What's on the Menu?

Feature: By Sam Walsh

Lacy, our red-brown dachshund, lifted her head and wandered into the dark bedroom. Our son had just gotten home from work and left his backpack on the bed. Although the room had been available all day, Lacy knew that something was different, and we wondered as she slowly and deliberately explored. Her short legs prevented her from seeing the backpack on the bed, but that didn’t matter – her elevated nose had picked up an aroma. We all puzzled over what she knew.       

Suddenly, our son remembered the remains of his supper: chicken tenders from Chick-fil-A. He had preserved them in a box and zipped them up inside his backpack. Lacy knew it and hoped to sneak a taste while no one was noticing.

To my knowledge, Lacy has never encountered a live chicken, and her diet does not include table scraps. But, that did not stop her nose from identifying the double-wrapped, Southern-fried delicacies. Perhaps she remembered my friend Bill who consistently brought a chicken treat to her every week. Looking like a used shoe insole, it was the lowest possible grade meat, processed overseas, dried out, and sometimes chewy, sometimes crunchy. At what ancient age the tough bird had given its life, I don’t know, but Lacy never paused to consider its nutrition and we had to scold her for nearly biting off Bill’s fingers as he held out the treat. Did these weekly tastes of gnarled, plastic-like chicken treats really whet Lacy’s appetite for the hot-selling chicken tenders inside my son’s backpack? Maybe. In any case, Lacy followed her nose toward something a thousand times better than her own experience. Similarly, God’s Word gives us a taste of greater things to come.

Christians shouldn't settle for substitutes.

Sometimes as Christians, we dismiss the present-age indigestion and take what is available, like Lacy did, becoming content with a lesser type of salvation. Other times, we swallow the substitute nutritional content of what is labeled as the final home of the believer and settle for inferior “chicken.” In more ways than one, though, heaven is not our home. Scripture leads us forward to something far greater: a world where God comes to us – a new heavens and a new earth where sin, evil, pain and death have all passed away.

Scripture points to something we can't imagine.

Scripture points toward this new heavens and new earth while using language that accommodates our low-grade, fallen experience of life on the present earth. If we had to eat the kind of chicken treat fed to our dachshund, we might also groan as Romans 8:22 indicates: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” How does Scripture use our language to describe the new heavens and new earth? How can our words come close to approximating the glory to come? With humility, we do best to acknowledge that our fallen nature prohibits us from fully comprehending it. The biblical writers nonetheless raise our expectations beyond our sensory and linguistic boundaries in several ways.

The Bible raises our expectations.

It raises our expectations by giving examples of the impossible becoming reality.

One way the Bible does this is through present-day impossibilities becoming realities. Isaiah’s poetic prophecy portrays the peace of the new heavens and new earth, lifting our sights beyond the present age by using earthly terms in revolutionary ways:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as waters cover the sea.

Isa. 11:6-9

Isaiah turns our attention to a time in the future that reminds us of the first Eden’s harmony and complete shalom.

For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

Isa. 55:12-13
This poetic, contrasting language describes “impossible” concepts that elevate our perspective, whet our appetite for the future and perhaps cause us to pause and reflect on what Adam and Eve cast aside in their thirst for human glory. The contrasts of Isaiah 60:10-22 highlight at least 20 “impossible” reversals that look toward the new heavens and new earth. And the prophet’s apocalyptic language is carried into the New Testament. Compare Isaiah 60:19 and Revelation 22:5, for instance:

The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.

Isa. 60:19

And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Rev. 22:5

Biblical study of Revelation depends on thorough knowledge of the rich language of Isaiah. Prophecy offers an extension of human horizons that includes present-day impossibilities becoming reality in the new heavens and new earth. The concept of peace in the new heavens and new earth is greater than the sum of the parts in Isaiah and other biblical prophecy. Scripture teases us with superlatives in symbolic language to describe the new heavens and new earth. For example, Daniel saw that “the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (Dan. 2:35).

