The Future: New Heavens and New Earth

Last week, John Farmer covered the doctrine of judgment. This week, we will finish our series on church doctrine by discussing the doctrine of the “New Heavens and New Earth.”  We will examine the Scriptures to see what the Lord has to say about the New Heavens and the New Earth and more specifically the New Jerusalem.

What is heaven?  Heaven is a place, not just a state of mind. Jesus taught his disciples to pray “Our Father who art in heaven.”  Luke records in his gospel:

“When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” --Luke 24:50-52

The Future: Judgment

Good morning!  We’re closing in on the end of our long running series on Sound Doctrine.  In fact, there is just one more message next week about the New Heavens and New Earth.  Today, we are going to talk about the Final Judgment.

We’ll look at the Scriptural evidence of this coming event, its timing, who will be judged and how, and we’ll talk about why judgement is necessary and God’s justice.  We’ll look at the application of these truths in our lives today.  And we will briefly talk about hell, the doctrine of eternal punishment.

So, what does the Bible say?  Revelation 20 describes not only the millennium we talked about last week, but also the release of Satan and the great battle leading to the defeat of Satan forever.  At this point we read about the judgment:

The Future: Tribulation and Millenium

Of all the topics that we have covered our series here on doctrine these two, the tribulation and the millennium, are without a doubt the ones that historically have generated the most diverse range of interpretations and opinions. In this context, “tribulation” refers to the Great Tribulation, a time of great trouble and distress described by Jesus in what is called his Olivet Discourse in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. A “great tribulation” is also referred to in Revelation. Some interpreters also claim a connection with the “seventy weeks” mentioned in Daniel 9 and with various other passages mentioning God’s judgment on the earth.

The “millennium” refers to one thousand years of Christ’s reign on earth, mentioned specifically only in Revelation 20, though, here again, some interpreters read it into other passages. So we can certainly agree that these two topics are Biblical and that at some point in history they will happen (or have happened or are happening, according to some). However, what they will look like and how they will fit together with other events prophesied in the Bible is not explicit. Should these passages be taken literally or figuratively? Can we say with certainty how long each event will last? More importantly, why should we care about them? What is the significance of the tribulation and the millennium?

The Future: The Return of Christ

Welcome! Today we begin the final section of our series on doctrine, focusing over the next four weeks on the future. As we have gone through our series, we have seen again and again that there are some things that are quite clear and uncontroversial, things that are presented quite clearly and explicitly in Scripture, but there are also other areas, other questions, other topics, that are quite the opposite. As we move to begin to discuss future events, it should be obvious that we are moving into areas where there is a lot of uncertainty. Next week Tim has the unenviable task of discussing the great tribulation and the millennium, some of the most uncertain topics of all. The following week John Farmer will talk about the great judgement, and then Fred will close out our series by talking about the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Who knows what the acronym TEOTWAWKI stands for? TEOTWAWKI stands for the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it. Survivalists use this and many other interesting terms. They try to plan for how to survive a civilization-altering event such as nuclear war, a severe disease that wipes out half the population, a complete breakdown of our economic system, an electromagnetic pulse from a weapon or from the sun that destroys electronics and our power grid, a severe natural disaster such as a comet or large asteroid hitting the earth or a super-volcano eruption that leads to something like a nuclear winter, zombies, or the election of Donald Trump as president. I’m kidding on the last two. See if you can guess what some of these other acronyms stand for: