The shingles were half blown off the barn. Some of the windows were broken. The siding on one side was almost gone, and what little paint remained on the trim was faded and peeling. The barn door was sagging, indicating the entire foundation of the place was of questionable stability. Weeds of every kind overgrew the ground, which was caked with layers of dead leaves and windblown trash accumulated over the years.
I (Sean) stood there looking at the old place as my dad (Josh) swept his arm toward it and told my sisters and me that this was the 120-acre dairy farm he had called home when he was growing up just outside Union City, Michigan. I looked at the dilapidated barn, the precariously leaning corncrib, and the overgrown fields and tried to imagine what the place must have looked like in the early 1940s.
Dad could remember when his older sister would come home to visit and how he’d help make homemade ice cream on the back porch of the house. He said his mother made the best root beer in all of Michigan, and he had guzzled all the root-beer floats his parents would let him drink. Josh clearly saw more in this acreage than my sisters and I did. We saw a place in ruins; through the enhancing lens of memory he saw it as it once was.
As we walked toward the corncrib, Josh’s entire demeanor changed. Pleasant thoughts of homemade ice cream and root beer quickly faded. The reality was, happy childhood memories for my father were few and far between. We were just a few feet from the old leaning shed when he abruptly stopped. As he stared at the weather-beaten structure, tears began to trickle down his face. Within seconds he was overwhelmed with emotion. He seemed paralyzed by the memories of that terrible day of shame and abandonment so many years ago. As if re-running an old movie, he seemed to see that 11-year-old boy, frightened and alone, buried inside up to his neck in corn, hiding from the humiliating scene of a drunken father out of control. It was more than he could bear, and he wept openly. My sisters and I wrapped our arms around our dad and wept with him.
I saw my dad differently that day. This old farm, now in ruins, had been his childhood home. He had so much wanted it to be a place of peace and safety, joy and happiness. But home had been far from that for Josh. And on that day I understood in a deeper way just how painful his childhood had been—a ruined childhood that could never be restored to what it should have been.
Two thousand years ago God saw through human eyes an entire world in ruins. What had once been a paradise of peace and safety, joy and happiness, was now a world of pain and suffering, murder and destruction. The Son of God stood before the city filled with people who were rejecting him and grieved. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. And now look, your house is left to you, empty and desolate. For I tell you this, you will never see me again until you say, ‘Bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’” (Matthew 23:37-39).
I (Josh) didn’t have the means to restore the old McDowell dairy farm into what it once was. And even if I could have repaired the old place, I couldn’t bring back my mother and father, run back the clock, and make my childhood home into a happy and loving family; that was all in the unchangeable past.
God has promised to renew each of his children to his original design and restore this earth to what it once was.
But unlike us, God can restore what has been ruined, both the physical creation and our broken relationships. As Matthew writes, “Bless the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (23:39). For Christ will return and take this physical “house” and our earthly home that is now “empty and desolate” and completely restore it.
The apostle Paul tells us that “all creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:21-22). The old McDowell farm along with every other place on earth is going to be restored to a home that will surpass the Garden of Eden.
And what about our painful memories and disappointments in life? Paul goes on to say we all “groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us” (Romans 8:23).
God will do more than just restore the earth to its pristine and perfect condition; he will restore us as well. Whether it’s pain of the past or suffering in the present, God has promised to renew each of his children to his original design and restore this earth to what it once was.
Jesus Will Return to Restore the Earth
The psalmist David declares, “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Psalm 24:1 NIV). God made the heavens and the earth and called them “very good,” and he hasn’t surrendered his title and right to them. They may be in ruins now, but he has definite plans to restore them to a perfect world for us to live in.
Jesus told his disciples that he was going away to prepare a place for them and for all of us. And he gave this promise: “I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:3 NASB). After Pentecost, Peter preached this same message to the people of Jerusalem and said that Jesus “must remain in heaven until the time for the final restoration of all things, as God promised long ago through his prophets” (Acts 3:21). And what had the prophets said about God’s restoration plans?
Look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth—so wonderful that no one will even think about the old ones anymore (Isaiah 65:17).
