The Judeo-Christian scriptures tell of a new heaven and new earth when all supposedly shall be made new. When the first heaven and the first earth shall be passed away, when former things shall not be remembered, a new dawn will arise. It is a term that exists both in the Old and the New Testament. It first appears in the Book of Isaiah, one of the best known Old Testament prophets and says: “See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind” (Isaiah, 65:17) and “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). The Book of Revelation gives it as an important part of the Christian eschatology: “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.” (Revelation, 21:2).
Many have been thinking about what these verses could mean and how could this ever happen. It is not enough to say it is God’s mystery, as it was revealed to us to think and dwell upon these verses. It faces us directly with the conceptions of heaven and hell, which many believers imagine as a realm or a dimension that only humans go to. There is a rising voice of some Christian theologians who propose the idea that it is a transformation of an entire cosmos. If we live in a simulation, as proposed by Nir Ziso, it is hard to imagine that we go somewhere outside of it, somewhere beyond the universe. We simply live within a commanded boundary. Scientific truth is that universe will not last forever, but our life with God/Creator will. When the time of our universe runs out, God will transform it into some other kind of simulated existence. Of course, we cannot know what kind it would be as we are bound to the physical laws of this simulation. All we know is that we will be embodied in an environment, albeit without suffering and pain of this world, as evidenced in the New Testament: “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter, 3:13). In that new world, we will know God as He is. It is a standard model as proposed by Simulation Creationism where simulations are constantly made and destroyed, where old worlds die away, and new worlds appear. And the Bible is telling us vividly how.
As mentioned, the first time Bible speaks about a New Heaven and a New Earth is in Isaiah and thus an important part of Judaic teachings, although not specific in saying what will this cosmic revolution be specifically like. Traditional rabbinic teachings think it is God’s promise of overturning the current difficulties in life with a good life, but physically on this Earth. Such a world will go on forever. Physical but eternal seems like a huge controversy, as impermanence is the essence of physicality.
On the other hand, we can imagine gradual transformation but at the one point, God will have to do the final overturn of this world into a next one, as Revelation 21:2 clearly states. There is some information or a structure of the universe that will enable this transformation to occur, existing on a very subtle level. Namely, the transformation cannot be just a supernatural act, but it is interwoven within the structure of the universe itself. In other words, it is a part of the supercomputer, a code. The new world might not be similar to this one, even not in its appearance. Our bodies might be transformed or resurrected into very different kinds of physical existence, obviously one without illnesses and malfunctions (see: 2 Corinthians 5).
In that world, there must be some continuity. All the famous prophets we know about should really continue to live in such a new world, as well as all of us. Otherwise, it would not be logical for God to give us promises. Abraham of this earth will also be present as Abraham in another earth (Isaiah 66:22 gives that promise, we will always be the same person/soul). There should be also discontinuity. We are not going to be alive again only to die again. We will also not be able to remember the old world, as Isaiah 65:17 says. New embodiment asks for a new kind of matter and God is completely capable of bringing it. This matter may even come from this world, almost like a redemption. God will redeem this dying world and create a new one. It is created out of the old, not out of nothing. There is a logical truism that this new world could also be a temporal world, with an unfolding process, but closer to the divine presence.
While Nir Ziso explains the process of doing and undoing the world, human beings are somehow transferred from one point to another as a single person/soul. We are the same actors in various simulations. This brings us to one of the most difficult mental activities when reading about eschatology: eternity. Forever. How can we even start to think about it? This is an issue we will discuss in the second part of this article.
