Jerald C. Brauer - "The New Heavens and the Old Earth" (February 12, 1961)

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-	Grace be unto you and peace from God, our Father,	0:17
	and from our Lord, Jesus Christ.	0:21
	I should like to reread for you a portion	0:24
	of the scripture lesson for the morning,	0:27
	taken from the 21st chapter of the book of Revelation.	0:30
	Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.	0:37
	For the first heaven and the first earth that passed away	0:41
	and the sea was no more.	0:46
	Then from the third and fourth verses.	0:50
	Behold the dwelling of God is with men.	0:55
	He will dwell with them and they shall be His people.	0:59
	And God Himself will be with them.	1:01
	He'll wipe away every tear from their eyes	1:04
	and death shall be no more.	1:09
	Either shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore	1:12
	for the former things have passed away.	1:16
	Since the beginning of human history,	1:23
	men have dreamed dreams	1:28
	concerning the meaning of their life,	1:32
	and the ultimate destiny for which they live.	1:36
	They have dreamed of the possibility first	1:42
	of conquer nature.	1:44
	For mankind for centuries upon centuries	1:47
	was a slave to nature and its vicissitudes	1:51
	and its uncertainties.	1:55
	Man dreamed of conquering nature	2:00
	and fire and air and water.	2:02
	The men dreamed of creating a society	2:07
	in which all men would live at peace.	2:12
	In which some modicum of prosperity would be realized.	2:16
	In which their potential as human beings	2:21
	could be fully developed and actualized.	2:25
	And so they dreamed dreams of men living in equality	2:29
	and freedom and peace.	2:36
	And whether one reads this in the various myths	2:41
	and rituals of primitive peoples	2:44
	and it can be found there.	2:46
	Or whether one reads this	2:50
	in a much more sophisticated version	2:52
	of Plato's "Republic"	2:54
	or More's "Utopia".	2:58
	There has been a constant stream in our history	3:00
	of men dreaming of a new heaven	3:05
	and a new earth.	3:08
	And our generation is no exception	3:13
	to this dream.	3:17
	For we too,	3:19
	having come out of two horrible wars	3:22
	faced with a possibility of atomic annihilation,	3:26
	we too dream dreams	3:30
	about a new heaven and a new earth.	3:35
	Now to be sure the passage that was read to you this morning	3:39
	in some sense has little in common	3:42
	with these dreams of which we have been speaking.	3:45
	And yet, in some sense,	3:49
	it has a good deal in common with them.	3:50
	For this dream was written by the people of God	3:55
	under persecution of the Roman Empire.	4:01
	They had no hope,	4:05
	no possibility of seeing the kind of earth come into being	4:08
	that they thought their faith demanded.	4:13
	And as Christians ultimately,	4:18
	they rested their faith in God.	4:20
	And so the apocalypse, they dream,	4:24
	I be held a new heaven	4:27
	and a new earth.	4:30
	And all old things had passed away.	4:33
	Well, now here we are,	4:37
	in the midst of the 20th century,	4:39
	and we find ourselves in the very strange situation.	4:43
	Where we are now confronted with the new heavens,	4:49
	but we still have the old earth.	4:55
	We are about to enter outer space.	5:01
	Up until now, our whole conception of the universe	5:05
	will theoretically, correct, shall we say?	5:08
	Or certainly more correct than it had been?	5:11
	Has had some impacts upon our lives.	5:15
	That is at the time when the Copernican Revolution occurred	5:17
	and men began to realize that this earth	5:21
	was not the center of the universe.	5:24
	Had to think differently about the heavens	5:28
	and even about earth.	5:30
	No longer could they think of a tri-part universe	5:32
	with the heavens above the earth in the middle	5:36
	and hell below.	5:38
	But still in all, this was not the great fact	5:40
	which changed man's understanding of himself	5:44
	and his world.	5:48
	Actually, a much greater significance	5:51
	for man's understanding of himself	5:53
	and the meaning of life was the discovery of the new world.	5:56
	The discovery of the West.	6:01
	Even the Industrial Revolution,	6:04
	these are the things that change the lives of man.	6:06
