The new creation.
It is difficult to harmonize the various passages of Scripture which touch on "the new creation." In one place (Acts 3:21) it is called an ἀποκατάτασις, in another (Matthew 19:23) a παιγγενεσία. Sometimes its scene appears to be the present world purified (Isaiah 2:2-4); sometimes an entirely new world created for the habitation of God's people (Isaiah 65:17, Isaiah 65:18). Perhaps the best explanation is that of Delitzsch, that there are to be altogether three worlds, or three ages.
1. The first age, or ordinary human life, as we have hitherto known it—a checkered scene of sin and holiness, of happiness and misery, of sorrow and rejoicing.
2. The second age, or the period of the millennium, in which "the patriarchal measure of human life will return, in which death will no more break off the life that is just beginning to bloom, and in which the war of man with the animal world will be exchanged for peace without danger."
3. And the third age, or a final state of happiness in heaven; or the heavenly Jerusalem, when death will be destroyed, and sin will be no more, and tears will be wiped from all eyes, and the former things will be passed away altogether (Revelation 21:4). The three ages are distinctly marked only in the apocalyptic vision of St. John the divine (John 20:1-31; John 21:1-25.). Isaiah and the other Old Testament prophets have an indistinct view, in which the second age and the third age are confused together, the characteristics being chiefly those of Age II; but some of the characteristics of Age III. being intermingled. Age I. and Age III. are common to all the redeemed. Age II. will belong only to a select few—"the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands," who will "live and reign with Christ a thousand years" (Revelation 20:4).
HOMILIES BY E. JOHNSON