The session here that we are about to hear about is New Creation Eschatology and the Believers' Eternal Experience, an Exercise in Theologically Informed Speculation. Hopefully we'll keep the speculation to a minimum, but there's some here. Okay, let's go ahead and begin with a word of prayer. Lord, we're grateful for your grace to us, for your goodness. Thank you for your kindness to us in Jesus Christ. And Lord, we do look forward to the occasion where we will be forever with you. And Lord, I ask that as we go through this exercise, that we will be more biblically informed about our expectations, about that eternal experience, and anticipate it all the more. We pray this in your name, amen. Okay, a distinction I'm pretty much going to read through here. We'll come up for air occasionally, but we'll read through this and should have some time for questions at the end. A distinction currently emerging in contemporary eschatological discussion is one between new creation and spiritual vision models of the believer's experience of eternity. This pairing of labels, to the best of my research, first appeared in Craig Blazing's 1999 distinction between his own view, which is very material and earthy, specifically of the millennium, but also of beyond. So that's the title of the book, Three Views of the Millennium and Beyond. So we're going to be talking a little bit more about the beyond aspect here. And he wanted to compare this, contrast this, with a more esoteric approach found chiefly within classic millennialism. His concern was that persistent platonic emphasis on the afterlife as a utopia void of particulars and change had so invaded the early church and its eschatology that, eventually, nearly all material or sensate expectations of the eternal state and its eschatological precursors, such as the millennium, were eventually dismissed not only as crude but impious. Premillennialism faded, not due to any lack of biblical warrant, but because there was no philosophical place for it in Platonic thought. An earthy or material future does not mesh well with Platonism. The point of contention, Blazing argued, undergirds nearly all eschatological debate today. So, we want to unpack this distinction further, new creation and spiritual vision models of eschatology, examine the philosophical underpinnings, its hermeneutical mechanism, and then the eschatological implications of it. So, new creation, eschatology summarized. The distinctive feature of all expressions of new creation eschatology, every time I see that NC, I think New Covenant, and I'm eventually going to slip and say that, but new creation in this case. So new creation eschatology is its expectation of material and earthy elements in the experience not only of eternity proper, but to some degree every chapter of the believer's eschatological experience. And I'm going to go backwards here. So the eternal home of saints centers on a literal earth upon which a literal holy city, the New Jerusalem, will descend out of heaven from God. Here, God will dwell with redeemed humanity forever on earth in sensate form. So visible to our physical eyes, audible to our physical ears, and tangible to our physical hands. We'll get some of the implications later on here. We will not simply gaze endlessly upon God with spiritual eyes in heaven. In fact, we may not spend any time at all in heaven. Again, we'll come back to this. Instead, we will chiefly inhabit and successfully exercise dominion over a renovated earth much like the original one over which Adam lost control." Second point, for premillennial new creation advocates, and not all are premillennial, the transitional home of the saints, this millennium, is likewise intensely earthy. The cosmological promises of the Old Testament related to the kingdom, such as radical changes in geology, astronomy, meteorology, zoology, will be fulfilled materially, not spiritually. The sociological promises, political, economic, jurisprudential, medical, Those too will also find literal realization. And many even take the ritual elements literally and materially, such as thrones, scepters, temples, and even sacrifices. Now, there are some new creation advocates who hold to a realized or inaugurated approach to the millennium. So these do not see the millennium as future, or at least strictly future, but they do see it as material. And for these, new creation eschatology expands into something of a missional mandate for the church. If we're already in this kingdom, which is material and earthy, then the church has to promulgate a gospel not only of personal salvation, but also must fulfill something of a robust ecological sociological mission as well. You can see that in in post-millennialism, right? But you also see that, too, in degree in historic premillennialism, even in progressive dispensationalism as well. Some new creation eschatologists also espouse a material intermediate state, so bringing it even closer to the present. The idea here that all persons receive at death an intermediate body that is not the resurrection body, arguing that a material body is essential to being human and to seeing God. citing, for instance, the physical appendages, fingers and tongues, that the rich man and Lazarus had, as well their material experiences of seeing, speaking, thirsting, and suffering torment from the flames." This understanding is particularly seen in grace brethren life. It seems to be a sort of a hub for this understanding. And Dr. McKeon held to this view as well in his systematic