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"Teaching the things concerning the kingdom of
God..."
Part 233
THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH
(continued)
“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” (Rev. 21:1).
There
is no truth within the pages of God’s blessed Book more certain than the fact
that God is creating a new heavens and a new earth. Beyond question this is the allegory
proclaimed by the Lord to the prophet Isaiah, “I have put my words in thy
mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand, THAT I MAY PLANT THE
HEAVENS, AND LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARTH, and say unto
Stand
with me for a moment in holy contemplation of these words the Lord spoke to
Isaiah. The Lord said that He would plant
the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth in
It
has been made very clear to me by the spirit of truth that the only way God can
create within us this new heavens and new earth, in all the splendor of their
fullness, is to bring us back to the beginning.
When God has finished His work in you, my beloved, He will have taken
you back to the beginning — because you are His spoken Word. Not just the Christ in heaven somewhere, but
the Christ within us is the Word of God! All that God has done, is doing, and shall
yet do in us is by His powerful, omnipotent, living, creative word! How do you think a man is “born again”? “Being born
again…by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (I Pet.
It
should be clear to every enlightened mind that God is in the process of making
an entirely new creation, or making all
things new — not this time a mere natural creation, nor yet a purely spiritual one, but a spiritual-physical one. The present natural creation is really only a
step in the process of making the creation God had in mind from the
beginning. “First that which is natural,
and afterward that which is spiritual,” is the divinely revealed order. Does that mean the natural is completely done
away with, supplanted by the spiritual?
Not at all! If that were so,
there would only be a new heaven, but
not a new earth! It means that the natural is swallowed up by the spiritual. The natural is a necessary step in the
process of making the kind of creation God
purposed from the beginning.
Jesus Christ, the firstborn Son of God, is the proto-type of that new creation — the PHYSICAL SPIRITUALIZED,
RAISED UP INTO UNION WITH THE DIVINE AND HEAVENLY! The physical
body of Jesus was raised from the dead, brought out of the tomb,
spiritualized and made a spiritual body —
not a spirit, mind you, nor yet just
a body — but a SPIRITUAL BODY! Jesus is still referred to as a man all
through the New Testament, not only after His resurrection, but also after His
ascension. And to this day “there is one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus.”
The
firstborn of this new creation order is a GOD-MAN upon the throne of universal
power! Think of it! When you see Jesus as a divine-human, a
God-man, one of the natural creation metamorphosed,
spiritualized, raised up into the celestial and incorruptible, then you see
exactly what God is after in the whole creation, and you also see what the
finished product of the new heavens and the new earth within you will be like! “This
corruptible must put on incorruption.” “This
mortal must put on immortality.” How unspeakably wonderful! We see the natural creation all around us,
but this natural creation is not the finished product any more than the ore dug
out of the earth is the fine piece of jewelry the artisan has in mind when he
begins his work. The whole creation is
still in the process of being made into the kind of creation God started out to
make. God is still Creator! And He is still creating a new heavens and a new earth!
The work has only begun in us!
The
new heaven is the spirit of Christ and the new earth is the body of Christ, the
members of which have put on incorruption. The new heaven is the new mind of the spirit, and the new earth is
the soul and body quickened and governed
by the spirit. Surely the fullness
of redemption includes possessing the “mind of Christ” as well as a body
“fashioned like unto His glorious
body.” And being conformed to His image,
partakers of His divine nature, we shall be His “all righteous” ones — a new heaven and a new earth WHEREIN
DWELLETH RIGHTEOUSNESS!
The
coming “world” will be one that will see the fullness of God in operation through
His Zion people, His manifest sons, the demonstration of the mighty power of
the new heavens and the new earth. It is
not a mansion over the hilltop, nor a cabin in the corner of gloryland, nor white night gowns, nor harps, nor palm
branches, nor dangling feet in some stream of celestial water. Oh, no!
There is a job to be done! A battle
to be fought! A victory to be won! An enemy to be conquered! “And there was no more sea.” “And there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow,
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are
passed away.” This is God’s will for
humanity on this earth, and this is what our call to sonship is all about. We are not headed for a great eternal “praise
service” in the sky. Creation is
groaning and waiting for the sons of God to
“For
it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the
heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the
good word of God, and THE POWERS OF THE WORLD TO COME…” (Heb. 6:4-5). The
Yet,
according to the writer to the Hebrews, there are MIGHTY WORKS OF A COMING AGE,
GREATER WORKS THAN JESUS DID TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO! And according to the writings of the apostles,
all we have experienced of God during this church age, of His Spirit, of His
Word, of His power, glory, miracles, manifestation, and revelation, has been
merely a small taste, a little sampling, of the glory and power to be
revealed through the sons of God in that coming age! Why, friends, we have only received the firstfruits of the Spirit, just a little down payment of what God will do through
His in-Christed body upon this earth. Can you imagine a world where the hospitals
have been emptied, the doctor’s offices deserted, the prisons closed, the
policemen all laid off, the armies and armaments all dismantled, the mortuaries
locked, the dead raised, all nature tamed, controlled, and subdued, the nations
turned to the Lord, all men restored into the image and glory of God, and the
whole world system transformed — and
GREATER WORKS THAN THESE SHALL YOU SEE as all creation is delivered from the
bondage of corruption, and the glorious mind of Christ rules and reigns over
the earth realm through the manifest sons of God! The fullness of what we have just had a taste
will be the normal works on behalf of humanity in that blessed world to
come. This will be the new heavens and
the new earth raised up and established in each and every man in all the fullness
of what that means!