	Well, now I think it takes no profit	6:11
	whether social scientist, theologian	6:14
	or anybody else or philosopher	6:16
	to point out that when man enters outer space,	6:19
	this will revolutionize light as we know it.	6:26
	It will not only revolutionize life	6:33
	in a technological sense,	6:35
	just as surely as the discovery of the new world	6:37
	and the coming of the Industrial Revolution changed it	6:40
	from an Agrarian to an industrial commercial society.	6:43
	And thus also changed man's religion.	6:48
	It will just as surely as this revolutionize our children,	6:55
	maybe even us	7:02
	before we have seen the end of our days.	7:05
	For if man enters outer space,	7:10
	they seeks to populate other planets.	7:14
	It will mean a tremendous change	7:21
	in every respect.	7:24
	But perhaps there's one respect above all	7:27
	in which man's life will be changed.	7:30
	And that is in man's psychology.	7:33
	Yes, in man's religion.	7:37
	The way he looks at himself,	7:40
	the way he understands the purpose,	7:42
	the significance of his own existence,	7:44
	the existence of the human species.	7:48
	Well, let us look at this just a little bit more closely.	7:52
	We are confronted with the new heavens.	7:55
	But we still have with us the old earth,	7:59
	but as we enter the new heavens.	8:03
	As we move out into it as we surely will.	8:06
	We will also change the old earth,	8:11
	but I venture to predict the old earth	8:13
	will still be with us,	8:14
	transform to be sure	8:17
	that still the old earth.	8:21
	I think the basic problem is,	8:25
	can the psyche of man,	8:28
	can man's imagination, creativity,	8:31
	his essential humanness	8:35
	cope with this vast new revolution that he faces?	8:39
	One of my colleagues, Professor Mircea Eliade	8:47
	at the University of Chicago	8:50
	in two very discerning books,	8:52
	one called "The Sacred and the Profane"	8:55
	and the other called "The Myth of the Eternal Return".	8:58
	He has pointed out how mankind throughout history	9:02
	has always attempted to understand	9:07
	the ultimate meaning of life by a search	9:11
	for the center of the world, the axis mundi.	9:14
	That there has been no record of humanity anywhere	9:19
	that has not somehow tried	9:25
	to find the center for the universe.	9:26
	This is what a totem pole is.	9:29
	These are what the sacred objects	9:32
	of primitive people's means.	9:34
	Even a church fire can be interpreted	9:38
	in some sense as the symbol of the meaning	9:42
	of the center of the universe located	9:44
	in the center of a town.	9:47
	Even a chapel of this type	9:49
	plays this kind of a role for a university community.	9:52
	That mankind must live with symbols.	9:57
	That isn't a question of he will or he won't, he does.	9:59
	The question is what are they and what do they signify?	10:04
	So it is that man has always searched	10:09
	for some center of meaning, some point of contact	10:13
	between the divine and the human between God and man,	10:17
	between the meaning of this life	10:22
	that comes from nowhere	10:26
	apparently goes to nowhere.	10:30
	In the face of this group fact	10:34
	asks the question, where is the center?	10:37
	Now, if you pause and ask yourself,	10:42
	what will happen to man	10:46
	when he literally ventures forth from mother earth	10:49
	into the infinite reaches of the universe	10:55
	where then will his center be located?	11:00
	Geographically, it's gone.	11:06
	Now we know full well, in theory,	11:09
	ever since the discovery the concept of relativity,	11:11
	this has been a fact,	11:13
	but it really has meant nothing to us	11:14
	because we've had no physical correspondence to this.	11:16
	But now, now we shall.	11:24
	Will man as he ventures out into the new heavens	11:29
	be able to understand the significance, the purpose	11:35
	and the meaning of the older or even his own life?	11:38
	Now I must confess as a theologian,	11:47
	I am somewhat fearful.	11:50
	Now I know the capacity of the human being	11:53
	is almost infinite in his ability	11:56
	to relate to new situations.	11:58
	But as a Christian theologian, I also understand	12:03
	that his capacity to remain human	12:06
	is just as infinitely great.	12:08
