It’s hard for us to think accurately about the New Earth because we’re so accustomed to speaking of Heaven as the opposite of Earth. It may be difficult to retrain ourselves, but we should do it. We must teach ourselves to embrace the principle of continuity of people and the earth in the coming resurrection that Scripture teaches.

A radio preacher, speaking about a Christian woman whose Christian husband had died, said, “Little did she know that when she hugged her husband that morning, she would never hug him again.”

Though the preacher’s words were well intentioned, they were not true. He could have said, “She’d never again hug her husband in this life,” or better, “She would not be able to hug her husband again until the next world.” Because of the coming resurrection of the dead, we will be able to hug each other again—on the New Earth.

Someone might say, “We all know what the preacher meant.” But I’m not sure we really do—or that he really did. I’m not trying to be picky, but we need to carefully reform our vocabulary to express what’s actually true. If we don’t, we will ultimately fail to think biblically and continue to embrace predominant stereotypes of Heaven.

“That’s the last time I’ll ever see him in his body,” a man said of his son who died. No. Because they were both Christians, they will see each other again in their resurrection bodies.

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