What wonderful promises are found in these texts? Isa. 65:17, Isa. 66:22, 2 Pet. 3:13, Rev. 21:4. Also, how are they linked with the biblical model of Creation, as revealed in the opening chapters of Genesis? ¹

The whole Christian hope rests on the promises of a new heaven and a new earth, a heaven and earth without the devastation that sin has brought to the one we inhabit now. Without that hope, that promise, we have literally no hope at all. The promise of eternal life is wonderful, but we want that eternal life in a world without the horrors, sorrows, and disappointments of this one. What could be worse than the eternal death that awaits the unsaved than eternal life in a world in which misery is often the rule, rather than the exception?

All of which leads to some very interesting questions in regard to origins and how the Lord worked in the process of the first Creation—the one depicted so masterfully in Genesis 1 and 2. The question is, will the new heaven and the new earth be created by divine fiat; that is, as depicted in a literal reading of Genesis: God speaks and within an amazingly short time all life exists on the earth fully formed and developed, with nothing left to caprice, violence, or chance?

Or, instead, will the process of creation mean that life will, again, have to endure the “joys” and rigors of natural selection and survival of the fittest for billions of years until a new world, one “wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13), finally appears?

After all, if God chose to use evolution the first time around to create this world, why would He do something different the second time? If these were His chosen means in the original Creation, are they not good enough for round two?

The absurdity of the idea that God would use evolution to recreate the heavens and the earth is more evidence pointing to the absurdity of His having created the world that way to begin with. No question, the Cross, Redemption, and the promise of a new heaven and a new earth are themes inseparably tied in with the literal Genesis account.

Try to imagine what our world was like in its pristine beauty. Imagine, too, what it will be like when it is created over. Our minds and hearts can only begin to wrap around what that will be like. Why is nothing in this world worth having if we lose out on what is promised us?

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