New Heaven And New Earth Quotes & Sayings

I still feel there is a case to be made for my old belief that as man approaches the 'new heaven and the new earth'
or the space-age universe, if you will, he must do so with humility rather than with arrogance. — Rachel Carson

Some people find no comfort in the prophets' vision of a future world. "The church has used that line for centuries to justify slavery, oppression, and all manner of injustice," they say. The criticism sticks because the church has abused the prophets' vision. But you will never find that "pie in the sky" rationale in the prophets themselves. They have scathing words about the need to care for widows and orphans and aliens, and to clean up corrupt courts and religious systems. The
people of God are not merely to mark time, waiting for God to step in and set right all that is wrong. Rather, they are to model the new heaven and new earth, and by so doing awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass. — Philip Yancey

We left our home forty years ago. Despite the unhappy events we faced there, we left because our faith allowed it, because our belief in the Lord taught us that we would find a new place, a place to build a heaven on earth. War was waged in our home as we left. Many, many innocents dies. To live, people killed and were killed. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses reminds his people of the promise made to their ancestors regarding the land of Canaan. He delivers the law, teaching them how to win a life of victory in the land of promise. They said, Jehovah, let all the enemies of the Lord face this same end. Do not pity them or offer them promises, only annihilate them all. And yet, Jesus taught love and peace. I say again - those left behind in our hometown had souls, just as we do. It is we who must repent first. (2007: 17) — Hwang Sok-yong

Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn. — G.K. Chesterton

The Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And we pray, not for new
earth or heaven, but to be quiet
in heart, and in eye clear.
What we need is here. — Wendell Berry

O holy Jesus, Gentle friend, Morning Star, Midday sun adorned, Brilliant flame of righteousness, life everlasting and eternity, Fountain ever-new, ever-living, ever-lasting. . . . Son of the merciful Father, without mother in heaven, Son of the true Virgin Mary, without father on earth, True and loving Brother. — Kenneth McIntosh

A new heaven is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness. And A New Earth is it's direct reflection in the physical realm. — Eckhart Tolle

As long as we see salvation in terms of going to heaven when we die, the main work of the church is bound to be seen in terms of saving souls for that future. But when we see salvation, as the New Testament sees it, in terms of God's promised new heavens and new earth and of our promised resurrection to share in that new and gloriously embodied reality - what I have called life after life after death - then the main work of the church here and now demands to be rethought in consequence. — N. T. Wright

From the Earl of Hellgate's Memoirs, Chapter the Twenty-Sixth
I realized then that I had mistaken the nature of love. Love has nothing to do with desire; it's the quest for the divine, found on earth. It's finding a woman whose soul preserves a shard of heaven, and worshipping her ... worshipping at her feet. I was a new man. — Eloisa James

The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises ... that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth. — Alice Hoffman

Against the new leviathan, whether in the guise of universal suffrage, democracy, or of an equally fraudulent triumphant proletariat, he (Kierkegaard) pitted the individual human soul made in the image of a God who was concerned about the fate of every living creature. In contrast with the notion of salvation through power, he held out the hope of salvation through suffering. The Cross against the ballot box or clenched fist; the solitary pilgrim against the slogan-shouting mob; the crucified Christ against the demagogue-dictators promising a kingdom of heaven on earth, whether achieved through endlessly expanding wealth and material well-being, or through the ever greater concentration of power and its ever more ruthless exercise. — Malcolm Muggeridge

The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom ... It is the decisive event demonstrating thet God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven."
"The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. — N. T. Wright

God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, ... are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. — Martin Luther

Revelation, which is often associated with the end of things, also speaks of new beginnings - a new name (2:17); a new Jerusalem (3:12); a new heaven and a new earth (21:1); and all things new (21:5). It reads like a description of New Year's Eve. Ring out the old; ring in the new! — William J. Petersen

He that seeks perfection upon earth leaves nothing new for the saints to find in heaven; for whilst men teach, there will be mistakes in divinity, and as long as no other govern, errors in the State. — Frances Osborne

