Hello all,
I was wondering about this and hope that someone will explain it to me:
Why is there a need for a new heaven after the resurrection? -would a new earth not suffice? (Compare Revelation 21)
1. all the dead have been re-embodied; 2. presumable the righteous formerly dead, now resurrected will live on the new earth; 3. even God will dwell with men
-that only leaves the angels. Will the new heaven be the dwelling place for the angels?
Thank you for enlightenment.

An interesting question.
I wonder whether the word 'heaven' might be referring to 'sky' rather than anything more abstract?
Perhaps to mirror God's original creation of the stars, sun, moon etc as well as the land and sea.
I think a new sky would be quite appealing since we seem to be damaging the atmosphere and have left lots of junk up in space!
But perhaps 'heaven' is meant in the more abstract sense? If God cares about the world, as we believe he does, then our trials and tribulations must have caused a certain amount of pain in heaven, so maybe the new heaven describes a new start without the pain caused by human sin? God coming to live on earth doesn't mean he can't still be in heaven as well.
Maybe someone else knows more about the passage in its original language and can enlighten us?

Hopegrace,

My understanding is that the death, resurrection and ascension was the start point of the new Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. We as the body of Christ are now working to see the fulfillment of that Kingdom.

I might be slightly off course - but my feeling is Revelation is revealing the New Kingdom to us and our hope is to see everything changed, everything made new when Jesus returns as the fulfillment of the promise.

I am sure that other explanations will also be forthcoming from the more learned among the community.

What an interesting question!

I did an essay on this passage from Revelation but that's quite a while back now and I can't remember addressing this specific point.

There are some really good resources online nowadays, I had a quick look and found this commentary on Revelation which says

It is Sunday morning and I feel drawn to respond here.

I was thinking about Revelation and how it revealed what was promised to us. I read something in the Church Times a review of a book called "Intelligent Faith" dealing with evolution and celebrating 150 years of Darwinian evolution theology.

While I have not read the book, the review gives a perspective on the content, which makes it one I will be reading soon (i-church bookshop please).
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=98240

Intelligent Faith offers a more mature way of understanding our origins and our faith. A series of essays by 19 well-qualified contrib­utors, a mixture of scientists and theologians, explores every aspect of the issues that were once so controversial. It is to be hoped that those who still cling to a funda­mentalist interpretation of Genesis, and have doubts about the validity and propriety of evolutionary theory, will have the courage to read this book, and discover that they may have been creating unnecessary problems for themselves.

Perhaps it will help me to understand better what A New Heaven and a New Earth will mean - but I suspect it might only give me a glimpse. But it will be worth reading just for that.