	As it has been put many, many times	12:12
	whether by scripture, by theologians, preachers,	12:15
	or philosophers.	12:17
	Every advance that man makes	12:19
	is open both to distortion and to creativity.	12:22
	And I suppose that our achievements in science	12:28
	are the fullest possible demonstration of this truth	12:32
	for modern man.	12:36
	So I do not think that our venture into outer space	12:37
	will essentially change us from being human.	12:41
	I, what I fear is	12:42
	that that side of life	12:47
	which today seems quickly to be slipping	12:49
	from our myths will all but disappear.	12:54
	Mainly that the man is a unique creature	12:58
	who comes from God	13:05
	from the mystery of being	13:09
	and ultimately is determined in God's plan	13:13
	to live and move and have his being in him.	13:20
	Now let us look at the dreams all already	13:25
	that we are creating as we have the new heavens,	13:28
	but the old earth.	13:31
	First of all, we say that mankind	13:35
	in order to achieve the conquest of space,	13:37
	must guard himself up,	13:42
	bring to bear all of his intellectual power and resources,	13:44
	all of his ingenuity,	13:49
	all of his inside,	13:51
	the full mastery of the physical resources	13:53
	of our world in order to enter and conquer outer space.	13:57
	This will be no small achievement.	14:03
	It will take the kind of discipline of rigorous effort	14:07
	and fullness of devotion	14:12
	that perhaps, perhaps many other equally important facets	14:16
	of life necessarily	14:22
	will be relegated to the background.	14:25
	Now, I am reminded of the one vision	14:31
	of this new world that Aldous Huxley	14:36
	produced in a novel around 1929, the "Brave New World".	14:39
	He recently wrote a book	14:46
	the "Brave New World Revisited"	14:47
	in which he pointed out the extent to which already	14:50
	we have moved along the paths	14:56
	that he outlined there in.	14:58
	Now I do not think it impossible	15:02
	for humanity in order to achieve peace, prosperity,	15:05
	and the conquest of space will so order his life	15:11
	and he can.	15:16
	Will so order his life	15:19
	that it will not be utterly dissimilar	15:21
	from Huxley's dream of the Brave New World.	15:25
	He wrote the dream as a bad dream,	15:29
	and he feared it's emerging.	15:33
	And now he says, I told you so.	15:37
	Well, what was Huxley's Brave New World	15:41
	that he feared was emerging	15:43
	in the midst of 20th century society?	15:45
	It was an age of space travel,	15:50
	of jet travel.	15:54
	It was an age of full dedication to achieve balance	15:56
	in an organic society.	15:59
	So everybody would be happy, content,	16:02
	and have plenty.	16:07
	And there would be no more wars.	16:08
	All tears would be wiped away.	16:11
	There would be no mourning.	16:15
	There would still be death,	16:17
	but death would now be completely taken care of,	16:19
	simply by the fact	16:24
	that there would be none to mourn	16:25
	for those who die.	16:28
	Because people's lives would be so ordered	16:31
	that they would not have mothers, fathers, sisters,	16:35
	and brothers.	16:38
	Well, we scratch our heads	16:40
	and we say but isn't this a bit peculiar?	16:42
	Now is it?	16:45
	Not too long ago at the University of Chicago,	16:47
	we had a great celebration honoring	16:49
	the Darwinian Centennial.	16:52
	And a number of brilliant papers were read	16:55
	at this festival.	16:58
	Among the papers,	16:59
	there was one written	17:01
	by a Nobel Prize winning zoologist, geneticist	17:02
	in which he made the proposal	17:06
	that mankind now take seriously possibility	17:09
	that he can control his own destiny.	17:12
	And that mankind seek to create the kind of a human species	17:16
	which would breed out of the human race	17:21
	all of the difficulties to profanities to evil	17:25
	and so forth with which we now have to struggle.	17:28
	And he proposed is the possibility of the careful selection	17:32
	of genes and their preservation through proper means	17:36
	and the bringing together under artificial conditions	17:38
	of the proper genes and chromosomes, male and female	17:41
	and the production then of a great master race	17:46