God’s
people are still lacking in understanding, and we must keep our anointed focus
on the reality that the new heavens and the new earth are preeminently
personal.
The earth itself will only be blessed and transformed because the people are transformed into the
righteous
In
the opening chapters of the Bible the Garden of Eden reveals the glory of the
This
new reality is formed in the elect of God in this hour and shall spread to all
creation. God is creating something
new! A new history is beginning! A new world is coming to earth! The earth shall be filled with the glory of
the Lord as the waters cover the sea! God
is raising up the life of Christ in a people and through the sons of God He is
putting a seed into the earth. We are now the light of men and the light
of the world! We are now the salt of the
earth! We are the new seed for the new
age! God’s purpose in raising up Christ
in us is that through us the generation of mankind may be lifted out of the
curse of sin and death, toward the revelation of eternal life and glory. Why else did Jesus heal the sick and raise
the dead? Why did He exalt the poor, the
hungry, and the oppressed? Why did He
touch, with miracle power, the hopeless and possessed? Surely not in order to tell them that they
would be blessed after death in some far-off heaven somewhere!
Jesus,
the first manifest Son of God, brought the blessings and benefits of the
There
is really nothing complicated about the new heavens and the new earth. To aid our understanding of this beautiful
truth let us learn a lesson from the symbolisms of the book of Revelation. The key to this understanding is the word
“sea.” As soon as John sees the new
heaven and the new earth he immediately notes that “there was no more
sea.” Again and again throughout the
book of Revelation we have shown that the word “sea” is not used in the literal
sense of the vast oceans of earth, but in a figurative and symbolic way. The vast majority of the events in the
Revelation take place in one of three dimensions: HEAVEN, EARTH, and SEA. These three realms, of course, represent
three dimensions of life within each of us, three states of being, life-styles,
levels of consciousness, spheres of existence, and realms of experience. There is a “heaven” realm within our spirit,
an “earth” realm within our soul, and a “sea” realm within our body. The highest of these realms is heaven — where
God dwells in our spirit. Earth is the
in-between realm, a dimension that at its highest touches heaven, and at its
lowest kisses the sea. That is the soul
which lies between the spirit and the body.
It can yield to the spirit above to become heavenly, or to the sea (body
realm, flesh nature) to become sensual and devilish.
The
lowest of these three realms is the
sea. Throughout the scriptures the sea
is a type of the inner storms and turbulent nature of the
Now,
when John says, “…and there was no more sea,” that does not suggest to me that
the vast oceans of earth have dried up.
That tells me that there is no more realm for a dragon to rise out of;
Leviathan, that serpent in the sea, has been destroyed. There are no more men in whom the dragon
nature agitates, tosses, overthrows, and torments them like the troubled
sea. That tells me that all men have
been reconciled to God, the nature has been transformed, and the peace and
righteousness and love of God reigns in every heart. It is already true within the elect of the
Lord! Ah, there is a place — a place in
God’s new heaven and in God’s new earth, in the triumph of Christ
raised up in our land, where the anguish represented by the sea exists for us
no more! When all men, and all things,
and all realms have been restored into Christ again it shall truly be said,
“AND THERE WAS NO
If “no more sea” does not indicate the drying up
of earth’s oceans, is it not also true that “a new heaven and a new earth” does
not suggest that somewhere out in space John saw a new planet, or a new
atmosphere, or a new solar system, or a new cosmos? I know and am sure that the new heaven and
the new earth of which the prophets have so vividly spoken is a typical
representation of the new order of the
This
is where the
Consider
again these awesome words: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the
first heaven and the first earth were
passed away.” How unutterably
significant this is! John tells us in
the plainest of words that there is a new heaven and a new earth for…that
is, because…the
former heaven and the former earth had passed away. The message is just this — God cannot
bring forth His new until the old has been done away with! If the Spirit of God has begun to build in
your life a new world and a new order, and left any of the old citadels of
fleshly living, of self-will, of carnal understanding, of religious mentality,
and worldly ways and means standing, they would have to come down. You may congratulate yourself upon their
remaining, but it is a false congratulation, your glorying is not good. I am sure of this, that Christ will never put
a new piece upon an old garment, or new wine in old wineskins: He knows the
rent would be worse in the long run, and
the bottles would burst. All that is of
the flesh’s spinning must be unraveled.
