Heaven: A Comprehensive Guide to Everything the Bible Says About Our Eternal Home

by Randy Alcorn

Conversion does not mean eliminating the old but transforming it. Despite the radical changes that occur through salvation, death, and resurrection, we remain who we are. We have the same history, appearance, memory, interests, and skills. This is the principle of redemptive continuity. God will not scrap his original creation and start over. Instead, he will take his fallen, corrupted children and restore, refresh, and renew us to our original design.

“God’s honor consists precisely in the fact that he redeems and renews the same humanity, the same world, the same Heaven, and the same earth that have been corrupted and polluted by sin. Just as anyone in Christ is a new creation in whom the old has passed away and everything has become new (2 Corinthians 5:17), so this world passes away in its present form as well, in order out of its womb, at God’s word of power, to give birth and being to a new world.”

“the rebirth of humans is completed in the rebirth of creation. The kingdom of God is fully realized only when it is visibly extended over the earth as well.”

Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19). John clarifies that “the temple he had spoken of was his body” (v. 21). The body that rose is the body that was destroyed. Hence, Hank Hanegraaff says, “There is a one-to-one correspondence between the body of Christ that died and the body that rose.”

Westminster Larger Catechism (1647) states, “The self-same bodies of the dead which were laid in the grave, being then again united to their souls forever, shall be raised up by the power of Christ.”

Jesus walked the earth in his resurrection body for forty days, showing us how we would live as resurrected human beings. In effect, he also demonstrated where we would live as resurrected human beings—on Earth.

Certainly, the glorified Christ will be by far the most glorious being in Heaven. Yet, as we will see, Scripture indicates that we too, in a secondary and derivative way, will reflect God’s glory in physical brightness.

Can one be “of dust” yet not under sin and death? Yes. Adam was, until the Fall. But he was subject to temptation, with the potential to succumb, whereas one day, when fully redeemed, human beings will not be.

This great passage about bodily resurrection does not simply focus on a new state and a new life, but also on the reversal of the Curse, and the conquest of sin and death.

Body means corporeal: flesh and bones.

The word spiritual here is an adjective describing body, not negating its meaning.

One Bible student told me that he couldn’t believe that the risen Christ might have DNA. But why not? Who created DNA in the first place? Christ explicitly said that his body was of flesh and bones.

Death, disease, and the deterioration of age are products of sin. Because there was no death before the Fall, presumably Adam and Eve’s original bodies were either indestructible or self-repairing (perhaps healed by the tree of life, as suggested in Revelation 22:2).

We dare not minimize the dissimilarities—for our glorification will certainly involve a dramatic and marvelous transformation.

Joni Eareckson Tada says it well: “Somewhere in my broken, paralyzed body is the seed of what I shall become. The paralysis makes what I am to become all the more grand when you contrast atrophied, useless legs against splendorous resurrected legs. I’m convinced that if there are mirrors in heaven (and why not?), the image I’ll see will be unmistakably ‘Joni,’ although a much better, brighter Joni.”

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

Albert Wolters says, “The redemption in Jesus Christ means the restoration of an original good creation.”

However, “the teaching that the new creation involves a radically new beginning,” writes theologian Cornelius Venema, “would suggest that sin and evil have become so much a part of the substance of the present created order that it is unrelievedly and radically evil. . . . It would even imply that the sinful rebellion of the creation had so ruined God’s handiwork as to make it irretrievably wicked.”105

As Martin Luther put it, “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.”

God subjected the whole creation to frustration by putting the Curse not only on mankind but also on the earth (Genesis 3:17). Why? Because human beings and the earth are inseparably linked. And as together we fell, together we shall rise. God will transform the fallen human race into a renewed human race and the present Earth into the New Earth.

“I understand the passage to have this meaning—that there is no element and no part of the world which is being touched, as it were, with a sense of its present misery, that does not intensely hope for a resurrection.”

Adam and Eve’s sin did not merely create a personal catastrophe or a local, Edenic catastrophe; it was a catastrophe of cosmic—not just global—proportions.

The second law of thermodynamics, entropy, tells us that all things deteriorate. This means that everything was once in a better condition than it is now.

“Even after the fall,” writes theologian Erich Sauer, “the destiny and the redemption of the earth remain indissolubly united with the existence and development of the human race. The redemption of the earth is, in spite of all, still bound up with man. . . . Man is the instrument for the redemption of the earthly creation. And because this remains God’s way and goal, there can be a new heaven and a new earth only after the great white throne, i.e., after the completion and conclusion of the history of human redemption.”

We should expect that anything affected by the Fall will be restored to its original condition.

Paul follows with the good news—that what went down with mankind in the Fall will come back up with us when Christ’s redemptive work is completed.

The God who raised Jesus will in turn raise his people and the universe.

“What happens to our bodies and what happens to the creation go together. And what happens to our bodies is not annihilation but redemption. . . . Our bodies will be redeemed, restored, made new, not thrown away. And so it is with the heavens and the earth.”