An epiphany enables you to sense creation not as something completed, but as constantly becoming, evolving, ascending. This transports you from a place where there is nothing new to a place where there is nothing old, where everything renews itself, where heaven and earth rejoice as at the moment of creation. — Abraham Isaac Kook

So this is reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody. Paul insisted that when Jesus died on the cross, he was reconciling "all things, in heaven and on earth, to God." All things, everywhere ... This reality then isn't something we make come true about ourselves by doing something. It is already true. Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making. — Rob Bell

In the new world every position of power evacuated by an arrested and beheaded pedophile or bankster will be filled with a grandmother who has pledged to create heaven on earth for all children, animal and humans with the stolen money we have recovered. — Roseanne Barr

It is the next step forward on the path to the sunrise, and the sun is rising over a new heaven and a new earth. — M. Carey Thomas

I think when people die, their souls go to heaven but just for a little while. Like that's where they see their old friends and stuff, and kind of catch up on old times. But then I actually think the souls start thinking about their lives on earth, like if they were good or bad or whatever. And then they get born again as brand-new babies in the world. — R.J. Palacio

We were fond together because of the sweep of open places, the taste of wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for. We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep, and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace. — T.E. Lawrence

To be a soul winner is the happiest thing in the world. And with every soul you bring to Jesus Christ, you seem to get a new heaven here upon earth. — Charles Spurgeon

Does the Power that runs the universe think us of more importance than we think ants?"
"You forget that an infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great for us to apprehend. To the infinitely little an ant is of as much importance as a mastodon. We are witnessing the birth pangs of a new era--but it will be born a feeble, wailing life like everything else. I am not one of those who expect a new heaven and a new earth as the immediate result of this war. That is not the way God works. But work He does, Miss Oliver, and in the end His purpose will be fulfilled. — L.M. Montgomery

Here, then, is the message of Easter, or at least the beginning of that message. The resurrection of Jesus doesn't mean, "It's all right. We're going to heaven now." No, the life of heaven has been born on this earth. It doesn't mean, "So there is a life after death." Well, there is, but Easter says much, much more than that. It speaks of a life that is neither ghostly nor unreal, but solid and definite and practical. The Easter stories come at the end of the four gospels, but they are not about an "end." They are about a beginning. The beginning of God's new world. The beginning of the kingdom. God is now in charge, on earth as in heaven. And God's "being-in-charge" is focused on Jesus himself being king and Lord. The title on the cross was true after all. The resurrection proves it. — N. T. Wright

Disturb us, Lord, When we are too well pleased with ourselves, When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when With the abundance of things we possess We have lost our thirst For the waters of life; Having fallen in love with life, We have ceased to dream of eternity And in our efforts to build a new earth, We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim. Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, To venture on wider seas Where storms will show your mastery; Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars. We ask You to push back The horizons of our hopes; And to push into the future In strength, courage, hope, and love. — A.J. Leon

Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio saying, "Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella. — Sarah Vowell

I have prayed for new men, fiery, reckless men, possesed of uncontrollably youthful passion - these lit by the Spirit of God. I have prayed for new words, explosive, direct, simple words. I have prayed for new miracles. Explaining old miracles will not do. If God is to be known as the God who does wonders in heaven and earth, then God must produce for this generation. Lord, fill preachers and preaching with Thy power. How long dare we go on without tears, without moral passions, hatred and love? Not long, I pray, Lord Jesus, not long ... — Jim Elliot

The significance of the resurrection claim within "true" Christian descriptions of the self, world and God is that, despite how tragic and hopeless present situations and circumstances appear to be, there is a God who sits high and looks low, a God who came into this filthy, fallen world in the form of a common peasant in order to commence a new epoch, an epoch in which Easter focuses our attention on the decisive victory of Jesus Christ and hence the possibility of our victory over our creature hood, the old creation and this old world, with its history of oppression and exploitation. So to be a Christian is to have a joyful attitude toward the resurrection claim, to stake one's life on it and to rest one's hope upon its promise - the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. — Cornel West

