Heaven

by Randy Alcorn

  Will the New Earth start over as a new Eden, or will it contain the cumula­tive benefits of human knowledge, art, and technology?

  Life in the new creation will not be a repristination of all things—a going back to the way things were at the beginning. Rather, life in the new creation will be a restoration of all things—involving the removal of every sinful impurity and the retaining of all that is holy and good. Were the new creation to exclude the diversity of the nations and the glory of the kings of the earth, it would be impoverished rather than enriched, historically regres­sive and reactionary rather than progressive. To express the point in the form of a question: is it likely that the music of Bach and Mozart, the painting of Rembrandt, the writing of Shakespeare, the discoveries of science, etc., will be altogether lost upon life in the new creation?178

  HOW DOES EDEN ANTICIPATE THE NEW EARTH?

  Eden wasn'tjust a garden. It was an entire land of natural wonders. The Pishon River, originating in Eden, flowed "through the entire land of Havilah.... (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there)" (Genesis 2:1112). The precious onyx stone was located not only near Eden but actually in Eden(Ezekiel28:13).

  Later in Israel's history, God commanded the high priest to wear two onyx stones with the names of the twelve tribes written on them. God calls these "memorial stones" (Exodus 28:9-12). Not just the names but the stones them­selves were apparently memorials. But what would onyx stones memorialize? The Genesis and Ezekiel passages suggest the answer: Eden.

  The onyx stones on the high priest's shoulders served to remind the people of Eden, the perfect Earth that should be kept alive in the hearts, dreams, and hopes of God's people.179 God wanted his people to look at the Temple and the high priest—a symbol of mankind reconciled to God—and to remember Eden, where people lived in communion with God. The stones suggested that in re­deeming mankind, God would restore them to Eden.

  The final biblical reference to onyx stones, and the only one in the New Tes­tament, tells us they will be on the foundations of the New Jerusalem's walls (Revelation 21:19-20). The onyx of Eden and on the high priest's shoulders—representing two places where God dwelled with his people—will be displayed in the Holy City, where God will forever live with his people. Hence, the onyx on the high priest and in the Temple simultaneously points us to our past in Eden and our future on the New Earth.

  Just as Eden is our backward-looking reference point, the New Earth is our forward-looking reference point. We should expect the New Earth to be like Eden, only better. That's exactly what Scripture promises. Notice the earth's restoration to Edenlike qualities prophesied in these passages:

  Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness He will make like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and sound of a melody. (Isaiah 51:3, NASB)

  They will say, "This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited." (Ezekiel 36:35, NASB)

  The wilderness and the wasteland shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. (Isaiah 35:1, NKJV)

  Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree. (Isaiah 55:13, NKJV)

  Commenting on such passages, theologian Anthony Hoekema writes, "Prophecies of this nature should be understood as descriptions of the new earth, which God will bring into existence after Christ comes again—a new earth which will last, not just for a thousand years, but forever. . . . Keeping the doctrine of the new earth in mind... will open up the meaning of large portions of Old Testament prophetic literature in surprisingly new ways."180

  WHAT WILL NEW NATURE BE LIKE?

  We've never seen men and women as they were intended to be. We've never seen animals the way they were before the Fall. We see only marred remnants of what once was.

  Likewise, we've never seen nature unchained and undiminished. We've only seen it cursed and decaying. Yet even now we see a great deal that pleases and excites us, moving our hearts to worship.

  If the "wrong side" of Heaven can be so beautiful, what will the right side look like? If the smoking remains are so stunning, what will Earth look like when it's resurrected and made new, restored to the original?

  In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds.We have joy whenever this world reminds us of thenext, and we take solace whenever it does not.

  C. S. Lewis

  C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien saw core truth in the old mythologies, and in their books they give us a glimpse of people and beasts and trees that are vibrantly alive. What lies in store for us is what we have seen only in diminished glimpses. As Lewis and Tolkien realized, "Pagan fables of paradise were dim and distorted recollections of Eden."181

  The earthly beauty we now see won t be lost. We won't trade Earth's beauty for Heaven's but retain Earth's beauty and gain even deeper beauty. As we will live forever with the people of this world—redeemed—we will enjoy for­ever the beauties of this world—redeemed.

  C. S. Lewis said, "We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it."182

  And so we shall.

  WILL THIS EARTH'S PLACES BE RESURRECTED TO THE NEW EARTH?

