The New Heaven and the New Earth Part 2
Scripture simply delineates three heavens. In 2 Corinthians 12:2 it says Paul was taken up into the third heaven, that’s the heaven where God dwells, that’s the third heaven. The first heaven is the atmospheric heaven, that’s the atmosphere around the earth, that’s the air we breathe. The second heaven is the stratospheric heaven, that’s the heaven of the heavenly bodies, the planets, the stars, the moons and everything else. And when you’ve gone through the atmospheric heavens and you’ve gone through the stratospheric heavens and come to the last heaven, it’s the heaven of God, it’s the divine heaven, the abode of God and angels and saints.
And people have asked throughout the centuries: where is it? Where is it? We believe it’s a place because there are some people there who actually have bodies. Is that not true? Like Enoch who talk a walk one day and walked right up to heaven. And the prophet Elijah who went to heaven in a chariot. And the Lord Jesus Christ who is there in a glorified body. And there’s going to be a lot more people there in their glorified bodies because Jesus said in John 14 He went to prepare a place for us and some day He’ll come and bring us there. And when He does bring us, according to 1 Thessalonians, our body is going to be transformed, we’re going to get a new body to go into that heavenly place. It’s a place.
You say, “Isn’t it just sort of a spiritual consciousness?” No, it’s a place. It’s a place where the spiritual and the transcendent glorified bodies of the saints will dwell with the glorified Christ and the holy angels.
The moon is 211,463 miles, you could walk to it in 27 years if you could walk 24 miles a day, it’s not that far. Now if we could just crank up your speed a little bit to like 186,000 miles per second, you could get to the moon in a second and a half, which is really the better way to go if you’re going to take the trip. At that speed you could reach Jupiter in 35 minutes and 11 seconds cause it’s only 367 million miles away. And if you could go 186,000 miles per second you could get to Saturn in 7 … in one hour and 11 seconds cause it’s only 790 million miles away. Now remember, you’ve got to go 186,000 miles a second to get there in a hour and 11 seconds.
But you see, when you’ve gotten to Saturn and you’ve gone beyond, and you’ve even gotten to Pluto which is in to the billions of miles away, when you’ve arrived at the very extremity of what we know is our solar system, you haven’t even gotten out of the front yard. You’re still at the very, very beginning of the stratospheric heaven because Alpha Centauri which is a star is 20 billion light years away, the North Star … 420 billion miles away, I should say … the North Star, 400 billion. And then a star Betelgeuse, 880 quad drillion miles away. And by the way, it’s big. They have discovered it has a 200 million mile diameter. And you want to know something? When you get there, you’re still in our galaxy and there are billions of galaxies.
And they say that our galaxy probably has a diameter of 100,000 light years, that’s going at the rate of 186,000 miles a second for a year. And when you’ve gotten through our galaxy there are billions more. So when we say “up,” it is up.
Doubtless as God advanceth our senses, and enlargeth our capacity, so will he advance the happiness of those senses and fill up with himself all that capacity.… We shall then have light without a candle, and perpetual day without the sun.… We shall then have enlightened understandings without Scripture, and be governed without a written law; for the Lord will perfect his law in our hearts, and we shall be all perfectly taught of God. We shall have joy, which we drew not from the promises, nor fetched home by faith or hope. We shall have communion without sacraments, without this fruit of the vine, when Christ shall drink it new with us in his Father’s kingdom and refresh us with the comforting wine of immediate enjoyment. To have necessities, but no supply, is the case of them in hell. To have necessity supplied by means of the creatures, is the case of us on earth. To have necessity supplied immediately from God, is the case of the saints in heaven. To have no necessity at all, is the prerogative of God himself. (The Practical Works of Richard Baxter [reprint; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981], 7, 16)
Such an unveiled view of God is impossible for mortal men. No living person has ever seen God in the fullness of His glory (John 1:18; 6:46; 1 John 4:12); He is invisible (Col. 1:15; 1 Tim. 1:17) and “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16; cf. Ps. 104:2), exposure to which would mean instant death for any living person (Ex. 33:20). But in heaven, “the pure in heart … shall see God” (Matt. 5:8), since they will be perfectly holy. They will be given an eternal and expanded vision of God manifest in His shining glory (21:11, 23; 22:5). Even the saints in heavenly glory will not be able to comprehend all the infinite majesty of God’s wondrous being. But they will see all that glorified beings are able to comprehend. Is it any wonder that Paul, thinking of the glory of heaven, had “the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better” (Phil. 1:23)?
Heaven will be so dramatically different from the present world that to describe it requires the use of negatives, as well as the previous positives. To describe what is totally beyond human understanding also requires pointing out how it differs from present human experience.
What it declares is the absence of anything to be sorry about—no sadness, no disappointment, no pain. There will be no tears of misfortune, tears over lost love, tears of remorse, tears of regret, tears over the death of loved ones, or tears for any other reason.