I am always glad the daily office readings end in Revelation as the New Testament reading. It makes me homesick every time. There will be a time when war will be no more. A time when heaven and earth are truly joined together. A time when our King will finally be known in fullness to all and what we know in part now will be known in full then. I long for that day. Truly.
So many Christians have read John’s book expecting that the final scene will be a picture of ‘heaven’ that they fail completely to see the full glory of what he is saying. Plato was wrong. It isn’t a matter—it wasn’t ever a matter—of ‘heaven’ being the perfect world to which we shall (perhaps) go one day, and ‘earth’ being the shabby, second-rate temporary dwelling from which we shall be glad to depart for good. As we have seen throughout the book, ‘earth’ is a glorious part of God’s glorious creation, and ‘heaven’, though God’s own abode, is also the place where the ‘sea’ stands as a reminder of the power of evil, so much so that at one point there is ‘war in heaven’. God’s two-level world needs renewing in both its elements.
But when that is done, we are left not with a new heaven only, but a new heaven and a new earth—and they are joined together completely and for ever.
Wright, T. (2011). Revelation for Everyone (pp. 187–188). SPCK; Westminster John Knox.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 