Let’s begin a study of the Bible’s next-to-last Chapter. Revelation 21 (with maybe a glance at the opening few verses of Revelation 22 as well) … which depicts the “New Heaven” and the “New Earth.”
Apparently God plans to eventually replace both!
Here’s proof: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” Revelation 21:1
John, as as a Prophet, recorded these words.
Isaiah, another great Prophet, also wrote long ago (700 years before Jesus’ Virgin Birth) about the “New Heavens” and the “New Earth.” For example: “For, behold, I (the Lord speaking) create NEW HEAVENS and a NEW EARTH: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” Isaiah 65:17
And again: “For as the NEW HEAVENS and the NEW EARTH , which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name (Israel) remain.” Isaiah 66:22
The Greek verb “were passed away” (back in Revelation 21:1) means “gone aside.” They (heaven and earth) are “past” now. Once in the New Testament (King James Version) this verb, “parerchomai,” is translated “to pass over.”
Wow, “to pass over!”
Because of the original PASSOVER (picturing Jesus’ shed Blood on the Cross) … this old sin tainted earth where will live will some day “pass over” and pass out of existence! Simon Peter put it this way in his Epistle: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?” Second Peter 3:10-12
Hence, the need for a new earth!
The “heavens” also have been sin soiled in like fashion. The devil being the “prince of the power of the air.” He being the leader of the forces of “spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Alluding to both Ephesians 2:2 and Ephesians 6:12.)
Our Text again: “And I (John on the Isle of Patmos) saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”
The “no more sea” (Israel has never loved the Ocean, always being a “people of the land”) phrase could be a reference to such passages as: “But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” Isaiah again, 57:20 this time.
All evil is GONE … in the “New Heaven.”
Sounds like a wonderful environment!
More tomorrow, the Lord willing, we’ve just begun!
— Dr. Mike Bagwell