Week 52
I finished reading Revelation today.
I started the year reading the Creation Story: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Then today I saw this: and I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away.
What that sounds like is that everything – all of the OT, and all of the NT, and all of what has happened since the NT up to today, and then going forward from today on into the indefinite future – that everything so far takes place in the first earth, the old earth.
The first earth started out good and stayed good for two chapters – about fifty-six verses – but then changed into an earth that wasn’t as good any more.
The whole story of the bible this year from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20 has been the description of life on our second-class first earth, our internally busted-up world, our not-as-good-as-it-had-been earth. A temporary space that’s a kind of place-holder for a new earth to come.
It’s hard to say whether the first earth will be totally vaporized and that the Lord will create a second earth from scratch or whether the first earth will be renovated in a top-to-bottom way. But for the person who believes there will be a future in heaven it sounds like at least a part of that will include a new earth.
Note: quotes from Genesis 1:1 & Revelation 21:1 (NASB & NLT).