theology of biblical Christianity. Those of you who are familiar recognize that there was a little bit of a dialogue between some of our faculty on that issue. Dr. McKeon held very firmly here to an intermediate body. As one might expect, the new creation model is embraced by a full range of Kiliasts, that is, those who believe in a a concrete millennium. So whether you're premillennial or postmillennial, as well as some neokyperians of sundry millennial suasion, some are amillennial, some are postmillennial, it is not restricted to any one strand of evangelical thought. The view has even attracted a number of ecologically infatuated folks whose theology exceeds even the most generous of evangelical definition. But the most thoroughgoing and consistent expressions of this model are dispensational. And no treatment is more comprehensive than Michael Vock's recent work, The New Creation Model, a paradigm for discovering God's restoration purposes from creation to new creation. Adding to the allure of his work is that it piggybacks on an earlier work that he wrote, He Will Reign Forever, a biblical theology of this kingdom of God, which argues for a pervasive governmental component connecting all of canonical history and theology. So for Vlock, redemption is not the center of the biblical storyline, but exists in the service of greater ends. Adam was created. There was no need for redemption. And yet he had a purpose and a function. And it seems like that what happens in the parenthesis in between is in the service of getting mankind back to that situation, where he is, again, the vice regent, the ruler underneath God of the present Earth. And I find his works compelling. Obviously, I can't summarize that all here. So let's go to the other side here, the spiritual vision eschatology. And I want to set the background for this and why it's coming back around. Theological modernism is well known, in a bad sense, for its pattern of stripping the Christian religion of all that is transcendent and supernatural and reducing Christianity to a here and now religion of eminence. overwhelmingly post-millennial in its earliest forms. Modernism quickly abandoned the gospel of personal salvation and its hope in the hereafter and began investing all of its energies to perfect the existing social order here on Earth. They do see the expectations of the millennium that are detailed in the Old Testament as something that is going to be fulfilled, but it's going to be fulfilled naturally by the efforts of the Christian church. Okay? So it's a fully naturalized eschatology. In one sense, I say here, theological modernists reject eschatology entirely, at least in terms of traditional terms involving supernatural advent. Their modest hopes lay in the present earth, slowly perfected through industrial, technological advance, and human altruism." If I can throw three words out here, they're going to come back here. Think in terms of material, mechanical, and humanistic. Those words are going to come back here in just a moment. But that's sort of what's embodied here in theological modernism and their version of post-millennialism. The spiritual vision model is a reaction to this. So oppositely, in spiritual vision eschatology, the spiritual and the material are in conflict and in the eschaton The former will triumph over the latter. The spiritual will take out the material. The believer's future is principally or entirely spiritual, consisting of perpetual ecstatic union with God in the face of God in a perfect heaven free of all undulation. any conception of the eternal state that features physical or material or mutable elements is a dangerous reversion to theological modernism. So opposed are spiritual vision advocates to the Aristotelianism and impassive flavor of modernism that many actively lobby for a return to Christian Platonism. It's a thing right now, Christian Platonism. Hans Boersma is a representative of this understanding and helps to explain it for us in five bullet points here. So these are the five points, he says, of Platonic Christianity in a nutshell here. So number one is anti-materialism. And he defines this here. All of this is directly out of his book. Bodies and their properties are not the only things that exist. Now, of course, that's true. But I think he's actually saying more than this. He seems to be almost anti-material. Not so much anti-materialism, but anti-material. And that's going to come out here. Anti-mechanism. The natural order cannot be fully explained by physical or mechanical causes. Again, this definition as it stands is acceptable. But by calling it anti-mechanical, he seems to suggest that he's opposed to this idea of natural law and the natural order as somehow antithetical to supernaturalism. It seems almost like he's saying, I'm opposed to all things mechanical. Thirdly here, antinominalism. Reality is made up not just of individuals, each uniquely situated in time and space, but two individual objects can be the same in essence while being unique individuals. And if I can put my twist on this, this is the denial of univacism in scripture, a single meaning. It shows up very much in the spiritual vision, hermeneutic, and in the eternal vision. So, for instance, land. What is land? There's land promises. Well, it's not just earth, and it may not be earth at all. It may be a symbol that points to a spiritual reality that, once realized, makes the idea of land as a physical option disappear. So you've got two meanings, each occupying the same