“The glorification of the visible creation,” says Tholuck, the distinguished German divine, “is more definitely declared in Rev. xxi. 1, although it must be borne in mind that a prophetic vision is there described. Still more definitely do we find the belief of a transformation of the material world declared in 2 Peter, iii. 7-12. The idea that the perfected kingdom of Christ is to be transferred to heaven, is properly a modern notion. According to Paul and the Revelation of John, the kingdom of God is placed upon the earth, in so far as this itself has part in the universal transformation. This exposition has been adopted and defended by most of the oldest commentators; e. g., Chrysostom, Theodoret, Hieronymus, Augustine, Luther, Koppe, and others. Luther says, in his lively way, ‘God will make, not the earth only, but the heavens also, much more beautiful than they are at present. At present, we see the world in its working clothes; but hereafter it will be arrayed in its Easter and Whitsuntide robes.’”
“I cannot but feel astonishment,” says Dr. John Pye Smith, “that any serious and intelligent man should have his mind fettered with the common, I might call it the vulgar, notion of a proper destruction of the earth; and some seem to extend the notion to the whole solar system, and even the entire material universe; applying the idea of an extinction of being, a reducing to nothingness. This notion has, indeed, been often used to aid impassioned description in sermons and poetry; and thus it has gained so strong a hold upon the feelings of many pious persons, that they have made it an article of their faith. But I confess myself unable to find any evidence for it in nature, reason, or Scripture. We can discover nothing like destruction in the matter of the universe as subjected to our senses. Masses are disintegrated, forms are changed, compounds are decomposed; but not an atom is annihilated. Neither have we the shadow of reason to assert that mind, the seat of intelligence, ever was, or ever will be, in a single instance, destroyed. The declaration in Scripture that the heavens and the earth shall flee away, and no more place be found for them, is undoubtedly figurative, and denotes the most momentous changes in the scenes of the divine moral government. If it be the purpose of God that the earth shall be subjected to a total conflagration, we perfectly well know that the instruments of such an event lie close at hand, and wait only the divine volition to burst out in a moment. But that would not be a destruction; it would be a mere change of form, and, no doubt, would be subservient to the most glorious results. We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”—Lectures on Geology and Revelation, p. 161, (4th London edition.)
Says Dr. Griffin, one of the ablest of the American divines, “A question here arises, whether the new heavens and new earth will be created out of the ruins of the old; that is, whether the old will be renovated and restored in a more glorious form, or whether the old will be annihilated, and the new made out of nothing. The idea of the annihilation of so many immense and glorious bodies, organized with inimitable skill, and declarative of infinite wisdom, is gloomy and forbidding. Indeed, it is scarcely credible that God should annihilate any of his works, much less so many and so glorious works. It ought not to be believed without the most decisive proof. On the other hand, it is a most animating thought that this visible creation, which sin has marred, which the polluted breath of men and devils has defiled, and which by sin will be reduced to utter ruin, will be restored by our Jesus, will arise from its ruins in tenfold splendor, and shine with more illustrious glory than before it was defaced by sin.
“After a laborious and anxious search on this interesting subject, I must pronounce the latter to be my decided opinion. And the same, I find, has been the more common opinion of the Christian fathers, of the divines of the reformation, and of the critics and annotators who have since flourished. I could produce on this side a catalogue of names which would convince you that this has certainly been the common opinion of the Christian church in every age, as it was also of the Jewish.
“The words which are employed to express the destruction of the world do not necessarily imply annihilation. Is it said that the world shall perish? The same word is used to express the ancient destruction of the world by the flood, when certainly it was not annihilated. Is it said that the world shall have an end, and be no more? This may be understood only of the present form and organization of the visible system? Is it said that the heavens and the earth shall be dissolved by fire? But the natural power of fire is not to annihilate, but only to dissolve the composition and change the form of substances.”—Sermons, vol. ii. p. 450.
We have now examined the most important testimony respecting the future destruction and renovation of the earth; for inspiration only can certainly determine its future condition. But science may throw some light upon the changes through which it is to pass. And I now proceed to inquire whether geology affords us any glimpses of its future condition.
