The New Heavens and Earth: Recreation or Renovation?

By Lee W Brainard

One of the most breathtaking prophecies in the Bible is the promise of the new heavens and earth. In that glorious day the widespread effects of the fall and the curse will be undone. Man will experience unbroken, utopian blessing in his eternal home.

But how will the new heavens and earth come about? Will the current heavens and earth cease to exist and be replaced by a second ex nihilo creation as many Bible teachers insist? Or will the current earth be refurbished by earthquake and fire from heaven even as the last earth was refurbished by the flood?

In this volume I present several arguments—such as historical precedent, the character of God, the eternality of the earth, and the eternal nature of the kingdom established at the second coming—which combine to make a formidable case that the new heavens and earth will be the current heavens and earth refurbished.

Foreword by Pete Garcia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee W Brainard
• Release date: Jul 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985322361

Lee W Brainard

Lee has been a Bible teacher for over 35 years. His areas of study include the Bible languages, Bible prophecy, apologetics, ancient history, catastrophism, and electric universe cosmology. He and his wife live in Harvey, ND where he preaches twice a month at Harvey Gospel Chapel. They have four children — all of whom are married — and twelve grandchildren.His passion is the presentation of Bible truth with a special interest in prophecy. To communicate these truths he writes books (fiction and non-fiction) and blog articles on his website, soothkeep.info.Lee's first foray into fiction, The Rogue, volume one of the Planets Shaken series, is a 2019 Audie Awards finalist in the Faith-Based category.His hobbies, which he rarely finds time for, are backpacking and mountain climbing. He finds enjoyment in the simple pleasures of life — conversation with friends, coffee, dark chocolate, mountains, the bugle of a bull elk, the call of the loon, the smell of lilacs in the spring, sunrises and sunsets, and northern lights.

Book preview

THE NEW HEAVENS

AND EARTH

RECREATION

OR

RENOVATION?

by

Lee W. Brainard

Soothkeep Press

The New Heavens and Earth: Recreation or Renovation?

by Lee W. Brainard

Copyright © 2022

All rights reserved

Published by Soothkeep Press

(an operates as handle for the published ministry of Lee W. Brainard)

ISBN — 979-8-9853223-4-7

Cover design by Jeffrey Mardis

Formatting by Polgarus Studio

The Bible version used in this work is the KJV modified with my own emendations in word order, modernization, and diction.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

THE RECREATION VIEW

CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE SKIRTED

CONTRARY TO THE PRECEDENT OF SCRIPTURE

EXEGETICAL SHIFTS

ARTEFACTS OF THE ENGLISH

STRAYING FROM THE OBSERVATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

NON SEQUITURS

TIMING OF THE NEW HEAVENS AND EARTH

CONCLUSION

APPENDIX A: TWO PILES EXEGESIS

APPENDIX B: CONFUSION ON RECREATION

APPENDIX C: BIBLE TEACHERS WHO REJECT ANNIHILATION

ENDNOTES

FOREWORD

Months before actually meeting Lee at Prophecy Watcher’s Homeward Bound Conference last May, I spoke to him for the first time on the phone one chilly Saturday morning in February. I’d heard from a friend that he was a Christian author who also did Christian fiction, and I was looking to find a partner to go in with me on a Christian fiction project. Armed with his name and website, I pounced on the opportunity to make contact. Admittedly, given his unusual-sounding last name Brainard and his website with a giant castle on it named Soothkeep.info, (mind you, I’d never heard him speak before nor read his bio), I just assumed he was British.

However, after discovering he wasn’t the moment we started talking, we hit it off like two old friends. To say I was immediately impressed by his theological proficiency, his mastery of multiple languages, and his deep knowledge of both the Old and New Testament, is an understatement. When I further discovered he did this all without throwing a bunch of consonants after his name; I was wowed. There is nothing more impressive than a man who chooses to enrich his knowledge not for a degree or title, but for the love of the thing itself. In this case, it was the Bible, and we are collectively better for it.

At the conference, Lee gifted me a copy of his book and asked that I pick it up at his table before I left to go home. I didn’t read it immediately because I was still trying to finish my own project. However, a month or so later, when I did manage to pry it from my tightly packed bookcase, I was selfishly looking for something to compliment my own literary efforts regarding the eternal state of mankind. I began to skim the book for that perfect, bite-sized quote that would perfectly encapsulate my thoughts.