space. Fourthly, anti-relativism, human beings are not the measure of all things, which again, all of these in principle I agree with, but Boersma seems to label as humanistic a lot of things that I wouldn't, most specifically here, the received laws of language. Language, for Boersma, is a human construct. It's something that we invented. And so the idea of having universal laws of language is a humanistic ideal. And so we need to revert to pre-modern exegesis, which did not operate according to hermeneutical laws that are universal. In fact, he very much is going to stand opposed to the grammatical historical method for that reason. Nonetheless, number five, there's an anti-skepticism. The real can in some manner become present to us so that knowledge, despite its objective elusiveness, is nonetheless within reach. So even though the words cannot be read according to mechanical and humanistic laws, we can still have confidence that we have the truth because we can know God's mind, not from the words, but if I may, borrow from the encounter that we have above the words. And so we can still have certainty. And if I can put in an extra thing here, the ecumenical creeds for the spiritual vision folks are the unanimous testimony of the whole church of this ineffable message that stands above the text. And so, if the word retrieval theology means anything to you, many of these are within that tradition. We're trying to retrieve the ecumenical creeds because this is when the whole church spoke with one voice And since they were all in agreement and were all unanimous, this must be proof that the Holy Spirit is governing them in an absolute sense. So retrieval theology is part of what we're talking about here. Now, applied firstly to hermeneutics, these principles disallow not only the historical critical method of modernist vintage, but also her seemingly innocuous stepsister, the historical grammatical method. And you can see here, I don't put everything into my footnotes here, but the grammatical historical method is mechanical. It uses linguistic rules of humanist vintage. And most especially, it is nominal. It says this word means this. This sentence means this. And it means one thing, univocal, univocally. And so for them, the grammatical historical method strips out all but the literal meaning. which the majority historical church has by and large been loath to do. So if you look at the history of the church, there has been quite a range of ways people read the scriptures, not just literally, and they're calling for a return to that. So a return to pre-modern exegesis. So by contrast, Christian Platonist premoderns reject as primarily, if at all, literal, the many predictive prophecies that bristle with earthy elements, such as thrones and temples and nations and lands and waterways and crops and swords and animals. Instead, these are all metaphorical, symbolic, typological, analogical, allegorical, anagogical pointers to spiritual realities that are visible only to the eye of faith. I can put an experiment here. The wolves will lie down with the lambs. What does that mean? Well, if you're a literalist, it's pretty easy. It means that wolves will lie down with lambs, or perhaps things like that will happen. So we have analogies there. We have analogies. So it's not just that those two particular animals will lie down together, but this is the kind of arrangement it's going to be. But in the spiritual vision model, there is a whole range of things that can mean. Years ago, as an experiment, I went through all of the commentaries on Isaiah in our library, and I think there was over 100 at the time. And I looked to see, what does this mean, wolves lying down with lambs? And the answers were, Unbelievably diverse. Scarcely anyone said the same thing, except for the dispensationalists who said it was wolves and lambs. That was the only exception to that. So it does seem to me racist and skepticism here, but not according to Boersma and others. The result for eschatological experience, specifically, as one might expect, is the suppression of all things material and an exclusive emphasis on the believer's spiritual experience, most especially the sustained rapture brought on by the beatific vision as the principium unicum of eternal life. This is the experience that we will have in heaven. Anything else that's there fades in significance until there's pretty much only this. Now, I want to say here that the beatific vision has long been with us, and I don't want to bash the idea here. I have a footnote there again. The beatific vision has long been celebrated as the direct intuitive knowledge of the triune God that perfected souls will enjoy by means of their intellect the final fruition of the Christian life in which they will see God as He is in Himself. That's from the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. So it's seated in text like Matthew 5, 8, we will see God. 1 Corinthians 13, 12, we'll see Him face to face and so on. Many of the fathers taught that the beatific vision overcame the inaccessibility of God to ordinary sight." So we will actually be able to see the invisible God with our resurrection eyes. And so he would be visible to us spiritually, typically at the moment of death. As time passed, the beatific vision swelled in theological import to eclipse nearly all other aspects of eternal experience so much that the Protestant Reformation, and I'm citing again from the EDT, the Protestant Reformation theologians rejected most of the Romanist teaching