Mark 10:29-30, along with the prophets, depicts the eternal age as featuring homes akin to ours but with no curse and pain – just the essence grown and blessed. Kuyper points to the natural world – butterflies from caterpillars, foliage from plants, generations from generations and says “Proceeding on that basis, one may and must insist that this entire world, as one organic creation of God, will perish in terms of its form and shape, but will nevertheless retain its essence, and will cause this to emerge later in new forms that are related organically to the old forms.” He notes that the exceptional and the precious here become the common there (c.f. Revelation 21:11-19) and that the new earth emerges from and is related to the old, our glorious body emerging from and is related to ours now, that genius and skill develop differently but interrelate and that dominion will bear the character of genius more than study but, then as now, the two can merge.
Ultimately, it will be seen that it was common grace “that functioned to maintain the connection of God’s people with the world. It focused on the life of this world. It upheld in that world the honour of God’s creational work. And it worked together with particular grace in order along this route to make possible the permeation of the powers of the kingdom in that world.”