Earth Is Enough. We men of Earth have here the stuff Of Paradise - we have enough! We need no other stones to build The Temple of the Unfulfilled - No other ivory for the doors - No other marble for the floors - No other cedar for the beam And dome of man's immortal dream. Here on the paths of every-day - Here on the common human way Is all the stuff the gods would take To build a Heaven, to mold and make New Edens. Ours is the stuff sublime To build Eternity in time! — Edwin Markham

It goes without saying that in order for me to buy a teapot at the Oneida, Ltd., outlet store at the Sherrill Shopping Plaza, the second coming of Jesus Christ had to have taken place in the year 70 A.D. To the Oneida Community, 70 A.D., the year the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, marks the beginning of the New Jerusalem. Which means we've all been living in heaven on earth for nearly two thousand years. Everyone knows there is no marriage in heaven (though one suspects there's no shortage of it in hell). So, the Oneidans said, we're here in heaven, already saved and perfect in the eyes of God, so let's move upstate and sleep around. (I'm paraphrasing.) — Sarah Vowell

Heaven is where God dwells. It is a specific place; ... a place of unparalleled tranquility and beauty. It includes the new heaven and new earth. — Paul P. Enns

Natural causes, as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, if they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. But though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules [i.e. atoms] out of which these systems are built-the foundation stones of the material universe-remain unbroken and unworn. They continue to this day as they were created-perfect in number and measure and weight. — James Clerk Maxwell

Many merry Christmases, many happy New Years. Unbroken friendships, great accumulations of cheerful recollections and affections on earth, and heaven for us all. — Charles Dickens

The door to heaven is open to us at any time we are willing to accept that we are of absolutely no importance. The bars of our own hell - the "mind-forged manacles" as Blake put it - are our attempts to justify ourselves or prove our self-worth. Accept that none of this matters and we can see that heaven is all around us. It is there in a child's smile, in the rain that waters the earth, even in the maggots that rise in new life from dead meat. All around us is evidence that life and love are eternal and unbroken by strife and suffering. — Aussiescribbler

What is being born is a new consciousness and, as its inevitable reflection, a new world. This is also foretold in the New Testament Book of Revelation: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. — Eckhart Tolle

I reason, earth is short, And anguish absolute, And many hurt; But what of that? I reason, we could die: The best vitality Cannot excel decay; But what of that? I reason that in heaven Somehow, it will be even, Some new equation given; But what of that? — Emily Dickinson

The spirit of Christmas lives with us. We are the protectors of the real tradition of Christmas-peace on Earth and Goodwill to all. We are the hope of Man-the only hope. Mankind's salvation lies within our hands. With our tech and ability we can create here on Earth a real heaven where men can be free. In our hands lies the power to restore to Man his determinism and all that he finds good in himself-his honesty, his integrity, and the thrill of being of real help to others. A very Merry Christmas to you all and a bright friendly new year. — L. Ron Hubbard

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new? — John Keats

Look up, you whose gaze is fixed on this earth, who are spellbound by the little events and changes on the face of the earth. Look up to these words, you who have turned away from heaven disappointed. Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears and who are heavy and who are crying over the fact that the earth has gracelessly torn us away. Look up, you who, burdened with guilt, cannot lift your eyes. Look up, your redemption is drawing near. something different from what you see daily will happen. Just be aware, be watchful, wait just another short moment. Wait and something quite new will break over you: God will come. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Creative experience foreshadows a new Heaven and a new Earth. — Nikolai Berdyaev

The Bird of Paradise, it seemed, had beckoned us on and led us in, to stand here in this place high in the land of volcanoes. It was here in Bali, after returning from the Toraja Star Children, that I first recognized what they meant by us all being born half of heaven and half of earth. And after the mounted warsports of Sumba it was in Balinese ritual that I saw with new eyes the battle for balance between light and darkness. And after Borneo, returning to the sacred Banyan tree and its simian custodians, I had felt that all great trees, what's left of them, do indeed link heaven and earth in a single forest of life. — Lawrence Blair

