21 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”
5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.”
But now a further point of great importance. A new heaven we may think we can grasp, but - a new earth? This is a stumbling block to many, and a word or two by way of elucidation will not be amiss. It used to be the fashion in theological circles to speak of heaven as a state rather than a place; to speak of it as an actual place was regarded as crude and literalistic. This is very plausible. But unfortunately it is wide of the mark as far as biblical teaching is concerned. As a matter of fact, the idea of heaven as a (very spiritual) state of mind rather than a place owes its origin to Greek philosophy, not the New Testament. For the Greek idea was that of the immortality of the soul. They thought of the continued existence of the soul after death, 'an existence disembodied, attenuated, rarified'. But the Scriptures teach something far beyond this - the resurrection of the body, a solid and substantial doctrine. This is why 'heaven' must be a place, as well as a state of mind, and must include also the idea of a new earth. For the new creation is to be peopled with a new humanity - God has a new kind of man prepared for this new creation, with spiritual bodies. The life to come is a solid reality, far removed from the dismal conception of disembodied spirits haunting a ghostly existence, which often does duty in men's minds for their idea of the afterlife. It is not too much to say that it is because of the persistence of this pernicious error in the thinking of the Church that so many believers consciously or unconsciously regard heaven very much as an insubstantial 'consolation prize' that follows upon their losing the solid experience of life as they have known it upon earth. It is time that the robust biblical 'materialism' of the world to come came back into its own, for it is time that the Church lost its desolating 'earthboundness' and became truly heavenly-minded.