	of people who would lead their lesser brethren	17:49
	into a new community, into a new society.	17:54
	I remind you, this was not science fiction.	18:00
	This is proposed seriously as an alternative route open	18:05
	to mankind.	18:12
	And now you look at Huxley's Brave New World.	18:15
	Huxley's society was divided into classes;	18:18
	Alphas, Betas, Gammas, and Deltas.	18:21
	Each one conditioned in advance	18:23
	to do those things in society	18:26
	that they were best fitted to do	18:28
	and their genes and chromosome being so controlled	18:30
	that they couldn't do any else	18:33
	and that they wouldn't want to do anything else.	18:35
	And all of these conceived and created in test tubes.	18:39
	So that one would not have mothers or fathers,	18:44
	love or hatred.	18:47
	But only dedication to the task	18:51
	for which one is conditioned.	18:53
	And how is one to be conditioned?	18:56
	Why through subliminal education?	18:59
	Now we are experimenting with subliminal advertising.	19:03
	You don't know how successful it's to be,	19:07
	but we are experimenting with it.	19:10
	One great psychologist at Harvard is quite certain	19:13
	that he could produce exactly the kind of people	19:16
	he wishes to produce	19:19
	if given the equipment.	19:21
	Do you really think this is so far fetch	19:24
	for as we enter the new heavens,	19:28
	the old earth must change.	19:32
	And the question becomes in what direction will it change?	19:37
	Well, in Huxley's "Brave New World" then,	19:44
	you could have peace, security, prosperity.	19:48
	For you bred out of it in advance	19:54
	all the possibilities of devotion,	19:58
	of clash, of difference.	20:02
	You bred out of it; freedom, imagination.	20:06
	Now I submit that as we are about to enter	20:15
	the new heavens, the old earth will be sorely tempted	20:21
	to so reorganize itself	20:27
	that it can achieve its goal.	20:28
	And in so doing perhaps lose its humanity.	20:31
	Not too long ago, one theologian suggested	20:38
	that our theological schools be about the task	20:41
	of educating men and women	20:44
	for the space age	20:48
	so that they could converse	20:49
	with whatever beings they will confront in the new planets.	20:50
	Well, it's my impression,	20:54
	we have enough of a job educating them	20:56
	to converse with the beings we have	20:58
	on this particular planet.	20:59
	But that is neither here nor there.	21:02
	I think much more basic is the question;	21:03
	what will we have to converse about?	21:07
	The latest understanding are the relation	21:12
	between protons and neutrons.	21:14
	Or how somehow chromosomes and genes are conditioned	21:19
	in such a way that we can produce	21:23
	the kind of a being that we want	21:25
	for the purposes of society is determined at a given moment.	21:26
	Is this an end-result of man?	21:32
	And we are reminded of the Song of Solomon.	21:37
	What is man that thwart mindful of him?	21:40
	And the son of man that do visits him.	21:44
	Thou has made him but a little less than God.	21:49
	Crown him with glory and honor.	21:54
	Now the scene shifts.	21:57
	We look at this vision in the book of Revelation;	22:02
	I beheld a new heaven	22:06
	and a new earth	22:09
	for the old had passed away.	22:12
	And then we go through almost this lyric hymn	22:16
	that God Himself would dwell with His people	22:21
	and death would be wiped out,	22:26
	mourning would cease, want would be gone.	22:28
	And He said, "Behold, I am making all things new.	22:34
	I am Alpha and Omega,	22:40
	the beginning and the end."	22:42
	Well, now, obviously this is not a literal picture	22:45
	of what is to happen to our universe.	22:47
	This is the cry of faith,	22:52
	of the human being rooted and grounded in God.	22:56
	Recognizing somehow that is the universe has come from God,	23:02
	whatever our inability to understanding,	23:07
	whatever our ability to understanding.	23:11
	This has come from God.	23:16
	And that furthermore men,	23:18
	men such as you and I	23:22
	are destined for fellowship with each other and with God,	23:27
	and that any measure of life	23:33
	that perverts, twists, or denies this,	23:35
	is a gross selling short of the human situation.	23:39
	And any vision of life	23:45