  In becoming new, will the old Earth retain much of what it once was? The New Earth will still be just as much Earth as the new us will still be us. "The world into which we shall enter in the Parousia of Jesus Christ is . . . not another world; it is this world, this heaven, this earth; both, however, passed away and renewed. It is these forests, these fields, these cities, these streets, these people, that will be the scene of redemption."183

  Shouldn't we expect, then, that some of the same geological features of the old Earth will characterize the new? Shouldn't we expect the New Earth's sky to be blue? Might God refashion the rain forests or the Grand Canyon? If the earth be­comes the New Earth, might Lake Louise become the New Lake Louise?

  Might we travel to a familiar place and say, "This is the very spot we stood on," in the same sense we'll be able to say, "These are the very hands I used to help the needy"?

  In The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis portrays the girl Lucy as she mourns the loss of Narnia, a great world created by Asian, a beloved world that she assumed had been forever destroyed. Jewel the unicorn mourns too, calling his beloved Narnia "The only world I've ever known."

  Although Lucy and her family and friends are on the threshold of Asian's country (Heaven), she still looks back at Narnia and feels a profound loss. But as she gets deeper into Asian's country, she notices something totally unexpected. What happens next, I believe, reflects the biblical revelation of the New Earth:

  "Those hills," said Lucy, "the nice woody ones and the blue ones behind—aren't they very like the southern border of Narnia."

  "Like!" cried Edmund after a moment's silence. "Why they're exactly like. Look, there's Mount Pire with his forked head, and there's the pass into Archenland and everything!"

  "And yet they're not like," said Lucy. "They're different. They have more colours on them and they look further away than I remembered and they're more . . . more . . . oh, I don't know. . . ."

  "More like the real thing," said the Lord Digory softly.

  Suddenly Farsight the Eagle spread his wings, soared thirty or forty feet up into the air, circled round and then alighted on the ground.

  "Kings and Queens," he cried, "we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all—Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia."

  "But how can it be?" said Peter. "For Asian told us older ones that we should never return to Narnia, and here we are."

  "Yes," said Eustace. "And
we saw it all destroyed and the sun put out."

  "And it's all so different," said Lucy.

  "The Eagle is right," said the Lord Digory. "Listen, Peter. When Asian said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Asian's real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream." . . .

  The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean.

  It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right forehoof on the ground and neighed and then cried:

  "I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."184

  Lewis captured the biblical theology of the old and New Earth, and the continuity between them, better than any theologian I've read. Did you catch his message? Our world is a Shadowlands, a copy of something that once was, Eden, and yet will be, the New Earth. All of the old Earth that matters will be drawn into Heaven, to be part of the New Earth.

  Through The Chronicles of Narnia series, we and our children can learn to en­vision the promised Heaven on Earth in a biblical and compelling way † We can learn to anticipate nature, culture, and humanity that will be, as the Lord Digory put it, "more like the real thing." Lewis goes even further later in The Last Battle:

  "Why!" exclaimed Peter. "It's England. And that's the house itself—Professor Kirk's old home in the country where all our adventures began!"

  "I thought that house had been destroyed," said Edmund.

  "So it was," said the Faun. "But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed."185

  Based on what Scripture tells us of the New Earth and the New Jerusalem, and that certain things will be restored, I think what Lewis envisions is very possible. On the New Earth we will see the raz/Earth, which includes the good things not only of God's natural creation but also of mankind's creative expres­sion to God's glory. On the New Earth, no good thing will be destroyed.

  WILL WE MISS THE OLD EARTH?

  The New Earth will be a place of healing (Revelation 22:2). Christ's healing ministry was thus a foretaste of Heaven, the place where all hurts are healed, all suffering forever eclipsed byjoy Whenever Jesus healed people, the act spoke of wholeness and health, the original perfection of Adam and Eve, and the coming perfection of resurrected bodies and spirits. Every healing was a memorial to the Eden that was and a signpost to the New Earth that will be.

  As we set our minds and hearts on Heaven, we should not only go back to the Garden of Eden but also move forward to the Holy City, where we will ex­perience both the riches of nature unruined and human creativity unleashed.

  Everything changes when we grasp that all we love about the old Earth will be ours on the New Earth—either in the same form or another. Once we under­stand this, we won't regret leaving all the wonders of the world we've seen or mourn not having seen its countless other wonders. Why? Because we will yet be able to see them.

  God is no more done with the earth than he's done with us.

  †l encourage parents to read The Chronicles of Narnia series aloud to their family or to listen to the complete books in radio theatre audio productions copublished by Tyndale and Focus on the Family.

  CHAPTER 24

  WHAT IS THE NEW

  JERUSALEM?

  Scripture describes Heaven as both a country (Luke 19:12; Hebrews 11:14 16) and a city (Hebrews 12:22; 13:14; Revelation 21:2). Fifteen times in Revelation 21 and 22 the place God and his people will live together is called a city. The repetition of the word and the detailed description of the architecture, walls, streets, and other features of the city suggest that the term city isn't merely a figure of speech but a literal geographical location. After all, where do we ex­pect physically resurrected people to live if not in a physical environment?

