Our last post showed the “new heaven and new earth” (Rev. 21:1) do not represent the eternal state. Saints do not go there only when they die. Rather, the “new heaven and new earth” is the environment in which God’s saints live during the Messianic Age. We will give our first two reasons for taking this position in this post.
First Heaven and Earth
Our first reason involves the passing away of “the first heaven and the first earth” (Rev. 21:1). This symbology represents the termination of the Mosaic Age. We see this in one of Isaiah’s Messianic prophecies. God would judge Israel so the Gentiles would come to trust in Him (Isa. 51:5). At that time, “the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment” (Isa. 51:6; emphasis added). The Gentile mission would occur in conjunction with the vanishing of the heavens and earth.
The Lord informs us about how he created this heaven and earth during the Exodus. Isaiah asks, “Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over” (Isa. 51:10)? God responds,
I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: The LORD of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundations of the earth. (Isa. 51:15–16; emphasis added)
God formed the Mosaic-Age heaven and earth during Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. This cannot refer to the original creation of the cosmos. This “heaven and earth” is the arrangement in which God relates to his people through the law covenant. It would perish when God judged Israel. We have referred to the period during which this “heaven and earth” existed as the Mosaic Age.
Jesus made an interesting comment that reinforces this definition of “the first heaven and earth.” He said, “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt. 5:18; emphasis added). If Jesus is speaking of the physical cosmos, then not one element of the Mosaic law has perished. This including the sacrifices, priesthood, Temple, et al.
We reject this interpretation. Jesus, for example, changed the Mosaic-Age priesthood. And, “the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law” (Heb. 7:12). After Jesus came, there was “a disannulling of the commandment going before” (Heb 7:18). The Mosaic-Age sacrifices “stood only in meats and drinks, and divers washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation” (Heb. 9:10). The time of reformation occurred in the “last days” (Heb. 1:2) of the Mosaic Age.
So, here is our thinking. A change to the law could not occur until heaven and earth passed away (Matt. 5:18). There has been a change in the law (Heb. 7:12, 18; 9:10). Therefore, heaven and earth have passed away.
Jesus cannot be using this “heaven and earth” terminology to mean the physical cosmos. He is using it in the sense of Isa. 51:5, 6, 10, 15–16. For John to say “the first heaven and the first earth were passed away” (Rev. 21:1) means the Mosaic Age ended.
This “heaven and earth” imagery explains Jesus’s language in the Olivet Discourse. He describes the end of the Mosaic Age by saying then “shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken” (Matt. 24:29). He was not speaking of the physical cosmos. He meant the removal of the old covenant and the establishment of the new during the Messianic Age. This happened in his generation (Matt. 24:34).
The “new heaven and earth” is where God relates to his people through the new covenant in Christ. This period is the Messianic Age. The following passages describe this covenant transition: Jer. 31:31–34; Heb. 8:6–13; 10:7–18.
The New Jerusalem
Our second reason involves the place where saints live in the “new heaven and earth.” They inhabit the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2). The Scriptures show they do so during the Messianic Age.
Paul, for example, makes this clear. He says the old Jerusalem represents the Mosaic-Age covenant. The new Jerusalem represents the Messianic-Age covenant. He speaks of a “Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:25–26). The Apostle recognized the ongoing Temple ministry. As he wrote these words, the Mosaic-Age sacrifices continued in earthly Jerusalem. But the covenant under which they operated could never lead to true freedom, only to bondage. For the moment, the free Jerusalem was “above,” waiting for the end of the Mosaic Age. The sons of the old bondage-covenant were persecuting the sons of the new freedom-covenant (Gal. 4:29). Soon things would change. The bondage-covenant would end and its sons be cast out (Ga. 4:30).
Paul leaves the new Jerusalem above in strict conformity to Jesus’s imagery. The new Jerusalem would not descend until God removed “the heaven and earth” of the old Jerusalem.
John completes the picture. In his vision, the old passes away and he sees “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven” (Rev. 21:2). God’s free people will now dwell in it.
This new Jerusalem is the church and kingdom Jesus established (cp. Matt. 16:18–19). We know this because when the new Jerusalem descends, she is “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2). John makes her identity clear. He says,
And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. (Rev. 21:9–11; emphasis added)
The bride,1 the Lamb’s wife, the great city, and the holy Jerusalem descending from heaven are the same.
We must not miss this identification. The new Jerusalem is the church. During the “last days” of the Mosaic Age, she was espoused to Christ. She would soon be presented to him “as a chaste virgin” (2 Cor. 11:2). Paul told the Ephesian husbands to
love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. . . . “For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. . . . This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (Eph 5:25–27, 30, 32; emphasis added)
The church is the bride of Christ and John again completes the picture. He hears an angel call the new Jerusalem “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” The holy city is the church. The bride and her groom will consummate their marriage in John’s near future as we will soon see.
The church exists as the home for saints during the Messianic Age. Therefore, the “new heaven and earth” in which the new Jerusalem exists is the Messianic Age.
Conclusion
Future posts will (D. V.) show other reasons for viewing the “new heaven and earth” as the Messianic Age. Let’s end here with John Newton’s beautiful and encouraging description of the city in which Messianic-Age saints dwell. It contains several elements John and Isaiah place in the “new heaven and earth.” (See Isa. 65–66 and Rev. 21–22).
Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God.
He whose Word cannot be broken
formed thee for His own abode.
On the Rock of Ages founded,
what can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
thou may’st smile at all thy foes.
See, the streams of living waters,
springing from eternal love,
well supply thy sons and daughters
and all fear of want remove.
Who can faint while such a river
ever flows their thirst to assuage?
Grace, which like the Lord, the Giver,
never fails from age to age.
Round each habitation hov’ring,
see the cloud and fire appear
for a glory and a cov’ring,
showing that the Lord is near.
Thus deriving from their banner
light by night and shade by day,
safe they feed upon the manna
which God gives them when on their way.
Savior, since of Zion’s city
I through grace a member am,
let the world deride or pity,
I will glory in Thy name.
Fading are the world’s best pleasures,
all its boasted pomp and show;
solid joys and lasting treasures
none but Zion’s children know.2
Footnotes
- The work of art showing a Jewish bride in the above image (here) and the reproduction thereof are in the public domain worldwide. The reproduction is part of a collection of reproductions compiled by The Yorck Project. The compilation copyright is held by Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
- This version of Newton’s hymn is here.
