THE PRESENT HEAVENS AND EARTH TO PASS AWAY
Practically all of the Pre-Millennial expositors are agreed in regard to the "heaven and earth" being symbolical. One of these has thus expressed himself on this matter:
"Aeons [ages] end, times change, the fashion of the world passes away, but there is no instance in all the Book of God which- assigns an absolute termination of the existence of the earth as one 'of the planets or any other of the great sisterhood of material orbs.
"So in those passages which speak of the passing away of the earth and heavens (See Matt. 5:18, 24, 34, 35; Mark 13: 30, 31; Luke 16:17, 21, 33; 2 Pet. 3:10; Rev. 21:1), the original word is never one which signifies termination of existence but a word, which is a verb of very wide and general meaning, such as to go or come to a person, place, or point; to pass as a man through a bath, or a ship through the sea; to pass from one place or condition to another, to arrive at, to go through . . . That it implies great changes when applied to the earth and heavens is very evident; but that it ever means annihilation or the passing of things out of being, there is no clear instance in the Scriptures or in classic Greek to prove. The main idea is transition not extinction.
"Some texts, particularly as they appear in our English Bible, express this change very strongly, as where the earth and heavens are spoken of as perishing, being dissolved, flying away (Isa. 34:4; 54:10; Rev. 6:14; 20:11); but the connections show that the meaning is not cessation of being, but simply the termination or dissolution of the present condition of them, to give place to a new condition. At least one such perishing of the earth has already occurred. Peter, speaking of the earth and heavens in Noah's time, says: 'The world that then was being overflowed with water perished. (2 Pet 3:5, 6)
But what was it that perished?
Not the earth as a planet, certainly, but simply the mass of the people, and the condition of things which then existed, whilst the earth and race continued, and have continued until now.
"The dissolving, of which Peter is made to speak, is really a deliverance rather than a destruction. The word he uses is the same which the Savior employs where He says of the colt, 'Loose him'; and of Lazarus when he came forth with his death-wrappings, 'Loose him, let him go'; and of the four angels bound at Euphrates, 'loose them'; and of the Devil, 'He must be loosed a little season.' It is the same word that John the Baptist used when he spoke of his unworthiness to unloose the Savior's shoestrings, and which Paul used when he spoke of being 'loosed from a wife.' It is simply absurd to attempt to build a doctrine of annihilation on, a word which admits of such applications.
The teaching of the Scriptures is that the creation is at present in a state of captivity, tied down, bound, 'not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected the -same in hope'; and the dissolving of all these things, of which Peter speaks, is not the destruction of them, but the breaking of their bonds, the loosing of them, the setting of them free again, to become what they were originally meant to be, their deliverance. (Compare Rom 8:19-23)
And as to the flying or passing away, of which John [in the text under consideration] speaks, viz. "And I saw a great white Throne and one sitting on it, from - Whose Face the Earth and the Heaven fled away, and no Place was found for them."(Rev. 20:11), a total disappearance of all the material worlds from the universe is not at all the idea; for he tells us that he afterwards saw 'the sea giving up its dead, the New Jerusalem coming down 'out of the heaven,' the Tabernacle of God established among men, and, nations' still living and being healed by the leaves of the Tree of Life."--SEISS.
We submit other comments on this text that we consider clear and forceful so far as the significance of the heavens and earth are concerned:
"The fleeing away of heaven and earth described in Rev 20: is described in Peter as their consumption by [symbolic] fire. Both descriptions include the passing away of the present corruptible state, and change to a state glorious and incorruptible." -ALFORD.
"That this is the case is clear from a careful study of the passage in the second epistle of Peter. The Apostle speaks here of three worlds. First: 'The heavens were made of old by the Word of God, and the earth also, which stands out of the water and in the water; which things being so, the world that then was being overflowed with water was destroyed!
What was destroyed?
Not the globe or the sidereal heavens (the starry heavens, the universe), but the world that then was the wicked anti-deluvian society; the then existing state of things passed away, but the globe, the Solar system, and the sidereal heavens remained of course as they were. Secondly, to the world that then was, he compares the heavens and earth that are now, or as Alford renders it, the new heavens and earth; that is the post-deluvian visible world; and of these he says that at the appearing [apocalypse] of the day of God, the thousand years of the Millennium , which is as one day with God, it is destined to be similarly purified, not with water, but with [symbolic] fire; and he adds thirdly, that we according to God's promise (alluding evidently to Isa. 65-17) look for a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness."--H. G. GUINNESS.
Neither of these writers it seems to us, however, have explained fully or clearly the outcome of the passing away of the present heavens and earth and the ushering in of the new. DR. SEISS locates this great change as beginning at the close of the thousand years, instead of at their beginning. MR. GUINNESS, however, makes the new heavens and the new earth state to refer to both the one thousand- year period and the eternal state which follows, but erroneously, we believe, applies the vision of Rev. 21:1 to begin after their close.
Continued with next post.
