I have been influenced quite a bit by writers like NT Wright and Brian McLaren on this subject, but have developed my own understanding, I think, beyond the points that they reach.
It seems to me that God seems always to act, when he does act, using the natural processes (the laws of physics if you like) that he has set in place. So, for example, it has recently been proposed that the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and the Israelites was achieved by the way that winds in the area blow in a certain way across the area between Egypt and Israel. I saw a programme a while ago in which the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen suggested that it could have been a tsunami caused by an earthquake on the other side of the Mediterranean that caused a complete withdrawal of the sea (during which the Israelites crossed) followed by the tidal wave, which killed the chasing Egyptians.
It was the timing of the event, happening just at the right moment, rather than the event itself, which demonstrated the miraculous. This starts me on a path of thought that suggests that a completely new earth, as believed by many from reading Revelation 21, is not the way to understand this passage: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God….” (Rev 21 v 1,2a, NIV). We are taught that Revelation is composed of fantastic imagery and is to be understood with reference to symbols that would have been understood at the time that it was written (e.g. references to the woman and the dragon, the four living creatures, etc). These descriptions are not to be taken literally but are symbols given to provide understanding of the bigger message. Why then should we understand the picture of a new heaven and new earth (ie completely new things, not containing any of the old) so literally?
My own view is that the Bible, indeed the whole of Gods plan, is leading us forward to a time when all things are put right. That this will be, in effect, a future time when humanity, under the guidance of God and living increasingly in the way he has set out, reaches a point where ‘justice roll[s] on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream’. (Amos 5 v24, TNIV) and where the imperative on all is to ‘act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’. (Micah 6, v8). The “world as it should be” as said by Hillary Clinton when campaigning in the last American election. So this new heaven and new earth would be this world at a point when all things are put right. This view means that there will not have to be a suspension of the natural processes to create a new thing, rather it will be a point in the future to which humanity is travelling. This future world will be marked with the signs of the ‘Kingdom of God’: justice, mercy, righteousness (when people governments, etc, do the right thing, do right by all).
And we see signs of this all the time (of the world coming together, of demonstrations of justice, mercy, and righteousness). See for example the way that the world now reacts to natural disasters (the Asian tsunami, the Haiti earthquake). Countries around the world, including Russia and China, rushed to send help to these areas. How about the end of apartheid and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission under Bishop Desmond Tutu? All signs, I believe, of the Kingdom coming closer.
So this is what we work for. This gives us real impetus. Not ‘pie in the sky when you die’, but a very real world, this world, made better as more and more people work for it and seek it, until it comes about. This is my reading of the message of the Bible; this is what Jesus, already standing there at that point when this new heaven and new earth are in place, calls us to.
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