New Heaven and New Earth

When I posted the info about Charles Spurgeon, I promised to share some more from the book We Shall See God by Randy Alcorn. What a great little book this is. I know I said it before, but I'll say it again. I like the chapter called Homesick for Eden. Here are some excerpts from Spurgeon's sermons delivered in 1860.

People are not the only ones who suffer under the Curse; the Earth itself experiences the devastation of the Fall in the form of thorns, blights, and disasters of every kind. But one day Christ will come to restore the Earth to its rightful state. Then it will no longer groan in the pains of childbirth but will live in joyful celebration of its new life, which will never again be taken from it.

After the first humans sinned, God cursed the Earth.

When Christ came into the world, evil people twisted a crown made of the cursed thorn and put in our his head and made him king of the Curse, and in that day he purchased the redemption of the world from its curse. I believe, and I think it is warranted by Scripture, that when Christ shall come a second time, this world will become everywhere as fertile as the Garden of Paradise used to be. 

 "The whole creation," says Paul, has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth" (Romans 8:22). Groaning for what? Groaning and waiting for the redemption, when this world shall be washed of all her sin. Her curse shall be removed, her stains taken away, and this world shall be as fair as when God first formed her from his mind, as when, like a glowing spark, forged from the anvil by the eternal hammer she first flashed in her orbit. This Christ has redeemed, this Christ shall most assuredly redeem.

And then Alcorn gives his thoughts on the subject.

We are homesick for Eden. We're nostalgic for what is implanted in our hearts. It's built into us, perhaps at a genetic level. We long for what the first man and woman once enjoyed―a perfect and beautiful Earth and free and unstained relationship with God, one another, animals, and the environment. Every attempt at human progress has been an attempt to overcome what was lost in the Fall. If God's plan were merely to take mankind to the present Heaven or to a heaven that is the dwelling place of spirit beings, there would be no need for new heaven s and a New Earth. 

Upon creating the heavens and the Earth, God called them "very good" (Genesis 1:31). Never once has he renounced his claim on what he made. He isn't going to abandon his creation; he's going to restore it. We won't go to heaven and leave earth behind. Rather, God will bring Heaven and Earth together into the same dimension, with no wall of separation, no armed angels to guard Heaven's perfection from sinful mankind (Genesis 3:24). God's perfect plan is "to bring unity to all things in heaven and oin earth under Christ" (Ephesians 1:10, NIV).

Wow, I don't know about you, but this really makes me look forward to heaven more than if I were to go there as a disembodied spirit drifting around on clouds as some have envisioned heaven. No wonder so many people have no desire to go there. Compared to a New Heaven and a New Earth, the "cloud" theory does sound a little boring. Although, if this were God's plan, I'm sure there would nothing boring about it. I just agree with Spurgeon and Alcorn. We are promised a new body like Jesus' resurrected body. A new body - a new Heaven and a new Earth - what could be better? I sure can't think of anything.

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