on the beatific vision as too narrow. A more modest understanding of the beatific vision was preserved among the Puritans, and the New Orthodox turn in the mid-20th century Christianity has brought it back again and is a matter now of interest in contemporary evangelical discussion. And Hans Boersma is sort of leading the charge on this. He has a massive book here, 600 pages, seeing God, the beatific vision in the Christian tradition in which he is He walks through all of church history and shows how the beatific vision is such a significant aspect of Christian theology and why we need to retrieve it. Okay. Now, while many in this audience, perhaps all, populate churches and schools that are majority premillennial and even dispensational, the idea of eternity as a perpetual beatific vision has not entirely gone away. If you ask the average church member or student what they anticipate eternal life to consist in, the most common answers will be, one, we'll be in heaven, where we will, two, see and know God fully, and three, worship and praise Him endlessly, principally through song. Any objection that this might get old after a while? It's very quickly shaken off with the firm insistence that once we see and know God for who He truly is, endless worship could never possibly get old. In short, a great many of our constituents have bought into a spiritual vision of eternal life. But is that what the Bible teaches? The following is an attempt to tease out the implications and perhaps engage minimally in some informed speculation of the biblical data respecting the believer's experience of eternity and the firm conclusion that the new creation approach to eschatology is to be preferred. I'll begin briefly with the intermediate state in the millennium and then concentrate more fully on the believer's eternal experience. So firstly here, we are talking about the intermediate state. We begin our discussion with the personal eschatology of the intermediate state, easily the most difficult problem for new creation proponents, for it's apparently anima rationalis separata, which is the disembodied soul. Of course, G.C. Burkhardt, I get this from him, and a lot of Latin appears in Burkhardt. So, the disembodied soul here. For some new creation eschatologists, this problem is immense, so immense that they resort to soul sleep or something close to it. Jay Middleton, for instance, argues from a holistic view of the human person that there is no consciousness without a body. And as such, the next thing we will know after death is the resurrection. All references to the believer's heavenly reward or citizenship or place are either metaphorical or speak exclusively to their origin. So we stockpile rewards in heaven that we receive on earth from heaven. Although more nuanced, Hermann Duyverd, when asked what activity remains for the soul separated from the body, felt comfortable replying, nothing. That's his answer. Okay? So there are some here who would say this is such a problem here that there must be soul sleep. Okay? We've already seen here that some propose intermediate bodies to resolve the tension. Okay? That there must be, if we're going to see God, then we must have intermediate bodies. That's the conclusion that is drawn by some, particularly in the Grace Brethren community, but elsewhere. Grace Seminary had just a very large reach in our circles, and so this understanding has spread significantly. But so what's the biblical evidence here? Well, it's not abundant. Anthony Hokema says, what the New Testament tells us about the immediate state is nothing more than a whisper. I think it's perhaps a little more than that. But his point is well received here, that it's not a major concern here. It seems adequate, however, to establish heaven as a minimum, the temporary residence of the disembodied redeemed on earth. Now, the Bible does not actually say Christians go to heaven when they die, but there is much evidence to suggest this. Firstly, Paul expects temporary existence with Christ as a naked soul, that is away from the body before later receiving His heavenly dwelling. That's in 1 Corinthians 5. Christ goes away to prepare a place for us where He is, where we will be with Him. And we note that Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is omnipresent. But his human form is not omnipresent. And it seems, from a number of texts that we have here, that this theanthropic Christ seems principally to reside in heaven. I don't think he locked in there, but it seems like this is his most common location. There is treasure awaiting our retrieval in heaven. Multiple occasions we see this. Our vindication. And recognition by God occurs in heaven. So those who are bound on earth are bound in heaven, right? And those who are loosed on earth are loosed in heaven as well. Stephen's spirit was received by Christ into heaven. So also Elijah, when he went up, went into heaven. The growing aggregate of the invisible church is gathered, Ephesians 3 says, in heaven. Our citizenship, Philippians says, is in heaven. Saints martyred during this tribulation gather in heaven in anticipation of future vindication. They're all gathered there before the throne. And finally, the marriage of the Lamb takes place in heaven, after which the saints join Christ in traveling from heaven to do battle together with Him on earth. So, we've got abundant testimony here that when we die, we go to heaven. We go to be with Christ. The foregoing evidence suggests that believers have at least some level of