What was the sense of so arranging things that anything really important should finally and absolutely depend on such a man of straw as himself? And at that moment, far away on Earth, as he now could not help remembering, men were at war, and whitefaced subalterns and freckled corporals who had but lately begun to shave, stood in horrible gaps or crawled forward in deadly darkness, awaking, like him, to the preposterous truth that all really depended on their actions, and far away in time Horatius stood on the bridge, and Constantine settled in his mind whether he would or would not embrace the new religion, and Eve herself stood looking upon the forbidden fruit and the Heaven of Heavens waited for her decision. — C.S. Lewis

Having been tenant long to a rich Lord,
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold,
And make a suit unto him, to afford
A new small-rented lease, and cancell th' old.
In heaven at his manour I him sought:
They told me there, that he was lately gone
About some land, which he had dearly bought
Long since on earth, to take possession.
I straight return'd, and knowing his great birth,
Sought him accordingly in great resorts;
In cities, theatres, gardens, parks, and courts:
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of theeves and murderers: there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died. — George Herbert

Our souls are wired for what we will never enjoy until Eden is restored in the new heaven and earth. We are built with a distant memory of Eden.8 — Gary L. Thomas

Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet. — N. T. Wright

God just turns on all the beauty He can possibly create, and that final Heaven on Earth, the eternal one of the New Heaven and the New Earth will be the most beautiful of all and the most perfect!-The perfect government of God administered directly and in perfection in every way! — David Berg

New creation itself has begun, they are saying, and will be completed. Jesus is ruling over that new creation and making it happen through the witness of his church. "The ruler of this world" has been overthrown; the powers of the world have been led behind Jesus's triumphal procession as a beaten, bedraggled rabble. And that is how God is becoming king on earth as in heaven. That is the truth the gospels are eager to tell us, the — N. T. Wright

The great drama will end, not with "saved souls" being snatched up into heaven, away from the wicked earth and the mortal bodies which have dragged them down into sin, but with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, so that "the dwelling of God is with humans" (Revelation 21:3). — N. T. Wright

Many of the passages that describe the millennial kingdom also, in continuity, describe the new heaven and the new earth the eternal state. — Paul P. Enns

The New Heaven and New Earth are like a double Millennium, Millennium for ever!-Double your pleasure, double your fun, double your Heaven that's never done! — David Berg

There's something that's not right or not perfect or not the way we had hoped or dreamed that it was going to be. But God promises that He will use everything and every moment to ultimately take us to a new Heaven and a new Earth. For now, we're stuck in the middle. — Louie Giglio

If you're a child of God, you do not just "go around once" on Earth. You don't get just one earthly life. You get another-one far better and without end. You'll inhabit the New Earth! You'll live with the God you cherish and the people you love as an undying person on an undying Earth. — Randy Alcorn

And then the dear Lord will take us to the new earth, surrounded by the new Heaven, and the holy New Jerusalem will come down from God out of Heaven. Then we will have an end of pain and sorrow and crying and death. All these, thank God, will be forever done! And then God Himself will wipe away our tears. — John R. Rice

If you travel as much as I do - 165,000 miles last year - you exist nowhere. You're always between heaven and earth, you're always arriving in a new place, you're always starting from the beginning - talk about origins - and you don't know quite what's going to unfold. You live in the unexpected and the inexplicable all the time. — Jean Houston

In the New Testament, grace means God's love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven. — J.I. Packer

I discovered a new thing in the Lord's Prayer that kind of hit me. "on earth as it is heaven" to me it means whatever you take out into the world is what you're going to draw out. like those days when you're all yang and no yin, and you're fighting with people inside, and you can't calm yourself down, and suddenly you're pulled over by the cops. everything goes wrong in the same day because you created it. so, if you get heaven within you, it'll be all around you. if hell is within you, it'll be around you. it's always created here first. — Jim Carrey

[Jesus] is, at the moment, present with us, but hidden behind that invisible veil which keeps heaven and earth apart, and which we pierce in those moments, such as prayer, the sacraments, the reading of scripture, and our work with the poor, when the veil seems particularly thin. But one day the veil will be lifted; earth and heaven will be one; Jesus will be personally present, and every knee shall bow at his name; creation will be renewed; the dead will be raised; and God's new world will at last be in place, full of new prospects and possibilities. — N. T. Wright

