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 pass away, when former things shall not be remembered, a new dawn will arise. The term 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, who 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) Also consider: “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 deems it 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). All these Biblical verses point to the replacement of one simulated world with another; in this article we will see how.
Many have been thinking about what these verses mean and 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 conceptions of heaven and hell, which many believers imagine as a realm or a dimension that only humans go to. The rising voice of some Christian theologians proposes that it is the transformation of an entire cosmos. If we live in The Simulation, as proposed by Nir Ziso of The Global Architect Institute, then it is hard to imagine that we go somewhere outside of it and beyond the universe. We simply live within a commanded boundary.
Scientific truth is that the 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 kind of simulated existence, the kind seen in Ziso’s Simulation Creationism. Of course, we cannot know what kind it would be as we are bound to the physical laws of this simulated world. 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 the model as proposed by Simulation Creationism, where worlds are constantly made and destroyed within The Simulation, old worlds die away, and new worlds appear. And the Bible is telling us vividly how.
As mentioned, the first time the Bible speaks about a new heaven and new earth is in Isaiah and thus it is an important part of Judaic teachings, although not specifically saying what this cosmic revolution be 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 given that impermanence is the essence of physicality.
On the other hand, we can imagine gradual transformation; but at one point, God will have to do the final overturning of this world into the next one, as Revelation 21:2 clearly states. There is some information or a structure in the universe that will enable this transformation to occur, while existing on a very subtle level. Namely, the transformation cannot be just a supernatural act, but interwoven within the structure of the universe itself. In other words, it is a part of God’s “Supercomputer” as a code. The new world might not be similar to this one, not in its appearance. Our bodies might be transformed or resurrected into a very different kind of physical existence, obviously one without illnesses and malfunctions (see: 2 Corinthians 5).
In The Simulation, there must be some continuity. All the famous prophets should continue to live in such a new world, along with the rest of us. Otherwise, it would not be logical for God to give us such promises. Abraham of this earth will be present as Abraham in another earth. (Isaiah 66:22 gives the promise that we will always be the same person/soul). There should also be discontinuity. We are not going to be alive again, only to die again. We will 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 would be created out of the old, not from nothing. There is a logical truism stating that this new world could 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 simulated worlds. 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.