communion with Christ in heaven, even though disembodied. Biblical descriptions of this communion is scant, but it should not be suppressed. It's probably best to conclude with Paul that this temporary state, while restful, is deeply incomplete. He does long to be with Christ, which is far better than being here, but he recognizes there's something much better than that, right? Burkhauer says this, believers will never become so oriented to their private bliss that they forget the coming kingdom. And then N.T. Wright, which I swallow hard to cite favorably here, suggests rightly that we must never lose sight of the fact that true biblical hope is life after life after death. As one hymn well reminds us, the golden evening brightens in the west. Soon, soon the faithful warriors come to their rest. Sweet is the calm of paradise, the blessed. Alleluia, alleluia, but low. There breaks a yet more glorious day. The saints triumphant rise in bright array. The king of glory passes on his way. Alleluia, alleluia. So it's the events here of this yet most glorious day that we're going to turn to now. So it is a glorious day when we get to heaven. It will be a more glorious day when we are resurrected and achieve this glorified state. So we're moving now to the kingdom, the millennial kingdom. Despite Matthew's frequent label, the kingdom of heaven, to describe it, there's little to suggest that any part of the believer's experience of the millennial kingdom actually occurs in heaven. I note there, I understand the genitive in this phrase to be one of source or origin. The king and the kingdom arrive from heaven, and in this sense it is a heavenly kingdom. But the point is not that it actually take all the events of the kingdom take place in heaven. It does not mean that there is no access to heaven during this period, but there is actually no text that actually says we do. Instead, emphasis is on the abeyance of the effects of the curse on earth that corresponds with the arrival of the King from heaven, resulting in a state of affairs in which Christ's kingdom, having come, God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. The Old Kingdom, especially, bristles with all sorts of material and earthly descriptions of the Millennial Kingdom. There will be a king reigning, ruling with an iron scepter, from a throne in Jerusalem, and not the heavenly Jerusalem, but rather a physical city, Ezekiel says, in the very same land that I gave Jacob my servant, the land where your fathers lived. So, if there's any question about what Jerusalem we're talking about, we're not talking heavenly Zion here. We're talking about earthly Jerusalem. Jerusalem will also be the religious center for the kingdom, featuring a temple with elements and dimensions that do not match any historical building that we have seen to date. together with the resumed residence of the Shekinah, according to Ezekiel 43. There's a lot of thorny issues in Ezekiel 40 to 48 that we're going to just gloss over here for now, except to say that those things are on earth. Number three, Israel will assume her long-anticipated place as a kingdom of priests for the nations. serving in the temple, and facilitating global worship. In this way, they will continue to fulfill the Abrahamic expectation that through them all the families of the earth will be blessed. The nations, in turn, will reciprocate, streaming to her, the nations will stream to her like to share the wealth of the nations, right? Adam Smith's book, right? So they will share their vast wealth with Israel, okay? So there's material wealth that is going to be produced by the collective nations and they're going to be brought to Israel and shared. Social justice will prevail. including the establishment of property and labor rights. We don't have time to look at all the passages. You can on your own time. The implementation of poverty relief through industry. I like that pairing, right? Poverty relief through industry. The restoration of family values. The resolution of ancient racial tensions, not by getting rid of racial elements, but by solving the problems between the races. And the removal of language barriers. I see this sort of as a reversal of what happened at Babel. There's debate on this one. Environmental damage will be undone. A stable global climate will be achieved. We can debate whether we're in trouble right now, but whatever problems we have now are going to be resolved. Meteorological changes will ensure that timely and abundant rainfall occur worldwide. Even in traditionally barren places, there will be showers of blessing that are rain showers. We will find that there are streams in the desert, and they will not be a collection of devotional nuggets. It will be streams in the desert, right? So these things are going to occur. This will result in the elimination of famine. Beneficial geographical and geological changes will occur, perhaps undoing the damage done by Noah's flood. It's hard to say exactly what this is going to look like. Fertility and productivity will abound. Animals, talked about this already, will become docile. Disease and deformity will be eliminated. Long physical life will be the norm. If a child, if one dies at age 100, he will be thought a child. even ordinary hazard associated with clumsiness will be reduced. It is here that the spiritual vision eschatologists begin their platonic assault in earnest. As Blazing correctly observes, a future kingdom on earth simply does not fit well with an eschatology that stresses personal