Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
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Jesus prophesied that "heaven and earth shall pass away." Peter went into a little more detail. He said this (2Pet. 3:10): "The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up."
God has determined to create new heavens and a new earth "wherein dwelleth righteousness?" (2Pet. 3:13). That means, of course, that this creation, this heaven and this earth, must be destroyed. Near the end of John's revelation, he saw the final Judgment, and he witnessed the moment when this creation "fled away" from the angry face of Christ:
"And I saw a Great White Throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them." And then later, "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." For God's new people, a new creation is promised.
In the Old Testament, God sanctified certain places and things, as well as His own people. Now, however, places and things are excluded. In this covenant, people alone are sanctified by God. In my sermon on that Sunday afternoon in 1979, I made the statement, "There is no holy land on this earth." The ramifications of that simple statement are many, but at the heart of it is an acknowledgment of the fundamental difference between the Old and the New Testaments. The first was in the flesh; the second is in the Spirit. With physical rituals, God sanctified physical things under the Law of Moses. Now, with the holy Ghost, He sanctifies the invisible spirit of men.
This heaven and this earth are cursed. There is nothing holy about them. They will be destroyed by God. They have been defiled by sin and are unfit for sanctified people; they are not good enough for those who belong to Jesus. But covetous men think differently. And the chief reason they think differently is the love of money.
Every day, pilgrims run to and fro across the continents to "holy sites", as if there were places on earth that still are holy. Travel to "the holy land" ranks high among man's greatest ambitions. But "that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God" (Lk. 16:15). Billions of dollars and countless desperate hopes are spent annually on religious journeys that accomplish nothing but to fatten the wallets of travel agents, fund slick tourist traps, and enrich false prophets and teachers. Pilgrimages to Mecca, chief of all holy places for Muslims, and to other "holy places" are strongly encouraged by Islamic teachers. With promises of blessing, Hindu teachers persuade millions of gullible souls to bathe in the "holy" Ganges River in India. The sight of those poor, trusting people washing themselves in that dirty river is heart-breaking.
Christians spend untold millions yearly to travel to the very spot, so they are told, of the birthplace of Jesus, or to the very spot, so they are told, of his crucifixion. Or they are baptized by their ministers in the Jordan River or in the Sea of Galilee. None of these places is holy. Many hundreds of millions of Christians pray to long-deceased "saints" who cannot hear them, and Christians have saved decaying body parts of many departed "saints" to touch for their healing and for other needs. Not only are all those places and all those relics void of power to effect any spiritual good, they are an affront to God because they deny the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Were it not for the deep love that He holds constantly in His heart for him, God would have rid the earth of foolish man long ago.
Try as he may, man cannot with his ignorance and vain imaginations make any place or any thing on this cursed planet holy; he can only delude himself and others like him. This world is damned to destruction, and man can do nothing about it. The best that any of us can do is to prepare to meet God in peace so that we can be given a place on the new earth "wherein dwelleth righteousness." That will be a holy world to live on. That is the holy land to which all wise men desire to go.