speaking of Revelations, Dr. Brante Pitre talks about the "new heavens and the new earth" (a popular JW topic from my friendly conversations with my JW visitor friends to my door). What do you think?:
"...Finally then, the second reading, the passage from the book of Revelation, continues our journey through the book of Revelation. But now the Church fast forwards, as we approach the end of the Easter season, to the end of the book, and to what is maybe my favorite chapter in one of my favorite books, the book of Revelation. This is chapter 21, where John has his vision of the new creation. A lot of times students will ask me the question, Dr. Pitre, what is heaven like? Could you tell us about it? In other words, could you give us a kind of guided tour what heaven looks like? And a lot of times people will look to various visions or private revelations that people have had, near-death experiences, to find out what heaven is like. I always try to tell my students, if you want to know what heaven is like in Scripture, you need to go to the end of the book of Revelation. In the book of Revelation, John the seer has another one of these visions that we've seen in previous weeks during Easter season, but in this case he has a vision of not just heaven, but the new heavens and the new earth. In other words, all of the universe being reconstituted in Christ at the end of time after the final judgment in Revelation 20. So if you want to take a guided tour of heaven, just go to Revelation 21. So what's going on here?
I'd like to highlight three things in this very interesting text. Number one, although Christians sometimes think of eternal life as simply the immortality of the soul in heaven in a kind of disembodied spiritual realm, John's vision in the Book of Revelation of the end of time is not just about the immortality of the soul, it has to do with the resurrection of the body and the restoration of the whole cosmos, of the universe, in a new heavens and a new earth. The Jews would actually use the expression, in the first century, heaven and earth, as a a way of talking about the universe, what we will call the cosmos, the universe. And so when John says "I saw a new heavens and a new earth," he means I saw a new universe, a new creation, that is both similar to the old creation but different as well. And in the context of that new creation he also sees, second, a new Jerusalem, who he mysteriously described as a bride adorned for her husband. That's a very weird thing to say about a city. Most of us, we see New York City, or Los Angeles, or some major city, we don't think wow, that city looks like a bride, but that's how John describes the new Jerusalem in this new creation. And what he's doing here is he's alluding to the Old Testament prophecies of Yahweh, of the Lord, as the divine bridegroom, who enters into a marriage covenant with Jerusalem, that represents his people, the city of his people, as his bride. So the Lord, Yahweh, is the bridegroom and Israel, Jerusalem, the people of God, are his bride. And in this case, John says that this new Jerusalem is decked out like a bride adorned for her husband, because we have basically a new marriage covenant, a new covenant between God and his people through Christ and the Church. There is so much more I could say about that, if you want to go into more depth, I actually wrote a whole book just on this theme here called, Jesus the Bridegroom: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told. And what I show in the book is that this passage is significant, primarily because the Bible begins with a wedding, of Adam and Eve, and also ends with the wedding, the wedding of Christ and his Church in this new creation, in the new heavens and earth. So the whole Bible is one divine love story, the story of God's love for his people, the creators love for his creature, that is so deep it goes way beyond just a personal relationship, it is actually a covenant, a marriage covenant in which God, although his people have sinned, is never going to abandon them, but is going to unite them to himself in this everlasting covenant of love.
So what John reveals here is that salvation is, number one, bodily, not just spiritual, so it's a new creation. Secondly, that it's not just about not going to hell, that's how most people think of salvation, it's like eternal fire insurance, but rather it's about union with God. That's the image that marriage conveys, union with God. God doesn't want to just save his people from sin and death, he wants to be united to them for ever in this new creation. And that's why he says, "behold God's dwelling is with the human race." Literally, God's Tabernacle is with him, he wants to pitch his tent with his people. And then finally, last but not significantly, not least significant at all, is Jesus's words, "behold I make all things new." So we say in the Gospel for this week that he gives us a new commandment, love one another, well the same things true about the book Revelation. It's not just the commandment to love one another that's new, it's not just the covenant that new, it's all things that are going to be new made new in Christ. So the risen Christ comes into the world to make every single thing new, to make all of creation new again in him. So that there would be no more morning, no more wailing ,no more crying, no more death anymore, because he is going to restore everything in him. And I think that's really important for us to remember, because sometimes, if you listen to Christian fundamentalists, especially in the United States, sometimes when they talk about the end times, it's all focused on the apocalypse, the destruction of the world, the coming Antichrist, the tribulation, the final judgment, and the destruction of the universe as if that's the end of the story. But that's not the end of the story in the book of Revelation, Revelation doesn't end with the destruction of the universe, it ends with the renewal of the cosmos, it ends with Christ saying "I'm making all things new." Because he doesn't come into the world to destroy the world and throw it into the dust basket, the wastebasket of history, he comes into the world to remake it. So although the world does pass away in Revelation 2,1 it passes away precisely in order to be made new. And that's his mission. In one of my favorite lines in the Bible Jesus says, behold, I don't just make some things new, behold, I make all things new.
That is the Christian hope, the hope, as we say in the Creed, for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth. So during this preparation, this Easter season, we want to have joy, not just about the resurrection of Jesus' body or the empty tomb, but in our own resurrection and our hope for this new creation, the new heavens and the new earth. I know I'm going on and on here, but this is just one of my favorite topics to talk about. Maybe, if you'd like to look into it with more detail, you can check out a Bible study series I did on CD called Life After Death: A Bible Study on the Seven Last Things, where I walk through death, heaven, hell, purgatory, resurrection and then, in my favorite CD, the last CD, which is all about this, the new creation, the new heavens and the new earth. That is the hope of Easter." (http://catholicproductionsblog.com/new-commandment-new-creation-lectionary-readings-explained-fifth-sunday-easter/)