Then it happened. Before I knew it, two hours had gone by, my own literary project long since abandoned, and I was voraciously devouring each page like a half-starved bookworm. I was captivated by it. Renovation or recreation? Does God destroy the earth, moon, and stars like certain passages seem to allude to, or is the universe renovated at the end of all things? To be honest, I’d never really given much consideration to the topic of whether the earth gets destroyed or simply gets a make-over. To me, the issue was of no effect to my previously held beliefs. I didn’t think the Bible said enough about the topic to make a difference one way or the other. Oh, how I was wrong.

And it is more than simply being wrong. My understanding now, having been transformed and strengthened by the eternal reasonableness that renovation, rather than annihilation and recreation, presents, must surely be the only eternal solution. As Lee so brilliantly puts it, Man was supposed to enjoy the physical fellowship of God here on this planet. But the serpent spoiled it. Did he spoil it temporarily? Or did he spoil it permanently?

In closing let me say, Lee’s samurai-sword-sharp style of comparing and contrasting what we think with what Scripture actually says (and doesn’t say) is truly amazing. I promise you, that before you’ve even finished this book, you will have long since reached that conclusion on your own. Lee’s arguments are sound. His justifications are rooted in commonsense and the plain interpretation of Scripture. You will finish this book even more wowed not by Lee, but by God’s grand design to finish what He started. And through that lens, we see our own redemption all the more secure.

Pete Garcia

8/17/2022

PREFACE

In Proverbs 18:17 we read the savvy observation, The first one to plead his cause seems right until his neighbor examines him. This speaks volumes when it comes to choosing sides in doctrinal controversy. We do ourselves and the truth a disservice if we don’t give both sides a fair hearing on whatever doctrinal issue lies before us. Not allowing one side to present their whole slate of evidence or not listening to their presentation of evidence manipulates the trial.

This advice from Proverbs is especially apropos for the question of the new earth and heavens. Christians often hear the recreation view proclaimed and defended—the current heavens and earth will cease to exist and be replaced by a brand new universe. But most of them have never been presented with a well-framed case for renovation—the current heavens and earth will be massively overhauled by fire and earthquake.

The pages before you are my effort to remedy this situation. I present a wide array of biblical and hermeneutical arguments that I believe conclusively demonstrate that the correct understanding is renovation. The sheer number, variety, and scope of these arguments will seem staggering to many who have never seen the other side of the mountain.

May the Lord grant the readers a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the understanding of this subject. We need our view to be formed by the fullness of God’s prophetic word illuminated by the entirety of God’s word. We need God’s thoughts on the matter, not our own.

Lee W Brainard

Harvey, North Dakota

May 12, 2022

INTRODUCTION

One of the most amazing teachings found in the prophecies of the Bible is the declaration that the present heavens and earth are going to pass away and be replaced by a new heavens and earth. The first time I read this as a young believer, my heart leaped in my breast. The thrill continues to this day. Believers not only receive eternal life from the hand of God, they get to spend this eternal life in a new heavens and earth which is nothing less than an infinite utopia with unlimited time, unlimited energy, unlimited resources, and unlimited opportunity.

The truth of a new heavens and earth is clearly stated in the New Testament. Revelation 21:1 says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. It is also taught in the Old Testament. For example, Isaiah 65:17 says, Behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

For those who interpret the Bible literally, there is no controversy over the essential meaning of such passages. The promise that the current heavens and earth shall pass away and be replaced by a new heavens and earth is just as clearly taught in the pages of Scripture as the promise of eternal life and the threat of eternal punishment.

Nonetheless, there is a debate over the sense in which the present heavens and earth will get replaced. Do they cease to exist in an absolute sense and get replaced by an ex nihilo recreation? Do they cease to exist in a relative sense, being dissolved into a cosmic sea of atoms and subatomic particles which are then reassembled into a new creation? Or will the new heavens and earth simply be a renovation of the present heavens and earth—the heavens getting rearranged, the earth getting resurfaced and purged by fire, and creation being freed from the curse?

