In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. After the thousand-year Kingdom Age has been concluded, God will create a new heaven and a new earth. The heaven comes before the earth.

But Paul stated that the natural comes before the spiritual:

Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. (I Corinthians 15:46)

So it is that God has bound us in the prison of the flesh because we are not ready to be entrusted with the true value, with that which is eternal.

But when God begins to create what is to endure in His sight, what is of eternal value, He begins with the heaven, with the spiritual.

Today God is perfecting our spiritual nature. God is creating a new race of people in which the spiritual has been perfected. After the spiritual aspect has been developed to God's satisfaction, God will provide a new environment for the new race.

. . . and to the spirits of just [righteous] men made perfect, (Hebrews 12:23)

Man's desire is for a change of environment, a paradise. But God's desire is to change the man. When the man has been changed, then God will change his environment.

Christ came to change us, to create righteousness, holiness, and obedience in us. Only when this has been accomplished will we be ready to receive the eternal life of God's Presence and a paradisiac environment.

After we have been delivered from our wretched spiritual condition and restored to fellowship with God, God will give us the pure, peaceful, beautiful environment we desire.

The only problem with the garden of Eden was the inhabitants. God removed Adam and Eve from their marvelous surroundings and placed them in a setting of weariness and pain.

Current Christian understanding is that Christ has come to forgive Adam and Eve and to bring them back into Paradise on the basis of His (Christ's) own worthiness. This is not the case. Christ has come in order to perfect in Adam and Eve a spiritual nature that no longer will rebel against God. Only after Adam and Eve, through Christ's virtue, have been able to overcome sin will they be permitted back into Paradise— regaining access to the tree of life.

. . . To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. (Revelation 2:7)

Christian grace is not a covering of what man is so he can be permitted to reenter Paradise. Christian grace is the Divine Virtue of God in Christ given to man so he can become a fit inhabitant of Paradise. To allow unchanged man to reenter Paradise would be to set the stage for another rebellion against God.

There must be a new heaven before there can be a new earth, to speak figuratively.

It may be observed that the new Jerusalem is not brought down to the new earth until after the thousand-year Kingdom Age and the Day of Judgment have been concluded. It is not until after the Bride of the Lamb has been perfected, and every person who has been born on the earth has appeared before the Judgment Seat of Christ, that the holy city will make its appearance. All judgment must be accomplished first. Only then will God descend in His holy tabernacle to the new earth.

To be continued.