[On Brave New World] "Mr. Huxley has been born too late. Seventy years ago, the great powers of his mind would have been anchored to some mighty certitude, or to some equally mighty scientific denial of a certitude. Today he searches heaven and earth for a Commandment, but searches in vain: and the lack of it reduces him, metaphorically speaking, to a man standing beside a midden, shuddering and holding his nose. — L.A.G. Strong

My knowledge is, if you will follow the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, every man and woman will be put in possession of the Holy Ghost ... They will know things that are, that will be, and that have been. They will understand things in heaven, things on the earth, and things under the earth, things of time, and things of eternity, according to their several callings and capacities. — Brigham Young

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book. — Christopher Morley

He is not the soul of Nature, nor any part of Nature. He inhabits eternity: He dwells in a high and holy place: heaven is His throne, not his vehicle, earth is his footstool, not his vesture. One day he will dismantle both and make a new heaven and earth. He is not to be identified even with the 'divine spark' in man. He is 'God and not man. — C.S. Lewis

Most people know the sheer wonder that goes with falling in love, how not only does everything in heaven and earth become new, but the lover himself becomes new. It is literally like the sap rising in the tree, putting forth new green shoots of life. — Caryll Houselander

May I view all things in the mirror of eternity, waiting for the coming of my Lord, listening for the last trumpet call, hastening unto the new heaven and earth. Order — Anonymous

But is it not already an insult to call chess anything so narrow as a game? Is it not also a science, an art, hovering between these categories like Muhammad's coffin between heaven and earth, a unique yoking of opposites, ancient and yet eternally new, mechanically constituted and yet an activity of the imagination alone, limited to a fixed geometric area but unlimited in its permutations, constantly evolving and yet sterile, a cogitation producing nothing, a mathematics calculating nothing, an art without an artwork, an architecture without substance and yet demonstrably more durable in its essence and actual form than all books and works, the only game that belongs to all peoples and all eras, while no one knows what god put it on earth to deaden boredom, sharpen the mind, and fortify the spirit? — Stefan Zweig

Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded. — Paulo Coelho

To know God's love is indeed heaven on earth. And the New Testament sets forth this knowledge, not as the privilege of a favored few, but as a normal part of ordinary Christian experience, something to which only the spiritually unhealthy or malformed will be strangers. — J.I. Packer

If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
Antony and Cleopatra - Act 1, Scene 1 — William Shakespeare

Salvation, then, is not "going to heaven" but "being raised to life in God's new heaven and new earth." But as soon as we put it like this we realize that the New Testament is full of hints, indications, and downright assertions that this salvation isn't just something we have to wait for in the long-distance future. We can enjoy it here and now (always partially, of course, since we all still have to die), genuinely anticipating in the present what is to come in the future. "We were saved," says Paul in Romans 8:24, "in hope." The verb "we were saved" indicates a past action, something that has already taken place, referring obviously to the complex of faith and baptism of which Paul has been speaking in the letter so far. But this remains "in hope" because we still look forward to the ultimate future salvation of which he speaks in (for instance) Romans 5:9, 10. — N. T. Wright

New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood.
Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life
Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines.
Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored,
The recociliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree
Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning.
See your rivers stirring with musk alligators
And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens.
Just open your eyes to the April rainbow
And your eyes, especially your ears, to God
Who in one burst of saxophone laughter
Created heaven and earth in six days,
And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new. — Wilkie Collins

You ever wonder what happens to people when they die?" I asked. He shrugged. "Not really. I mean, I guess they go to heaven? That's where my Grans went." "I think about it a lot," I said. "I think when people die, their souls go to heaven but just for a little while. Like that's where they see their old friends and stuff, and kind of catch up on old times. But then I actually think the souls start thinking about their lives on earth, like if they were good or bad or whatever. And then they get born again as brand-new babies in the world." "Why would they want to do that?" "Because then they get another chance to get it right," I answered. "Their souls get a chance to have a do-over. — R.J. Palacio

We live, therefore, between Easter and the consummation, following Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and commissioned to be for the world what he was for Israel, bringing God's redemptive reshaping to our world.