ascent to a spiritual realm. The possibility that those who long sojourned in heaven might be obliged to return to earth much less one that is still not completely restored, is a disgusting one. The kingdom must instead be realized spiritually, in us, or among us, corporately. And to that end, a substantial body of biblical evidence is whiled away by Christian platonic sleight of hand. These things cannot be literal because we do not have a place in our philosophy for a literal understanding of the millennium. But it gets worse here when we come to the eternal state. And here's where we want to sort of spend the rest of our time. So it's the material eternal state, however, that most troubles the spiritual vision eschatologists. So intense is the angst among them that even those who hold to an otherwise new creation approach lose courage at this juncture. I throw in here John MacArthur, who by all measures would be part of the new creation model. still says, well, he assumes from the beginning of the book that we're going to be forever in heaven. And then he says, well, how is this going to happen? Well, when the city of God comes down from heaven, it's going to basically make heaven expand to include the earth. And so we're going to be in heaven forever. But he actually has this rather mushy view of what heaven is like. He suggests here that heaven is anywhere that holiness, fellowship with God, joy, peace, love, and all other virtues are realized in perfection. And he concludes that while living saints aren't in heaven bodily, because of our spiritual union with him we've already entered into the heavenly realm. Now, he insists that there is a real place called heaven, but he also maintains that it transcends all space-time limitations, which seems to suggest it's not very real. But I diverge from the point here. I've got three arguments here why we should think of the eternal state as physical and earthly principally. First is an exegetical argument. If you want to open your Bibles here to this one here, I'll spend some time in Revelation 21 and 22. I'm trying to think if I have time to read it. Yeah, I think so. I saw the new heaven and the new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, There will be no more death, no mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making all things new. Then he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. He said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost. From the springs of water of life he who overcomes will inherit all this. I will be his God and he will be my son. But to cowardly, unbelieving, vile, murderers, sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death." One of the seven angels, who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, came and said to me, Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away to a mountain. great and high, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God. Its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper clear as crystal. It had great high walls, with twelve gates, with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three to the north, three on the south, three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and all of them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." The angel who talked with me, had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates, its walls. The city was laid out like a square. As long as it was wide, he measured the city with a rod, and it was about 12,000 stadia, about 1,400 miles in length, as wide and high as it was long. He measured its wall, and it was 144 cubits thick by man's measurement, which the angel was using. The wall was made of jasper. The city was pure gold. As of glass, the foundations of the wall were decorated with every sort of precious stone. First foundation was jasper. Second, sapphire. The third, chalcedony. The fourth, emerald. The fifth, sardonyx. The sixth, carnelian. The seventh, chrysolite. The eighth, beryl. The ninth, topaz. The tenth, chiropras. Not sure what that is. the 11th Jacanth, and the 12th Amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street in the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass. It did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city did not need a sun or a moon to shine, for the glory of the Lord gave it light, and the Lamb was its lamp. The nations also walked by its light, and the kings of the earth brought their splendor to it. On no day will its gates ever be shut. There will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought to it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life." And I could keep reading, but for sake of time, I'll make some references to those next few verses. So, what do we hear, what do we learn about the new earth and the eternal experience? Well, the account commences with a description of resurrected humanity standing on a renewed earth with distinct topographical features. There's no more C. The old order will pass away, and with it pain, sorrow, death, sin, sinners. Everything will be made new, and the material curse will be replaced not by obliterating the earth, but by regenerating and renewing it, which is a theme throughout scripture. The first scene features the descent of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, out of heaven from God. These prepositions speak both to origin and also to the continued existence and otherness of their objects. The Scriptures offer no reason to conclude that heaven is the eternal home, or