The natural building must come down, lath and plaster, stud and truss,
roof and foundation, and we must have a house not made with hands, of a new
creation.
It
was a great mercy for the city of
Consider
with me this scene. There is an organ in
the corner of a church building. Suppose
the pastor tells the congregation that this organ is going to be taken away
this week and replaced with a new one.
Then on next Sunday they come to church and he says to them, “The old
organ is gone now and we have a new one in its place.” Would you look for a fresh coat of paint on
the old organ? Would you listen to
determine whether the old organ had been tuned up? Would you examine the organ to see whether it
was the old organ with some new parts installed? No — you would expect to see a brand new organ! Well, our
“For,
behold, I create new heavens and a new
earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind” (Isa.
65:17). When God says that He "will
create,” what does He mean? He means
that He is going to call into existence something that did not previously
exist. “In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). He
made the billions of swirling nebulae and galaxies of glory. He created the earth, the sun, and the
moon. He had nothing with which to
begin. He simply spoke and these things
came into existence. Now, you can build
a table or make a cake, but you must use pre-existent materials. However, when God creates He brings things
into existence only by His powerful and omnipotent Word! So when I say that God is creating a new
heaven and a new earth, I do not mean that God will use the old heaven and old
earth. These are passed away! Our physical life does not become our
spiritual life. Our carnal mind does not
become our spiritual mind. Our human
strength does not become “anointed” to be divine strength. Human
In
the Bible the term “creation” is used one hundred and twenty times, and each time
it is used it means the origin of things and not the cleansing or the change of
some old thing. That reveals why every revival in church history has eventually
gone into apostasy. A new revelation, a new vision, a new anointing,
a new ministry, a new worship, a new moving of the Spirit was simply added to the old church order that was
already in place. It was new wine in old
wineskins, it was a new piece of cloth sewed onto an old garment. How soon it burst! How soon it rent! I do not hesitate to tell you that the
manifestation of the sons of God has absolutely nothing to do with any
established religious order of man. When
the sons of God are revealed they will not be preaching in church buildings,
they will not advertise a crusade, they will have no worship team and no
choir. They will not sing ten choruses,
prophesy over a few folks, followed by preaching and an altar call. When they heal the sick or cast out devils or
do any miracle the people will not be paraded across a platform with great
theatrics before television cameras.
There will be no offering plates, no announcements, no pot-luck dinners,
no fund raising seminars, no youth meetings, no singles clubs, and no altar
calls. The new heavens and the new earth
that God is creating is unlike any religious thing you have ever seen! It is something that has not previously
existed. It is greater than all. The only model for it is the ministry of Jesus,
the firstborn Son of God — but even that is not enough! For His sonship ministry was in the days of
His flesh — but the sons creation is groaning and travailing for shall arise in
THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION! Nothing
less than that will suffice, for they
shall not heal the sick to get sick again, or raise the dead to die again, or
feed the multitude to become hungry again.
Oh, no! These sons come to
None
of Adam’s race will ever enter this new
world. “Flesh and blood cannot
inherit the
So
through Jesus Christ, something new came into existence. And He is the Door, so none can enter this
realm except through Him. He is the
Head, so once in this realm you cannot move or operate in His divine principles
except as He directs you. He is the
first and the last, the beginning and the end, so no one ever had this without
Him, and you will never get past Him or surpass Him; no matter how far you go
in God, you will find that Jesus is there, too!
He is truly the GOD-MAN. And in
union with Him we become GOD-MEN. As it
is written, “Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the GODS!” Yes, indeed, who is like unto Him? Those
who are born of God and conformed unto His image. Oh, the wonder of it!
“These
are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created,
in the day that the Lord God made the
earth and the heavens” (Gen. 2:4). Now I
have discovered that each time I read the scriptures I find something new. The word of God is absolutely
inexhaustible! It seems truly remarkable
to find something new in so familiar a chapter as this, yet I have no doubt
there are depths and heights of revelation far transcending our present
comprehension. Notice how it reads, “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth…” — the heavens are mentioned first. Then, when he begins to talk about man, it
reads, “…in the day when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” There is a complete turn around, a reversal
of the order; the earth becomes the center of interest because man is to be
lowered into this material realm, formed of the dust of the earth, and placed
in dominion over all the earth realm.
