In this section, we will be discussing what life will be like on the new earth that God will create. In other words, we are looking at what scripture reveals to us regarding what living conditions will be like, for the children of God that will inhabit the new earth. This is not to be confused with what living conditions will be like for the saints that will inhabit the New Jerusalem however, for although there will be certain areas that will be similar, as we will see when we discuss the New Jerusalem later in this series, many areas will be completely different.
Deuteronomy 1:39 “Moreover your little ones and your children, who you say will be victims, who today have no knowledge of good and evil, they shall go in there; to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.”
In order for us to understand what life will be like in the new earth, there is a fundamental truth that we need to understand about the children of God in the age to come. Which is that unlike the saints of God, the children of God will have no knowledge of good and evil. For God has clearly stated in the above quoted passage of scripture, that all children have no knowledge of good and evil. In fact this passage of scripture is actually prophetic, because just as God gave the children of Israel their promised land to inherit, so He will give His own children their promised land to inherit. And so, because the children of God have no knowledge of good and evil, in that sense they are just like Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, before they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So how does that concept impact on what life will be like in the age to come? Many bible teachers that try to teach what it will be like in the new earth teach from a worldly perspective. In other words, they look at what the world is like today, and then mistakenly think that that’s what the world will be like in the age to come. They talk about sports, science, arts and entertainment, travel, business, media and education and how all of those aspects which form part of this life, will still be the same in the life to come, and then how the saints will be responsible for governing all of those various aspects in the future. There are two major problems with that kind of thinking however. The first problem is that when God creates the new earth, there will be absolutely no manmade infrastructure present. In other words, there will be no sports stadiums, no science labs, no movie theatres, no art galleries, no vehicles, no highways, no planes, no airports, no ships (because there also be no sea), no harbours, no business corporations, no factories, no shopping malls, no newspapers, no internet, no satellites, no television or radio, no schools or universities and there will also be no churches. In short, society as we know it in this life will not be present in the age to come. The second problem with that kind of thinking is that the population of the new earth will have absolutely no knowledge of any of the things of this world, for they would have all grown up in heaven, where none of this world’s norms and infrastructure is present. And even those children who were exposed to this world’s system before they died and went to heaven, will no longer have any recollection of what this world’s system was like, for God will erase all memory of this world, in the age to come (Isaiah 65:17). And so, the children of God will have absolutely no desire for any of the things of this world, simply because they will have no knowledge of it.
Michael E.B. Maher
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