for that matter, even an occasional destination for redeemed humanity. It's possible that we'll be able to visit heaven. I'm not saying we can't, but I think we're going to have this sense that we're visitors there. Our home will be earth, okay? The creator-creature distinction is not obliterated in eternity. I think this is a theme that's got to come back here several times. God will descend to dwell visibly. with us where we are, okay? And I have to assume that this is, we are seeing God in Christ, okay? I see no reason to think that our resurrection eyes are suddenly going to be able to see the other two members of the Trinity. Again, the creator-creature distinction is not removed here. And we do not have a comprehensive knowledge of God as he is, if I can appeal back to the EDT. No one ever has a comprehensive knowledge of God. God is incomprehensible. For him to fail to be incomprehensibility would completely remove the mystery and make him like us. So we should not think of the beatific vision as doing all that its proponents have suggested throughout history. Okay? So He's going to come and dwell visibly among us, further cementing the point made above that we do not properly rise to live with Him where He is. He's going to come and dwell with us where we are. The city of God, the New Jerusalem, will have objective dimensions. It will be constructed from known materials, that I butchered, right? The city will be enormous, about 1,400 miles per site, including a vertical dimension. Some have suggested that this is a cube, patterned after the Holy of Holies. Others have suggested perhaps a pyramid. I don't know that it is materially important that we know, but it does have a vertical dimension. Despite its size, however, if you do the math, The base of the city covers only about 1% of the square mileage of the existing earth. So it sounds like an enormous city, and it is. But if you think about the size of the earth as it stands right now, it's only about 1%. The other 99% is unaccounted for at this point. The population of the new earth will be divided into nations, each with kings. This is something that the spiritual vision guys become apoplectic about, right? There's going to be no distinction in heaven. But no, there's going to be nations, kings. It not only assumes national distinctions, but personal inequality of rank as well. If there's kings, Rulers, there's people who are ruled as well. I think we're probably seeing an extension here of what happens in the King. Remember the parable of the Minas, where the ones who were faithful received authority over cities. I have to think that that's probably something that is extended now into the eternal state. So we're going, our reward will probably take the form of rank within the kingdom. Maybe not entirely that, but I think it includes that. Of particular interest to us is the fact that the glory and honor of the nations will come to the city, verse 26, and act reminiscent of, and again, perhaps contiguous with, similar events that occurred during the millennium. Nations streaming to his light and bringing their wealth. If this is the case, we have reason to assume that the nations will develop industrially, technologically, become prosperous, and engage in commerce and benevolence. We will also eat, next chapter that we didn't read here, of the fruit of the tree, with historic pedigree from the Garden of Eden, and the fruit and even the leaves will sustain the nations. Now many see a spiritual or representative dimension to this eating, but there is no reason to think for this reason that there is no material aspect to it. We will receive physical nourishment in the eternal state. If I can say perhaps the closest parallel would be when we take the Lord's table. Just because it has a symbolic value does not mean that it has no nutritional value. I mean, it does. And I think the same thing would be true of this tree and its fruit. In every turn in these verses, we are met with physical, material, and sensory data. And there's no textual suggestion that these are strictly metaphorical of spiritual realities. So that's the first argument, exegetical. Second is anthropological. The biblical portrayal of man in Scripture comes to us in neither Aristotelian nor Platonic terms. We are neither purely material nor purely spiritual beings, but a union of the two, with neither part eclipsing the other. How do we know? We know by means of observation and acquaintance, using physical sensory organs, and we process the collected data in physical brains. Even what we know instinctively is not ours by mere intuition, but by objective recognition of revelation rationally synthesized and propositionally expressed. That we are persons means that we have the capacity to subjectivize this data, engage in theorizing, inference, self-determination, trust, affection, worship, but we can do none of these things without bodies. In Anthony Hokema's words, man exists in a state of psychosomatic unity. So we were created, so we are now, so we shall be after the resurrection of the body. For full redemption must include the redemption of the body, since man is not complete without the body. The glorious future of human beings in Christ includes both the resurrection of the body and a purified, perfected new earth. So the idea, then, that intuition, telepathy, or ineffable epiphanies are superior to or destined to replace sensory perception, discourse, and propositional expression is totally unknown in Scripture. We're still going to