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| We say a lady is “a new woman” when she has had her hair made over and put on a new dress. |
If God is planning to create a new heavens and a new earth, then
what’s the point of laboring for new creation now? After all, I wouldn’t
give my Ford an oil change today if I’m planning to take it to the junk
yard tomorrow and buy a Dodge? So what’s the point of planting trees or
working to clean up pollution, not to mention our cultural endeavors,
if God is just going to start over?
The problem with this question is that it assumes the work we do in
the present age is not going to last for eternity. But Saint Paul
describes our work as enduring (1 Corinthians 3:14) and he says
it is “not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15.58) Moreover, we know from
elsewhere in Scripture that there is an organic continuity between what
happens in this age, on the one hand, and the age to come, on the other.
Thus, the relationship between the present age and the age to come is
not like the relationship between a Ford and a Dodge; it’s more like an
old beaten up Ford compared to the same car after it’s been renovated
and renewed.
Because of this, we shouldn’t think of the new heavens and the new earth as being completely new. C.S. Lewis gets it right in The Last Battle when
he describes the heavenly Narnia being built on the template of the
original Narnia. The “new earth” described in Revelation 21 will be new
only in the sense that we say a lady is “a new woman” when she has had
her hair made over and put on a new dress.
To read more about this, visit my Colson Center article, 'Building For God's Kingdom' and 'Dispensationalism and the problem of Multi-generational parenting.'
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