What Will Eternal Life Be Like? Brief Thoughts on Heaven and Earth

REVELATION 5:9–10

“They sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.’”

COMMENTARY FROM THE SERMON “Lamb on the Throne” BY ALISTAIR BEGG.

“It’s interesting: ‘They will reign on the earth.’ I’m so glad they’re going to reign on the earth! I’m so glad there’s going to be a new earth, aren’t you? I mean, frankly, most of the stuff about heaven that I was told as a boy made me distinctly uncomfortable. You too! Even now, I’m not excited about it, I’ll tell you straight-up. I don’t know what alabaster walls look like. And I’ve never played a harp. And the thought of playing one, especially for an interminable period of time, seems absolutely unattractive. Indeed, if somebody said to me, ‘Would you like to go and get fish and chips in Sidmouth or play the harp in an alabaster hallway?’ I’d go for fish and chips in Sidmouth every time.

“And I understand why it was when the Sunday school teacher asked the boys in the class how many of them wanted to go to heaven, and everybody put their hands up except for one wee boy. And she said to him, ‘Jimmy, what’s up with you? You don’t want to go to heaven?’ He said, ‘Oh, I want to go to heaven, but I thought you were gettin’ the group to go just now.’

The ultimate purpose of God was actually not Adam and Eve in the garden; it was Christ in Gethsemane, and it was His people in a new heaven and a new earth.

“I don’t want to get off on a diversion here, and I don’t want to unsettle many of you. In fact, I want to encourage you. In a new earth, all the things that we have enjoyed in a fallen world will be rectified. Every friendship that is precious to us now will be even more precious to us then. The question of what you’re going do with your spouse, or whatever else it is, should probably be subsumed under the absolute assurance that God will make everything that is a blessing and an encouragement and a help to us in this fallen world even better when He makes a new heaven and a new earth.

“And actually, most of our pictures of heaven, most of our songs about heaven have more to do with Victorian Christianity and Platonic views of the universe than they have to do with a rigorous, thoughtful consideration of what God is actually planning to do. ‘For the whole creation groans in travail, waiting for the redemption of the sons of God.’¹ Why? Because He is going to make a new creation. The ultimate purpose of God was actually not Adam and Eve in the garden; it was Christ in Gethsemane, and it was His people in a new heaven and a new earth.  For the cross of Christ was not something that was slotted into time in order to correct a defect in a system that had gone wrong. It was the eternal counsels of God’s will that purposed, in the view of man’s inevitable rebellion, that things would be this way.”