Just
here we want to note a particular word, the use of which is peculiar to Genesis
— the word generations. Every time it is used it gives the
generations that are to follow, thus the generations of the heavens and the earth are clearly the generations of MAN. Now notice something that is quite wonderful,
and in looking at it keep in mind the fact that when the Lord speaks of the
generations of the earth, He is not
speaking of what preceded, but what follows.
He speaks of unfoldment, not origins; of results, not causes. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of
the ground, and
In
fact, three stages are given here of creation, for the word for “creation” is used only three times in
the first chapter of Genesis:
(1) The creation of the world of matter:
“In
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
(2) The creation of life:
“And
God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth,
which the waters
brought
forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and
God
saw that it was good” (Gen.
1:21).
(3) The creation of man with spiritual capacities:
“So
God created man, in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and
female created He them” (Gen.
These
three phases find their conclusion in Paul’s great statement, “Your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Thes.
The
first man Adam lost the dignity and power that was his by yielding to his lower
nature, raising it up to dominate and rule his life, obscuring the majesty and
glory of His divine nature. The second
man, the last Adam, came to reveal and restore the true reality and stature of
man as he was meant to be. He came as
the Redeemer of all mankind! The grandest of all truths is that CHRIST IS
THE IMAGE OF GOD! If you want to truly
understand what God had in mind when He said, “Let us make man in our image,
and after our likeness,” you have only to look at Jesus Christ. That
is what God meant! “But if our
gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost
(who know not who or where they are): in whom the god of this
world hath blinded the minds of them
which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel (good news) of CHRIST,
WHO IS THE IMAGE OF GOD, should shine unto them” (II Cor. 4:3-4). “In whom we have redemption through His
blood…who is THE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE GOD, the firstborn (prototype) of every creature” (
How
totally inadequate do our words become
in the light of words of such wonder as these! Jesus is the prototype of what God intends man to be. He is God’s finished product, God’s perfect
man; what every man should be and ultimately will be. We will only understand the majesty of man in
God’s image when we see Jesus as THE BEAM OF THE DIVINE GLORY, and THE
OUT-RAYING OF GOD’S PERSON. Jesus Christ
is the express or exact image of the
Father’s being, the perfect imprint and the very image of God’s nature. The allusion here is to the impression made
in ancient times by a seal on molten wax; and as the image made on the wax is
the exact representation (though on another substance) of the die, so is Christ
the exact representation of the invisible Father in human flesh. And thus He was able to say, “If you have
seen me, you have seen the Father.”
The
life of Jesus is the life of God transmuted into the form of our human life, so
that we may see, touch, hear, know, understand, and experience the very being
and nature of God in human terms. The
natural mind cannot understand such a truth as this, but this is what God meant
when He said, “Let us make man in o
As
we consider the wonderful advent of man created “in the image of God” we can
only conclude that this is a SPIRITUAL MAN brought forth out of the very
spirit-substance of God almighty, and bearing His own divine nature, character,
power, and attributes. The image of God is the nature of God
reproduced in man. Thus, man is the true
image of God! The divine nature was best
and fully expressed in the man Christ Jesus who shined upon the world of
mankind the truest revelation of God and lifted man’s sights higher than their
poor thoughts would allow. Jesus
revealed to men their true origin, heritage, and destiny. He came to show man what man really is, was
intended to be, and through redemption and so great a salvation shall be — THE
IMAGE OF GOD. Christ is the Alpha and
the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. In Jesus Christ you see man as he was in the
beginning before sin entered, and as he ever shall be world without end — THE
IMAGE OF
There
is a story which I have shared before but am compelled to share again in the
light of our present thought. It is the
story about a little piece of wood that once bitterly complained because its
owner kept whittling away at it, gouging it and making holes in it. But the one who was cutting it paid no
attention to the stick’s protests. He
was making a flute out of that piece of ebony, and he was too
Now
while we are considering such a wonderful work as this, does our heart not say,
“Truly this is the vision John beheld on
As
the late Carl Schwing wrote, “It has been appointed to the sons of God to
establish the New Heaven and the New Earth in righteousness and peace. The high places shall shout for joy and leap
for gladness; the low places shall be filled with blessing, honor, and glory
unto the Lord. And like a mighty river
the Word of the Lord shall go forth, baptizing all things in the light and life
of the Son of God. All creation shall
“Though
all the powers of the world and of religion oppose the hand of the Lord, He
shall, through the sons of His Christ, bring forth His good pleasure. Not one portion of His plan will be altered,
not one among His creation will be able to resist His authority. Among the lightening and the thundering of
the Father’s infinite glory, the sons shall send forth the proclamation of
freedom, to establish the justice and goodness of the Lord. Life, and love, and grace, shall burn as a
purifying
To be continued… J. PRESTON EBY
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