Fix Your Eyes On Eternity: A 12-Day Devotional On Heaven And The New EarthExemplo

The apostle Paul considered it vital for us to know what happens when we die: “Dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).

When Christians die, they enter into what theologians call the “intermediate heaven.” I prefer the term “present Heaven,” used to refer to a transitional place between their past lives on Earth and their future resurrection to life on the New Earth. By definition, an intermediate state or location is temporary. It isn’t a halfway place that’s only sort of Heaven, but the place where we will live with God between our lives here and the “final” Heaven that will be centered on the New Earth.

Though it will be a wonderful place, the present Heaven is not the place we are made for. It’s a temporary residence where departed saints live until the return of Christ and our bodily resurrection. The eternal Heaven, the New Earth, is our true home, the place where we will live forever with our Lord and one another. The great redemptive promises of God will find their ultimate fulfillment on the New Earth, not in the present Heaven.

Once we abandon our assumption that Heaven cannot change, it all makes sense. God does not change; He’s immutable. But God clearly says that Heaven will change. It will eventually be relocated to the New Earth.

So if Heaven—“the new heavens and new earth”—will be your home someday, wouldn’t you like to discover all you can about it now?