The time will come when all the earth will be filled, as the waters fill the sea, with an awareness of the glory of the LORD (Habakkuk 2:14).
“As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the LORD, “so will your name and descendants endure” (Isaiah 66:22 NIV).
These promises God declared were directed to the children of Israel, but they also include us as beneficiaries. When Peter asked what was in store for the disciples that followed Jesus, he said, “At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28 NIV). Peter later wrote, “In keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13 NIV). Jesus also told us that “when the Son of Man comes in his glory,” he “will say to those on his right; ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world’” (Matthew 25:31,34 NIV).
God has not given up on his original plan. He has neither abandoned the idea of a perfect earth, nor has he laid aside his plan for his children to live in a perfect place forever. He has no intention of taking us away to some distant heaven and then destroying this earth he designed to be our home. After his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven with a promise to return. He will return and restore this earth to his original design. God’s perfect plan is “to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (Ephesians 1:10 NIV).
Notice that in the verse above Paul tells us that the earth, as well as heaven, will be under one head. If we who now live on the earth were to be taken into heaven, what would be left on the earth to be brought together under one head? Heaven is God’s home. The earth is our home, not only now, but forever, just as God originally intended. And it is Jesus who will eternally bring us together with God and connect his home with ours. In John’s revelation he saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven and said, “Look, the home of God is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them” (Revelation 21:3).
Theologian Randy Alcorn in his book Heaven puts it this way:
There will be one cosmos, one universe united under one Lord—forever. This is the unstoppable plan of God. This is where history is headed. When God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden, Earth was Heaven’s backyard. The New Earth will even be more than that—it will be Heaven itself. And those who know Jesus will have the privilege of living there.1
When God’s restoration project is complete we will experience a renewed earth in the perfection of the Garden of Eden. “No longer will anything be cursed” (Revelation 22:3). No more thorns or thistles to prick our bodies. No more difficulty in getting things to grow. No more “survival of the fittest” among the animals. For they will all be at peace with one another. In fact, there will be no discord or fighting or evil anywhere, because “nothing evil will be allowed to enter—no one who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life” (Revelation 21:27).
Jesus Will Return to Restore Our Bodies
When Christ returns he will fulfill the promise he made through Isaiah the prophet long ago.
In that day he [God] will remove the cloud of gloom, the shadow of death that hangs over the earth. He will swallow up death forever! The Sovereign LORD will wipe away all tears. He will remove forever all insults and mockery against his land and people (Isaiah 25:7-8).
As his redeemed children, we will live forever on this perfect earth where “there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. For the old world and its evils are gone forever” (Revelation 21:4). Our earthly bodies will be “transformed into heavenly bodies that will never die. When this happens…then at last the Scriptures will come true: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’” (1 Corinthians 15:53-54).
And all this, the restoration of our bodies and a new world, is dependent upon Jesus Christ returning to destroy death and, of course, his archenemy, the devil. Jesus first had to die as an atonement for our sin. And he did. He then had to conquer death through his resurrection to become our High Priest. And he did. And upon his second coming he will destroy death and the evil one to renew and restore all things.
Only as a human being could he [Jesus] die, and only by dying could he break the power of the Devil, who had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14).
Christ was raised first; then when Christ comes back, all his people will be raised. After that the end will come, when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having put down all enemies of every kind. For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:23-26).
The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8 NASB).
When he has conquered all things, the Son will present himself to God, so that God, who gave his Son authority over all things, will be utterly supreme over everything everywhere (1 Corinthians 15:28).
We believe the truth that Jesus will return to resurrect our lifeless bodies into everlasting bodies, abolish sin, and restore the earth to a perfect world where he will live with us forever and forever.
Jesus conquered death through his resurrection and will one day return to earth and exercise his power to cast the devil, death, and the grave into the lake of fire, known as the second death (see Revelation 20:10-15). Christ’s resurrection is a prerequisite to his return and the entire restoration plan to give us new bodies and a new earth. Christ has promised to return and do this for us. And we can rest in his promise. As the writer of Hebrews said, “It is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18).