Christians have always found it difficult to understand and articulate this, and have regularly distorted the picture in one direction or the other.

[ ... ]

When God does what God intends to do, this will be an act of fresh grace, of radical newness. At one level it will be quite unexpected, like a surprise party with guests we never thought we would meet and delicious food we never thought we would taste. But at the same time there will be a rightness about it, a rich continuity with what has gone before so that in the midst of our surprise and delight we will say, 'Of course! This is how it had to be, even though we'd never imagined it. — N. T. Wright

matter what their differences on the details, all Christians who take the Bible as their final authority agree that the final and ultimate result of Christ's return will be the judgment of unbelievers and the final reward of believers, and that believers will live with Christ in a new heaven and a new earth for all eternity. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will reign and will be worshiped in a never-ending kingdom with no more sin or sorrow or suffering. — Wayne A. Grudem

Yes, that resurrection does indeed give us a sure and certain hope. If that's not the case, we are of all people, as Paul says, most to be pitied.3 But when the New Testament strikes the great Easter bell, the main resonances it sets up are not simply about ourselves and about whatever future world God is ultimately going to make, when heaven and earth are joined together and renewed at last from top to bottom. Precisely because the resurrection has happened as an event within our own world, its implications and effects are to be felt within our own world, here and now. This — N. T. Wright

The central idea of the Eastern Fathers was that of theosis, the divinization of all creatures, the transfiguration of the world, the idea of the cosmos and not the idea of personal salvation ... Only later Christian consciousness began to value the idea of hell more than the idea of the transfiguration and divinization of the world ... The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, the universal resurrection, a new heaven and a new earth. — Nikolai Berdyaev

We have become so trusting of technology that we have lost faith in ourselves and our born instincts. There are still parts of life that we do not need to "better" with technology. It's important to understand that you are smarter than your smartphone. To paraphrase, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your Google. Mistakes are a part of life and often the path to profound new insights - so why try to remove them completely? Getting lost while driving or visiting a new city used to be an adventure and a good story. Now we just follow the GPS. — Jocelyn K. Glei

My faith survived because I realized God didn't want this for us, He never had. I'm passionately looking forward to a new Heaven and Earth where only good exists once more. — Dee Henderson

From my childhood it has been my conviction that men would reach the planets in my lifetime ... this conviction ... rests on two beliefs, one scientific and one political: (1) there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our present-day science. And we shall only find out what they are if we go out and look for them. (2) it is in the long run essential to the growth of any new and high civilization that small groups of people can escape from their neighbors and from their governments, to go and live as they please in the wilderness. — Freeman Dyson

Despite a thousand Easter hymns and a million Easter sermons, the resurrection narratives in the gospels never, ever say anything like, "Jesus is raised, therefore there is a life after death," let alone, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die." Nor even, in a more authentic first-century Christian way, do they say, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised from the dead after the sleep of death." No. Insofar as the event is interpreted, Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: Jesus is raised, so he is the Messiah, and therefore he is the world's true Lord; Jesus is raised, so God's new creation has begun - and we, his followers, have a job to do! Jesus is raised, so we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven! To be sure, as early as Paul the resurrection of Jesus is firmly linked to the final resurrection of all God's people. — N. T. Wright

When I speak elsewhere in the book of the multifaceted joys of the resurrected life in the new universe, some readers may think, But our eyes should be on the giver, not the gift; we must focus on God, not on Heaven. This approach sounds spiritual, but it erroneously divorces our experience of God from life, relationships, and the world - all of which God graciously gives us. It sees the material realm and other people as God's competitors rather than as instruments that communicate his love and character. It fails to recognize that because God is the ultimate source of joy, and all secondary joys emanate from him, to love secondary joys on Earth can be - and in Heaven always will be - to love God, their source. — Randy Alcorn

