Fire and Ice

• Our hope is in the world to come, not in just heaven, as explained in both the Old and the New Testaments:

For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. -Isaiah 65:17

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. -Revelation 21:1

• A common open question is how the world will end, in fire or ice and if the new creation will be new substance, or a renewal of the old substance.  This question always reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

• However, the Bible is clear that it will be fire.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. -2 Peter 3:10-13

• This would seem to indicate that the world will be a new creation as the current elements will be melted, but in the Apocrypha, the Jews saw it very differently.

The Similitudes of Enoch describe how God will “transform the earth and make it a blessing” (1 En. 45:5).  Both 4 Ezra (7:75) and 2 Baruch (32:6) state that God will “renew creation.” In Jubilees we hear about “the day of the new creation when the heaven and earth and all of their creatures shall be renewed according to the powers of heaven and according to the whole nature of earth, until the sanctuary of the Lord is created in Jerusalem on Mount Zion” (1:29).  These texts are important, because they illustrate the expectation that was common in Jewish apocalyptic eschatology – the same background shared by the New Testament.


In Romans 8:18-23, Paul says that although creation has been subjected to futility and the slavery of corruption, it eagerly awaits the revelation of the sons of God (8:19).  Paul adds in 8:22 that “the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” Creation longs for this future event because, as Paul has already said in 8:21: “creation itself, also will be set free from its slavery of corruption into the freedom of the children of God.”