	that seeks to block this out or to deny it,	23:47
	ultimately is sacked religious.	23:52
	Because this vision of life.	23:58
	says in its faith	24:01
	that God is God and not man.	24:04
	We do not have the wisdom,	24:10
	collectively or singularly	24:12
	to sit down to determine	24:15
	what genes and chromosomes ought to be preserved.	24:17
	We've neither had it in the past,	24:23
	we do not have it in the present.	24:26
	We shall not have it in the future.	24:28
	We are men, not God.	24:31
	And that the man who operates	24:37
	with this understanding of life,	24:38
	operates much more responsibly	24:42
	than the man who for the sake of humanity	24:46
	seeks to put limitless possibilities	24:51
	in man's potentialities.	24:54
	And so demonize man.	24:57
	And what can be worse	25:01
	than man thinking himself divine playing the role of God?	25:03
	The most recent exhibition of that	25:11
	was Mr. Hitler in Germany	25:18
	who sought to create a master race.	25:21
	The vision of Revelation then is a constant reminder	25:27
	that the true freedom of man,	25:32
	his true potentiality, rests in affirming	25:36
	the primacy of God.	25:42
	Lord thou has been our dwelling place in all generations.	25:46
	Here is the center of the universe,	25:52
	not this world,	25:56
	not the infinite possibilities within the infinite universe,	25:59
	but Lord thou has been our dwelling place	26:06
	in all generations.	26:09
	Before the mountains were brought forth.	26:13
	When the earth was created	26:17
	from everlasting to everlasting,	26:21
	thou our God,	26:23
	is it not strange when man recognizing	26:25
	his own limitations becomes free	26:30
	to act responsibly	26:34
	in relation to himself,	26:37
	in relation to his fellow human beings.	26:40
	For man will have a measure.	26:43
	The measure cannot be denied.	26:47
	And either the measure is great enough	26:50
	to point out, honestly,	26:56
	his limitations as well as his potentialities	26:59
	or the measure will thwart and preserve it.	27:03
	Finally then, it's not only rests in God as creator,	27:10
	it rests in God as redeemer.	27:17
	You know one of the things that strikes you about	27:22
	the Christian message,	27:24
	is the fact that it constantly affirms	27:26
	that God, the creator,	27:30
	creator of this universe of you and of me	27:32
	is God, the redeemer.	27:36
	Actively engaged in the processes of history	27:38
	relating himself to men, to nations, to human destiny.	27:42
	The New Testament has expressed that saying,	27:48
	God was in Christ reconciling cosmos to Himself.	27:51
	I realize full well,	28:00
	I am ending this morning with nearly an exhortation.	28:01
	But an exhortation is nearly an introduction	28:06
	into a life struggle.	28:09
	If it is true as a Christian's faith affirms	28:12
	that in the Christ	28:16
	we have encounter the truth,	28:18
	the truth about the measure	28:22
	and the meaning of life,	28:24
	of our universe, of ourselves.	28:26
	Then in a way, one can only end by beginning	28:30
	with an exhortation.	28:33
	Let the Christian grasped	28:37
	by a vision of life	28:40
	rooted and grounded in God.	28:43
	Finding its significance of the Revelation	28:47
	of God's trustworthiness and faithfulness in Christ.	28:49
	Looks forward to an ultimate culmination	28:54
	of the whole process.	28:57
	Again, in the hands of God,	29:00
	"I am the Alpha and the Omega," He says.	29:05
	The beginning and the end.	29:10
	And so the Christian can cry out.	29:14
	I beheld a new heaven and a new earth,	29:17
	and he said, behold I make all things new.	29:23
	And so we stand	29:29
	in the order facing the new heavens.	29:31
	Let us pray.	29:37

Item Info

Title:

Jerald C. Brauer - "The New Heavens and the Old Earth" (February 12, 1961)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4057ht7s

Date:

February 12, 1961

Speaker:

Brauer, Jerald C.

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Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0134
ref5472_b0t
uachapelsermaud
duke:628509
dcrau002153
ark:/87924/r4057ht7s
6369f7c8-ea57-4ef8-abc0-0f9e4d0aa80d

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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