receive data and process data in the very same way we do now. free of the inhibitions of sin, of course, but it's going to be the same processes. It's not as though we're just somehow going to just know intuitively everything that we need to know. We're going to learn. In fact, I think that's part of the joy of heaven. We will continuously be learning. Okay. On the contrary, the Bible's teaching of the resurrected state is overwhelmingly sensate. Christ's own resurrection body, which is paradigmatic of ours, we will be like him. It was visual. It was tangible. It was propositionally expressive. That our physical experience would be less corporeal, that our resurrection experience would be less corporeal than his, is surely to be rejected. Rather, his resurrected self stands as sturdy proof that our eternal experience will be somatic. Our knowledge and experience of God and all things will occur discursively, not by means of spiritual vision. Third argument is biblical theological. God did not create mankind with the express intent of saving them. Instead, soteriology emerged in the service of the larger purpose detailed in the very outset of the biblical storyline. God created man with a stated purpose, to fill the earth, subdue the earth, and glorify God by consulting with him as he walked in their midst. That was the purpose. Man sinned. Of course, it's not as though this is something that caught God off guard here. So, man sinned and made it necessary for there to be some resolution to this problem, but all of this is in the service of the restoration to the way it was, and actually better, right? We're going to get the earth back, and we're going to have a second go at it, if I may, in resurrected, glorified bodies, and we're going to carry out, I would say, the Dominion Mandate as Adam was supposed to have done. So God did decree from eternity the fall and redemption of mankind and with it the curse and restoration of whole creation. Still, the broadest purpose of God in redemption has always been to reestablish and perfect that primitive government that began in Eden. It should not surprise us then that this is precisely what is seen in Revelation 21 and 22. To quote Russell Moore, The picture is not of eschatological flight from creation, but the restoration and redemption of creation with all that it entailed. Table fellowship, community, culture, economics, agriculture, animal husbandry, art, architecture, worship. In short, life and that abundantly. Stated positively then, God created mankind expressly to glorify him by exercising dominion over the earth and all that was in it. God intended for Adam and Eve to multiply, to organize into hierarchical sociopolitical units, families first, and then broader collectives. work the land, exploit the animals, engage in all physical sciences, build societies, cultures, consult routinely with God who walked in their midst. This purpose has been occluded by sin but has never been fully lost. We're still supposed to be doing that thing, and we are limping along doing that in degree. The question under review, then, is what we will be doing forever. I believe that the likeliest scenario will be that we will perfectly be executing God's expectation detailed in Genesis 1-2. We will likely spend much time working, not just laboring with our hands, but developing technologically, cultivating, expressing chaste affections through art, and so on. We will do all of these things with great satisfaction, in efficient and regulated solidarity with the rest of God's people. And we will do all these things in consultation with God who will dwell among us in ordinary, sensate ways. And we will engage in much formal worship of God, including, but not limited to, regular pilgrimages to his capital city with an abundance of offerings. Now, many questions remain. Probably the most difficult one is the question of procreation, because the very first element in the Dominion Mandate is what? Be fruitful. And we understand from several texts that the idea of procreation seems very unlikely, not absolutely. I think there might be wiggle room here. But it does not seem that procreation is an element that takes place in the eternal state, which does sort of push against this idea. But I don't think that one element here needs to distract from the facts and evidence that the eternal state will not be one of endless transfixed rapture, but one of robust community, industry, economy, art, the development of every capacity whereby humanity on earth images God. Conclusion. The shadow of modernist liberalism, with its criticism and dismissal of all that is supernatural, has resulted in a pendulum swing of suspicion towards everything that is material or corporeal or mechanical. And so the result has been a reversion to Platonic Christianity, which commenced in earnest with Karl Barth and has proved attractive to many evangelicals. This is unfortunate, as the dark shadow of modernism, long as it is, is positively dwarfed in the whole history of the Church by the much longer, darker shadow of Plato that produced first Gnosticism and many errors since. That evangelicals are beginning freely to embrace Platonism as an alternative way of saving Christianity from its culture-despisers is troubling. The proposals of new creation model for biblical theology, hermeneutics, and eschatology are restoring a much needed and distinctively Christian middle way in the ancient debate between Aristotle and Plato, or more to the point, between Schleiermacher and Barth.