WILL EARTH BE AN EXTENSION OF HEAVEN SOME DAY?
Billy Graham answers the question this way. Yes, the Bible tells us that God will bring Heaven to earth where He will live among His people at the end of this present age.
Scripture tells us that the Earth will be restored, and will become the New Heaven.
Isaiah 65:17: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. This verse often leads to confusion. The former things Isaiah is talking about has to do with the Jews legal rites and ceremonies, and the traditions of the elders. They will discard the old, and embrace the Messiah, and all his truths and ordinances; old things shall pass away, and all things become new: and it shall have its complete accomplishment in the New Jerusalem. The New Heaven.
Isaiah 66:22: “As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name and descendants endure.
2 Peter 3:13: 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
Charles Stanley said if God did not cleanse and restore the Earth, Satan would have won.
Revelation 21:1: Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.
The fact that there is no longer any sea suggests, to me, that the new heaven will be right here on earth.
In Genesis 1:31, God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. It doesn’t seem reasonable that God would have given up on His creation.
Richard deHaan, goes further. He writes, the New Jerusalem, the city of God, will be right here on the New Earth.
It’s not only the current crop of religious theologians who say the Earth would not be destroyed, but renovated. Jerome , the man who translated the Bible into Latin about 347 AD, wrote that Heaven and Earth would not be annihilated, but would be transformed into something better.
Augustine , Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and many other medieval theologians wrote that the earth would be annihilated , cleansed and restored.
Luke 1:32 tells us that Jesus will set on David’s throne and rule forever. David’s throne was on earth.
