will spend eternity in resurrection bodies. So heaven and earth, now separated, will then be merged: the new earth will also be heaven, since God will dwell there with his people.^a

— ANTHONY HOEKEMA

When we speak about the coming New Earth, much of what we say about it may not apply to the Heaven we go to when we die. For instance, Scripture makes it clear that we will eat and drink in our resurrection bodies on the New Earth (Isaiah 25:6; Matthew 8:11; Luke 22:18, 29-30; Revelation 19:9). But that doesn’t mean we will eat and drink in the present Heaven, the place where God’s people who have departed from Earth now live. Remember, those now in Heaven do not yet have resurrection bodies. (Theologians debate whether the saints have temporary physical forms there, but certainly our current bodies will remain in the grave until the resurrection.) Likewise, when we describe the present Heaven, it will not necessarily correspond with what the eternal Heaven—the New Earth—will be like.

Does this sound confusing? I understand. But once you abandon the assumption that Heaven cannot change, it all makes perfect sense. Think with me. God does not change, but God clearly says that Heaven will change. For one thing, it will eventually be relocated to the New Earth (Revelation 21:1-2).

Because God created Heaven, it had a beginning and thus is neither timeless nor changeless. It had a past — the time prior to Christ’s incarnation. It has a present — the intermediate Heaven, where believers go when they die. And it will have a future — the eternal Heaven, or New Earth.

The past Heaven, the present Heaven, and the future Heaven can all be called Heaven because they are God’s central dwelling place. Yet they are not synonymous. The present, intermediate Heaven is in the angelic realm, distinctly separate from Earth. By contrast, the future Heaven will be in the human realm, on Earth, in a resurrected universe. The dwelling place of God will be the dwelling place of humanity: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God’ ” (Revelation 21:1-3).

When the New Jerusalem, which was in Heaven, comes down out of Heaven from God, where will it go? To the New Earth. From that time on, God’s dwelling place—Heaven—will be with his redeemed people, on Earth.

Some would argue that the New Earth shouldn’t be called Heaven. But if Heaven, by definition, is God’s special dwelling place and we’re told that “the dwelling of God” will be with mankind on Earth, then Heaven and the New Earth must essentially be the same place. Wherever God dwells with his people and sits on his throne is Heaven. And we’re clearly told that “the throne of God and of the Lamb” is in the New Jerusalem, which is brought down to the New Earth (Revelation 21:1-3; 22:1).

God, who is omnipresent, may dwell centrally wherever he wishes. Wherever he chooses to put his throne is Heaven. He has revealed that he will relocate his central dwelling from the place we now call Heaven to the New Earth to live with his risen people. When he puts his kingdom throne on the New Earth, it will transform the New Earth into Heaven.

Jesus says of anyone who would be his disciple, “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). This is a picture of God’s ultimate plan—not to take us up to live in a realm made for him, but to come down and live with us in the realm he made for us. Think about this: In God’s original plan, he could have taken Adam and Eve up to Heaven to visit with him—but he didn’t. Instead, he came down to walk with them in their own world (Genesis 3:8).

When Jesus Christ came to Earth, one of the names given to him was Immanuel, which means “God with us.” The Incarnation means that God came down to live with us. And when Jesus ascended to Heaven in his resurrected body, it demonstrated that the Incarnation wasn’t temporary, but permanent. This has great bearing on where God might choose for us and him to dwell together. The New Earth will be Heaven incarnate, just as Jesus Christ is God incarnate.

Several books on Heaven state that the New Jerusalem will not descend to Earth but will remain suspended overhead. But Revelation 21:2 doesn’t say this. When John watches the city “coming down” from Heaven, there’s no reason to believe it stops before reaching the New Earth. (If we said that a plane was coming down from the sky, we wouldn’t assume it never landed, would we?) The assumption that the New Jerusalem remains suspended over the earth arises from the notion that Heaven and Earth must always be separate. But Scripture indicates they will be joined. Their present incompatibility is due to a temporary aberration— Earth is under sin and the Curse. Once that aberration is corrected, Heaven and Earth will be fully compatible again (Ephesians 1:10).

Utopian idealists who dream of mankind creating “Heaven on Earth” are destined for disappointment. But though they are wrong in believing that humans can achieve it, the fact is that there will be Heaven on Earth. That’s God’s dream. It’s God’s plan. And he—not we—will accomplish it.

Is the idea of Heaven coming down to Earth a foreign concept to you? What do you think about living on a New Earth that is also Heaven? Can you imagine anything better than that?

Father, what a great truth it is that Jesus came down to be with us in the Incarnation. And how incredible that he not only became a man but will forever be the God-man. What amazing grace you showed to us by inhabiting space and time as a human being. It’s hard to imagine the eternal Son of God, the Creator of the universe, becoming a human child—carried by a Galilean peasant woman, born in a Bethlehem barn, surrounded by human blood and animals and straw, wrapped to keep out the cold night air. And how amazing, too, that you promise one day to come down and live with us again in our home, the New Earth. Millions of years from now, Father, surely we will still be awestruck with wonder at your glorious plan!