In the first place, geology shows us that the earth contains within itself all the agencies necessary for its future destruction in the manner pointed out in the Bible.
Some author has remarked that, from the earliest times, there has been a loud cry of fire. We have seen that it began with the ancient Egyptians, and was continued by the Greeks. But in recent times it has waxed louder and far more distinct. The ancient notions about the existence of fire within the earth were almost entirely conjectural, but within the present century the matter has been put to the test of experiment. Wherever, in Europe and America, the temperature of the air, the waters, and the rocks in deep excavations has been ascertained, it has been found higher than the mean temperature of the climate at the surface; and the experiment has been made in hundreds of places. It is found, too, that the heat increases rapidly as we descend below that point in the earth’s crust to which the sun’s heat extends. The mean rate of increase has been stated by the British Association to be one degree of Fahrenheit for every forty-five feet. At this rate, all known rocks would be melted at the depth of about sixty miles. Shall we hence conclude that all the matter of the globe below this thickness (or, rather, for the sake of round numbers, below one hundred miles) is actually in a melted state? Most geologists have not seen how such a conclusion is to be avoided. And yet this would leave only about one eight hundredth part of the earth’s diameter, and about one fourteenth of its contents, or bulk, in a solid state. How easy, then, should God give permission, for this vast internal fiery ocean to break through its envelope, and so to bury the solid crust that it should all be burnt up and melted! It is conceivable that such a result might take place even by natural operations. And certainly it would be easy for a special divine agency to accomplish it.
It may be thought, however, that the igneous fluidity of the internal part of the globe is too mighty and improbable a conclusion to be based upon the increase of temperature, observed only to the depth of two or three thousand feet. But this is not the only evidence of such a condition of the earth’s interior. Three hundred active volcanoes, and still more numerous extinct ones, have opened their mouths and poured forth their molten contents from a great depth, to bear witness to the existence of vast masses of melted rock beneath the earth’s crust. The globe, too, is flattened at the poles, just to the amount it would be by rotation on its axis, had it been a liquid mass; and, therefore, there is every probability that it was once liquid; and if so once, its interior is probably still so, because the period for cooling it, when once surrounded by a solid crust, must be incalculably long. That this solid crust has once been liquid from heat, is most obvious to all who carefully examine it. For the unstratified rocks have certainly once been melted, and most of the stratified series were derived from the unstratified. Again, the organic remains dug out from the deep-seated strata prove that, when they were alive, the surface, even in high latitudes, must have been subject to a tropical, or even an ultra-tropical heat; thus showing us that the temperature of the globe has gradually diminished, as we should expect from the theory of original igneous fluidity. And, finally, no other hypothesis but the gradual cooling of the earth’s crust, and the powerful volcanic agency that must from time to time have torn and ridged up that crust, will account for the present fractured and overturned condition of the strata, and the elevation of our continent from the ocean’s bed. But this supposition does most satisfactorily explain all these phenomena, and also those of earthquakes and volcanoes.
I must acknowledge, however, that all these arguments fail of convincing a few geologists of the doctrine of internal igneous fluidity, to the extent above described. But they all admit that the facts do prove the existence of vast oceans of melted matter beneath the earth’s crust. Nor do even these geologists doubt but the globe contains within itself the agencies requisite for a universal conflagration. Mr. Lyell says that “there must exist below enormous masses of matter, intensely heated, and in many instances in a constant state of fusion.” He says, also, “When we consider the combustible nature of the elements of the earth, so far as they are known to us, the facility with which their compounds may be decomposed and made to enter into new combinations, the quantity of heat which they evolve during those processes; when we recollect the expansive power of steam, and that water itself is composed of two gases, which, by their union, produce intense heat; when we call to mind the number of explosive and detonating compounds which have been already discovered,—we may be allowed to share the astonishment of Pliny, that a single day should pass without a general conflagration. ‘Excedit profecto omnia miracula, ullum diem fuisse quo non cuncta conflagrarent.’”—Lyell’s Principles of Geology, b. ii. chap. xx. vol. ii.