The fallen but redeemed children of God will be transformed into something new: sinless, wise stewards of the earth. Today the earth is dying; but before it dies—or in its death—it will give birth to the New Earth. The New Earth will be the child of the old Earth, just as the new human race will be the children of the old race.

It is no coincidence that the first two chapters of the Bible (Genesis 1–2) begin with the creation of the heavens and the earth and the last two chapters (Revelation 21–22) begin with the re-creation of the heavens and the earth.

The only unearthly eternal destination spoken of in Scripture is Hell, not Heaven. Yet even in Hell the condemned will have a physical presence. Jesus said that all people will be resurrected, some to life, some to condemnation (John 5:28-29). While some will forever experience the physical pleasures of Heaven, others will experience the physical torments of Hell.

Moses prayed, “Establish the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:17). The Hebrew word translated “establish,” as indicated in the margin notes of the New American Standard Bible, means “make permanent.” So Moses was asking God to give permanence to what he did with his hands.

Resurrection is not a figurative expression. It indicates durability.

Some may think it silly or sentimental to suppose that nature, animals, paintings, books, or a baseball bat might be resurrected. It may appear to trivialize the coming resurrection. I would suggest that it does exactly the opposite: It elevates resurrection, emphasizing the power of Christ to radically renew mankind—and far more.

may be mistaken on the details, but Scripture is clear that in some form, at least, what’s done on Earth to Christ’s glory will survive. Our error has not been in overestimating the extent of God’s redemption and resurrection but underestimating it.

It’s hard for us to think accurately about the New Earth because we’re so accustomed to speaking of Heaven as the opposite of Earth.

In one sense, we’ve never seen our friend’s body as truly as we will see it in the eternal Heaven. We’ve never been hugged here as meaningfully as we’ll be hugged there. And we’ve never known this earth to be all that we will then know it to be.

It will be as if an artist wiped away the old paint, stained and cracking, and started a new and better painting, but using the same images on the same canvas.

Theologian Cornelius Venema explains, “The word used in the older and better manuscripts conveys the idea of a process that does not so much destroy or burn up, but uncovers or lays open for discovery the creation, now in a renewed state of pristine purity.”

The Greek word kainos, translated “new,” indicates that the earth God creates won’t merely be new as opposed to old, but new in quality and superior in character.

As God may gather the scattered DNA and atoms and molecules of our bodies, he will regather all he needs of the scorched and disfigured Earth. As our old bodies will be raised to new bodies, so the old Earth will be raised to become the New Earth. So, will the earth be destroyed or renewed? The answer is both—but the “destruction” will be temporal and partial, whereas the renewal will be eternal and complete.

“The Bible begins with original creation which is corrupted, and the rest of the Old Testament is a redemptive-historical process working toward a restoration of the fallen creation in a new creation. The New Testament then sees these hopes beginning fulfillment and prophesies a future time of fulfillment in a consummated new creation, which Revelation 21:1–22:5 portrays.”

Dumbrell is correct in understanding new creation as the dominating notion of biblical theology because new creation is the goal or purpose of God’s redemptive-historical plan; new creation is the logical main point of Scripture.”

The earth’s death will be no more final than our own. The destruction of the old Earth in God’s purifying judgment will immediately be followed by its resurrection to new life.

“The emphasis on the present heaven is clearly rest, cessation from earth’s battles and comforts from earth’s sufferings. The future heaven is centered more on activity and expansion, serving Christ and reigning with Him. The scope is much larger, the great city with its twelve gates, people coming and going, nations to rule. In other words, the emphasis in the present heaven is on the absence of earth’s negatives, while in the future heaven it is the presence of earth’s positives, magnified many times through the power and glory of resurrected bodies on a resurrected Earth, free at last from sin and shame and all that would hinder both joy and achievement.”

When the New Earth comes down from Heaven, the rest of us will be going home, but Adam and Eve will be coming home. Only they will have lived on three Earths—one unfallen, one fallen, and one redeemed.

So when we hear that in Heaven we will have new bodies and live on a New Earth, that’s how we should understand the word new—a restored and perfected version of our familiar bodies and our familiar Earth and our familiar relationships.

We’re told the “first earth” will pass away (Revelation 21:1). The word for “first” is prote, suggesting a vital connection between the two Earths. The first Earth serves as the prototype or pattern for the New Earth. There’s continuity between old and new. We should expect new trees, new flowers, new rocks, new rivers, new mountains, and new animals. (New, not non-

Before the Incarnation, Heaven was transcendent. By virtue of the Incarnation, Heaven became immanent. The coming New Earth will be God’s dwelling place, as pure and holy as Heaven has ever been.

“What we need is not to be rescued from the world, not to cease being human, not to stop caring for the world, not to stop shaping human culture. What we need is the power to do these things according to the will of God. We, as well as the rest of creation, need to be redeemed.”