Everything that MichaelAllen said here concerning the terms "heaven" and "earth" as they were used in ancient Mesopotamian literature is true. The words were used in Sumerian and Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions with those meanings, and that is the culture from which Abraham and the patriarchs had come.
The early Egyptians also used a word for "creation" to describe a temple, which was imagined to be the source of the creation, along with the community which surrounded the temple, and the laws and customs and the economy under which the community functioned. All together these things were a "creation", or even THE creation, since the gods and temples of other peoples were not even acknowledged. So a "creation" is also used in Scripture to describe a foundation or establishment of a body of people all functioning under the same God and laws.
In the ancient world, laws came from "heaven", which was also the seat of the gods. These gods established a "creation" and ruled over it. These gods sought to establish their own world orders, sought to be worshipped by the common people, who were the "earth" of their respective cities, and therefore they "fell" from the real heaven: which was the original establishment of the One true God.
So the Hebrew Scriptures stand against these man-made concepts, representing that One true God, and at the same time they frequently use the allegorical language of this same culture.
Wow, can we make mistakes not realizing the way these terms were used in allegory! I discussed this at length in the part of Pragmatic Genesis entitled "More Myths Dispelled", discussing Isaiah chapter 14.
I tried to bridge the gap in Pragmatic Genesis. Maybe I did not go far enough. But to prove the points I wanted to make about the role of race in Creation, I said that it did not really matter where the heaven was that you want to think the angels had fallen from, whether from space, or from another dimension, or
from a seat of godly government here on earth, a former heaven which had been destroyed.
The new heavens and new earth promised in Scripture are not a new planet and a new atmosphere, but the foundation of a new society to replace the corrupt old pagan societies. And while we have a promise of that, we are still not there yet.
But MichaelAllen is correct, that the city of God come down from heaven are the people who will establish that society.
The old school CI is very Judeo-Churchianity-minded. There are many problems with all of those lines of thought,
and they cannot be rectified from within their own paradigm.
We must look to establish an academic and non-Judaized CI that cannot be legitimately challenged, because it is based upon Scripture and upon the understanding of Scripture in the context of the culture of the ancient world in which Scripture was written.
That was one of my main contentions in
Shemitic Idioms and Genesis Chapter Three.
Believing that the entire planet was flooded means that Noah and his sons had to have communion with the niggers and all the other races that Yahweh later told Israel to stay away from. That opens the door to universalism, and I will never accept it, especially when the alternate is so much more plausible historically, biblically and scientifically.
Believing in British-Israel "Dominion Theology" (which fell apart with the British Empire) makes Yahweh God out to be a hypocrite who cannot get His story straight either, because the law was only given to Israel, and He has not dealt in that manner with any other nation. When White men keep the law, they can only expect the beasts to be in fear of them, and that is the covenant made with Noah in Genesis chapter 9.
According to Isaiah chapter 43, Yahweh gave Egypt and Ethiopia up to niggers for the sake of the children of Israel, so Egypt and Ethiopia were destroyed.
Today our White nations descended from Noah are being given up to niggers for our own disobedience, but there are STILL so-called "CI" teachers who would imagine that Noah and his sons communed with niggers on the ark?
With their visions of a planet-wide flood they would claim there was no blood of Cain after the flood, they endeavor to make noble beasts out of wicked bastards, and they destroy the entire racial context of Scripture.
They are trying to keep us locked into the Judeo-universalist mindset. They are not doing us a damned but of good. I am getting pissed and will start cussing momentarily, so I will hit the "Submit" button on this post now...