Hence the dazzling mountain scene that takes our breath away should not provoke us to try to seize and freeze the moment, but to give thanks and look ahead to the beauty of the new heaven and the new earth, of which this world's finest beauty is but a miniscule glimpse. We delight in the world's beauty as we lament its transience. — Daniel J. Treier

Our first task is to dispel this vague, murky feeling of discontent and to look critically at how we are living our lives. This requires honesty, courage, and trust. We must honestly unmask and courageously confront our many self-deceptive games. We must trust that our honesty and courage will lead us not to despair, but to a new heaven and a new earth. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

We can't fathom what God has in store for us when He makes all creation new. Believe it by faith and share with those who still doubt that they, too, can be perfected in Heaven by turning to Christ and abandoning their unobtainable satisfaction on earth. — Billy Graham

1:8 The apostles' mission of spreading the gospel was the major reason the Holy Spirit empowered them. This event dramatically altered world history, and the gospel message eventually reached all parts of the earth (Matt. 28:19, 20). receive power. The apostles had already experienced the Holy Spirit's saving, guiding, teaching, and miracle-working power. Soon they would receive His indwelling presence and a new dimension of power for witness (2:4; 1 Cor. 6:19, 20; Eph. 3:16, 20). witnesses. People who tell the truth about Jesus Christ (John 14:26; 1 Pet. 3:15). The Greek word means "one who dies for his faith" because that was commonly the price of witnessing. Judea. The region in which Jerusalem was located. Samaria. The region immediately to the north of Judea. Jesus Ascends to Heaven 9Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

The breakage and agony rending us today will be our salvation if they drive us by new routes to meet it ... As of old we must be our own seers, musicians and explorers, and to an extent vaster than ever before. This is the purpose to which we are being summoned to harness our world-body! ... Heroic responses in ideals and in conduct are a choice of regal dignity in the presence of a new earth and Heaven. — Helen Keller

Hold ever before you the vision of the new heaven and new earth. — Eileen Caddy

When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him ... For such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth. — Paracelsus

The philosophy of Atheism has its root in the earth, in this life; its aim is the emancipation of the human race from all God-heads, be they Judaic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Brahmanistic, or what not. Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods, nothing but pain and persecution, have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder. Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon the earth. — Emma Goldman

Life on earth is a dot, a brief window of opportunity; life in Heaven (and ultimately on the New Earth) is a line going out from that dot for eternity. If we're smart, we'll live not for the dot, but for the line. — Randy Alcorn

When you see the dawn breaking, you think back to the darkness in a new way. "Sin" is not simply the breaking of a law. It is the missing of an opportunity. Having heard the echoes of a voice, we are called to come and meet the speaker. We are invited to be transformed by the voice itself, the word of the gospel- the word which declares that evil has been judged, that the world has been put to rights, that heaven and earth are joined forever, and that new creation has begun. We are called to become people who can speak and live and paint and sing that word so that those who have heard it's echoes can come and lend a hand in the larger project. That is the opportunity that stands before us, as a gift and a possibility. Christian holiness is not (as people often imagine) a matter of denying something good. It is about growing up and grasping something even better. — N. T. Wright

The kingdom of God . . . does not mean merely the salvation of certain individuals nor even the salvation of a chosen group of people. It means nothing less than the complete renewal of the entire cosmos, culminating in the new heaven and the new earth. Anthony Hoekema — Randy Alcorn

When the Son on the Cross promises paradise in his company to the good thief, when he promises the future feast in Heaven to the Apostles, when he speaks of the kingdom of the Father, he is always pointing toward eternity. However brief and close to the earth his words sound, they echo throughout infinite eternity and permeate the faith of his followers with their eternal content. He knows what he speaks of, what he brings with him and what he promises; and he can convey it to those who know it not. The very words he uses are designed to awaken in them a new sense: the sense of the eternal. — Adrienne Von Speyr

There're going to be animals in God's Heaven on Earth, a New Heaven and a New Earth! God's not going to have His Creation defeated. He put those animals here for pets and playthings and companions for you and your children, and you're still going to enjoy the animals. — David Berg