Our great hope, then, is not to escape “place”—not to escape the fact that we have bodies that are located at specific places in time and space. The hope that God promises us is that he will bring us into his eu-topia—his very good place, to live in his presence as he lives among us in the person of the God-Man, Jesus Christ. 

Christians differ on events to come, but we are agreed on two things:

1. Our blessed hope is the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13).

2. Whatever trends or events, good or bad, lie ahead for the church for the rest of the messy history of the present heavens and earth, our final destiny is a new heavens and earth, which will be a cosmic and terrestrial paradise that outshines Eden before Adam’s Fall, “God’s good place” from which every remnant of creaturely rebellion, human and demonic, and its every toxic byproduct are utterly excluded. 

Other contributors from the trurthXchange Think Tank The Coming Pagan Utopia, have the sobering task of exposing the illusions of Oneist eschatology, the fantasies of those who worship the creature and the created order as though they were the Creator, who is blessed forever.

On the other hand, I get the happy assignment of exploring from the Bible the sure future that overflows with sheer joy and celebration, which the true and living God, Creator of everything and redeemer of his people and his cosmos, has in store for those who humbly trust him—and which he has guaranteed by embedding the beginning spark of his new creation into the midst of history, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the first fruits of the robust, endlessly overflowing life of the age to come.

God’s good place is unimaginably beautiful (Rev. 21:1-4, 10-21)

The New Jerusalem is a portrait of God’s people, founded on the Lamb’s 12 apostles and fulfilling Israel’s 12 tribes (Rev. 21:12-14). The final revelation-resurrection-transformation of God’s people will precipitate the whole creation’s liberation from corruption/decomposition for the cosmos groans in longing (Rom. 8:19-23). The beauties of the New Jerusalem—precious stones and metals, radiant light, flawless dimensions, impregnable holiness—are portrayed in images drawn from our limited experience to give us a sense of ravishing beauty beyond our wildest imagination. The resplendent glory of the New Jerusalem exemplifies the unimaginable beauties awaiting the cosmos when God announces, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:1)

God’s good place is unembarrassedly physical
(1 Cor. 15:20, 35-57; Phil. 3:20-21; Luke 24:36-43; Acts 1:1-2) 

How can we discern the line in the visions of Revelation between symbolic imagery and the “prosaic” form of the future reality that the symbols signify? The resurrection body of Jesus is the one foretaste, the visible, touchable sample of the new heavens and earth, sent “back from the future” to mark the epochal turning point of our mundane and messy history.

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