It raises our expectations by offering new paradigms.

Typology also offers new paradigms for God’s people, like judgment on the old order. God systematically stripped away the Egyptian kingdom through the plagues and recreated a place for the Israelites to live with him as their king. Dwelling with them to a degree, God went before them in a pillar of cloud and fire. The motif of light from Genesis 1 returns as God recreated a new home for his people in Exodus. Crossing the Red Sea and the Jordan River, the Israelites rejoiced as God once again separated the waters from the dry land, as on the third day of creation. In this way, typology offers categories for us to think ahead toward the new age.

It raises our expectations by giving teasers that challenge the mind.

We get a sense of the new heavens and new earth through accommodating language, superlatives and typology, but Christ Jesus also presents some surprising teasers. New concepts challenge our finite minds, such as his statement to the Sadducees that they knew neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25). Something even more perfect than marriage is ahead for the new heavens and new earth. Jesus’ resurrection body allowed him to eat fish and to appear and disappear. He invited Thomas to touch his hands and side, yet he defeated death. The new heavens and new earth contain mysteries of which we cannot even dream.

Consider this: the New Jerusalem will not only be about 1,400 miles on a side, but also nearly 1,400 miles high (Rev. 21:16)! Once again, the Lord uses accommodating language of present impossibilities to give us a glimpse of the realities of the new heavens and new earth. Furthermore, the wording is actually “12,000 stadia” – a symbolically complete number 12 multiplied by a symbolically complete number 1,000. The Lord is communicating much more than physical dimensions about a place, and if we are willing to see the New Jerusalem as the people of God, it means that he will make us picture-perfect, fully complete in number and character. The superlative language of walls of jasper and gold, gates of a single pearl, and streets of pure gold describe the utmost value, not architectural or engineering methods.

The provocative language of the new heavens and new earth culminates with a setting so perfect that the Lord God himself can dwell among us. He comes to us. “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Rev. 21:3). Present impossibilities become eternal realities. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

It raises our expectations by whetting our appetite.

When my family goes out to eat, I’m usually the last to order. They brace for the next embarrassing moment with the server as I slowly go through the menu. The anticipation is literally mouth-watering as I imagine each ingredient descending on my taste buds.

One time I walked into a fast-food restaurant. I was looking forward to discovering the new food combinations. In the midst of my menu reverie, though, an eager and slightly impatient employee barked out, “Chicken or beef?” I’m positive he was trying to be helpful, but his common-sense reduction ruined my appetite. I had not come to the restaurant for chicken or beef – I was looking for an expansion of my horizons. More than immediate calories, I wanted every aspect of dining to overwhelm me. I longed for each of my senses to be engaged in the experience, but it was too tall an order for this food joint and its employees.

Scripture sets the table for us to get a taste of the coming age. The language and concepts in the new heavens and new earth far exceed that of any fast-food menu. Capturing a bit of the flavor, E.A. Stockman wrote this:

The plan of redemption will eventuate in the recovery of our material universe from satanic domination, and its restoration to its primal conditions; and our marred and blasted creation shall once more blush in Edenic beauty, with redeemed man in full fruition of his ancient immunities and glories; and EARTH, cleansed from the virus of the curse, regarnished and put in its native attire, will be the future and unchanging home of ransomed saints.” (1)

E.A. Stockman Tweet

People do not really talk like that today, but maybe that’s the point. Scripture’s poetic, prophetic and apocalyptic language moves us beyond our present impossibilities. The future marriage supper of the Lamb is greater than I can fully comprehend, and that aroma is only going to increase my anticipation as I study and savor Scripture’s menu for the new heavens and new earth.

Sam Walsh, “What’s on the Menu?,” The Advent Christian Witness, Spring 2020

[1] Stockman, E.A. Our Hope, or Why Are We Adventists? 7th ed. Boston: The Advent Christian Publication Society, 1902.