"We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 2 Peter 3:1313Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (2 Peter 3:13). This, although not the proximate hope of the Church, is the great end of the purpose of God: the final consummation of all His dispensational workings. Blessed and glorious as the millennial kingdom will be, it falls short of absolute perfectness; it is not the "eternal glory" to which the saints have been "called" (1 Peter 5:1010But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. (1 Peter 5:10)); it is not the eternal rest of God and His redeemed. This rest will only be reached when every trace of sin and sorrow has been done away, when every mark of the fall and the curse has been wiped off: the last enemy destroyed, and the whole of God's redeemed-including those who will live on the earth in mortal bodies during the millennium-have been brought into the perfectness and glory of the new creation. Then it is that all that connects itself with the first Adam and the first creation disappears forever, the old heavens and earth pass away, and new heavens and a new earth appear, in which God will be all in all; the fair Paradise of God; the eternal home of the last Adam and His bride, into which neither Satan, nor sin, nor sorrow shall ever enter.
The glory of the new heavens and new earth we can at present but feebly apprehend. The first creation was glorious ere sin had marred it: even now, amidst its groans for deliverance, there are traces of its great Creator's hand, which proclaim His wisdom and His might. But the beauty and the glory of the new creation will exceed the old, as the glory of Christ the second man exceeds that of the first Adam, who was of the earth.
With this glimpse of the eternal state the curtain drops and the Scripture ends. The Book of God had opened with an account of the creation of the first heavens and earth, and with a view of the first Adam and his bride amid the beauties of an earthly paradise, with its tree of life and flowing rivers: and the Book of God now closes with a view of the new heavens and the new earth, and of the last Adam and His bride amidst the eternal glories of the Paradise of God. Fair scene! over which no cloud shall ever roll, or day of sorrow come. Full well may we sing: Beneath Thy touch, beneath Thy smile New heavens and earth appear, No sin their beauty to defile, Or dim them with a tear."