For all practical purposes, these replacement options can be boiled down to two: recreation (a second creation) and renovation (altering the existing creation). While the ex-nihilo and dissolution positions are technically different, they are not far apart practically. Both involve the visible disappearance of the heavens and the earth, and both are diametrically opposed to a renovation understanding. Probing the debate between these disparate views—recreation and renovation—is the topic of this volume. Does the evidence vindicate recreation as the truth of God? Or does it point to renovation?

The presentation of this debate is simple and straightforward. In the following chapter, I will present the recreation view and the five basic arguments that are presented on its behalf. In the remainder of the chapters, I will present a broad survey of arguments, classified by category, that argue against the recreation view and for the renovation view.

With this subject, as with every subject that I teach, I have an ulterior motive—encouraging Christians to practice candid, robust investigation. Many errors beset and divide the church. But behind the vast horde of errors, there is one error that binds them all—lack of candid, robust investigation. If we fix this error, we fix all of our errors in principle, and we will fix many of them in reality, given time and opportunity.

THE RECREATION VIEW

The Prevailing Understanding

The prevailing understanding of the new heavens and earth among prophecy teachers is the recreation view—after the close of the thousand years, the current universe will disappear and be replaced by a completely different creation. This view dominates the books, pulpits, videos, and schools which present the dispensational approach to Bible prophecy.

Now there is a bit of variation within the camp. A few articulate the dissolution view of recreation with clarity—the universe shall dissolve into atoms and subatomic particles, then be reassembled. A few present the cessation view in unmistakable terms—the universe shall cease to exist, then be recreated ex nihilo. But most teach the recreation position with such vagueness or inconsistency that we are unable to discern, with any certainty, in what sense they expect the universe to depart and be recreated.¹ But I won’t pursue the confusion here. How men think the universe will depart and be recreated is of less concern to me than the fact that they do believe the universe will depart and be recreated.

Admission of Difficulties

While it may come as a surprise to many readers, some of the greatest scholars in the recreation camp have been candid enough to admit that there are passages in the Bible that challenge the view they favor and point to a renovation instead.

Robert L. Thomas writes, The renovation approach has the support of parallel passages in Rom. 8:19-22; Acts 3:21; Matt. 19:28. Paul in the Romans passage wrote about the renewal of an old creation. Peter in Acts spoke of the restoration of all God spoke about through the prophets, and Jesus in Matthew about the resurrection. The teaching of the OT regarding the eternality of the earth, part of which was given to Israel as their everlasting possession, also supports renovation (cf. Gen. 48:4; Ps. 119:90; Eccles. 1:4).²

Without fully developing this point,³ it bears mentioning that if we find ourselves forced to choose between two piles of verses, one pile defending one view and the other a contrary view, we need to stop and examine our presuppositions. The Bible is not at odds with itself. All of the testimony in the Bible on a subject can and ought to be harmonized into a single, unified position. The only reason we ever find ourselves forced to choose between piles of Scripture and the disparate doctrinal perspectives they represent is that we hold—maybe even dearly embrace—a preconceived notion that introduces confusion into the Bible’s treatment of the subject we are investigating. We need to figure out what this notion is and jettison it as if it were poison.

The Three Primary Arguments

There are, for all practical purposes, three arguments that men present as proof of the recreation view: the chronological argument, the exegetical argument, and the theological argument. You can read a dozen treatments by a dozen different men, and these are the arguments you are going to find.

The chronological argument points out that the mention of the new heavens and earth in Revelation 21:1 follows the mention of the thousand years and the great white throne, and it concludes from this that the new heavens and earth must transpire after these two events. Robert L. Thomas, for instance, writes, The new creation will appear chronologically following the Millennium and the Great White Throne.⁴

The exegetical argument leans on the four classes of statements in the Bible that refer to changes in the heavens and the earth in the day of judgment: those that speak of passing away or vanishing,⁵ those that speak of burning or melting,⁶ those that speak of dissolving,⁷ and those that speak of the heavens being rolled up like a scroll or folded like a garment.⁸ From these statements, men conclude that the current heavens and earth must and will cease to exist.

The theological argument states that the present creation is so defiled that God must remove it and start over with a new creation. Robert L. Thomas writes, The entrance of sin and death spoiled the earlier creation and made it a place of rebellion and alienation, an enemy-occupied territory. Its replacement with a whole new order … is a necessity.⁹ John MacArthur expresses it in more detail, "The entire universe, all the way out to endless space through all the