  Everyone knows what a city is—a place with buildings, streets, and resi­dences occupied by people and subject to a common government. Cities have inhabitants, visitors, bustling activity cultural events, and gatherings involving music, the arts, education, religion, entertainment, and athletics. If the capital city of the New Earth doesn't have these defining characteristics of a city it would seem misleading for Scripture to repeatedly call it a city.

  The city at the center of the future Heaven is called the New Jerusalem. The city is portrayed as a walled city; its security is beyond question. It is perched on the peak of a hill that no invading army could ascend. The city's walls are so thick that they couldn't be breached by any siege engine and so high that no hu­man could hope to scale them. (Of course, the city won't ever be under attack, but its structure will remind us of God's might and commitment to protect his people.)

  When I think of the walls of the New Jerusalem, I remember the morning a pastor came to see me. His teenage son Kevin, who was also his best friend, had died four months earlier. This pastor had recently attended a seminary course I taught, "A Theology of Heaven." By God's grace the class had comforted and encouraged this man.

  As the pastor sat in my office, he opened his hand to reveal a beautiful reddish, polished stone. I'd never seen anything like it. He said itwas jasper, which I recog­nized as a stone that will make up the walls of the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:18). The stone was a reminder of his son Kevin and of the assurance that he and his son will live together again in a glorious city with jasper walls.

  The pastor insisted I keep the jasper stone. He said, "I want you to know I'm praying for you as you write your book about Heaven. And I want you to have this stone to remind you of Heaven's reality."

  I often look at the stone and hold it in my hand. The more I do, the more beautiful it becomes. It's not ghostly; it's solid and substantial—just like the place that awaits us.

  WHAT ARE THE CITY'S DIMENSIONS?

  The city's exact dimensions are measured by an angel and reported to be 12,000 stadia, the equivalent of 1,400 miles or 2,200 kilometers, in length, width, and height (Revelation 21:15-16). Even though these proportions may have symbolic importance, this doesn't mean they can't be literal. In fact, Scripture emphasizes that the dimensions are given in "man's measurement" (Revelation 21:17). If the city really has these dimensions (and there's no rea­son it couldn't), what more could we expect God to say to convince us? (I deal with whether the dimensions are literal in appendix B, "Literal and Figurative Interpretation.")

  A metropolis of this size in the middle of the United States would stretch from Canada to Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains to the Califor­nia border. The New Jerusalem is all the square footage anyone could ask for.

  Even more astounding is the city's 1,400-mile height. Some people suggest this is the reach of the city's tallest towers and spires, rising above buildings of lesser height. If so, they argue that it's more like a pyramid than a cube.

  We don't need to worry that Heaven will be crowded. The ground level of the city will be nearly two million square miles. This is forty times bigger than England and fifteen thousand times bigger than London. It's ten times as big as France or Germany and far larger than India. But remember, that's just the ground level.

  Given the dimensions of a 1,400-mile cube, if the city consisted of different levels (we
don't know this), and if each story were a generous twelve feet high, the city could have over 600,000 stories. If they were on different levels, billions of people could occupy the New Jerusalem, with many square miles per person.

  If these numbers are figurative, not literal (and that is certainly possible), surely they are still meant to convey that the home of God's people will be ex­tremely large and roomy.

  The cube shape of the New Jerusalem reminds us of the cube shape of the Most Holy Place in the Temple (1 Kings 6:20), the three dimensions perhaps suggestive of the three persons of the Trinity. God will live in the city, and it is his presence that will be its greatest feature.

  WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CITY'S GATES?

  The city has "a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west" (Revelation 21:12-13). A city's gates were important for several rea­sons. First, they were a place of defense from enemies. Typically the gates of the city were shut tight at night to keep out dangers. Even Disneyland, "the happi­est place on earth," closes its gates at night. However, Scripture tells us, "On no day will [the New Jerusalem's] gates ever be shut" (Revelation 21:25). Why can the gates remain open? Because the city's twelve gates are attended by twelve angels. Of course, there will be no enemies outside the city's gates—the entire New Earth will be filled with the knowledge of God (Habakkuk2:14). And cit­izens from outside the gates will regularly travel in through them (Revelation 21:24,26).

  All enemies of the Kingdom will be forever cast into the lake of fire, far away from the New Earth. So the gates will remain open, with no need for searches or metal detectors. Any citizen of the New Earth is always welcome, al­ways free to come to the capital city—and even to access the King's throne! The open gates guarded by angels remind us that our safety has been bought and permanently se­cured by our God.