Heaven on earth?

[Bill the Cat]

What do the JW's teach about the new heaven and new earth?

[Sparko]

if I recall, 144,000 people will be in heaven ruling with God. The rest will be here on earth.

During the millenium, anyone who is not really really evil will be resurrected and will have 1000 years to accept Jesus. Then the judgement. Those who accept Jesus will live forever, those who don't will cease to exist.

Then after the millenium the earth will be a paradise and go on forever with those who accepted Jesus living on earth ruled by the 144,000 in heaven.

[Bill the Cat]

Do they not teach that God will create a new heaven and earth?

[Sparko]

they seem to think that new earth and new heaven mean a change in society.

The Bible assures us: “There are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to [God’s] promise, and in these righteousness is to dwell.” (2 Peter 3:13; Isaiah 65:17) Sometimes when the Bible speaks of “the earth,” it means the people who live on the earth. (Genesis 11:1) So the righteous “new earth” is a society of people who receive God’s approval.

http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/article_03.htm

[JB]

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that the "new heavens and new earth" don't primarily refer to any alteration in the physical constituents of heaven or earth, but rather have reference to social factors, just as in the Psalms sometimes the human race viewed as a collective is referred to as "the earth". The "new heavens" are constituted by the theocratic government, while the "new earth" is, as Sparko noted, the new society of godly people. Consider what they wrote in the first volume of Isaiah's Prophecy--Light for All Mankind (p. 382):

In 1914 the long-awaited new heavens came into existence. The Messianic Kingdom born in that year rules from heaven itself, and Jehovah has given it authority over all the earth. (Psalm 2:6-8) This Kingdom government, under Christ and his 144,000 corulers, is the new heavens.—Revelation 14:1. What of the new earth? Following the pattern of the ancient fulfillment, the new earth will be made up of people who gladly submit to the rulership of the new heavenly government. Even now, millions of rightly disposed individuals subject themselves to this government and strive to follow its laws as found in the Bible. These ones come from all nationalities, languages, and races, and they work together to serve the reigning King Jesus Christ. (Micah 4:1-4) After the passing of the present wicked system of things, this group will form the nucleus of a new earth that will eventually be a globe-encircling society of God-fearing humans who inherit the earthly realm of God’s Kingdom.—Matthew 25:34

I should add that this isn't especially new. On page 315 of the seventh volume of Studies in the Scriptures, they quoted from a 1916 issue of Zion's Watch Tower, in which it was written:

Paradise, the Garden of God, applicable as a name to Eden, where our first parents resided, is Scripturally applied to the new earth when Restitution blessings shall, during the Millennium, have brought it to perfection. This Paradise of the future is referred to by the Apostles as ‘the third heaven,’ and as ‘a new heavens and a new earth.’ (2 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Peter 3:13.) They are not referring to new planets, nor to heavens ranged one above another, as many have supposed, but to the third of three great periods of time, beginning with man’s creation and extending into the illimitable future. The first of these periods, termed the first heavens and earth—the old order of things—passed away with the Deluge of Noah’s day. The second period, ‘the heavens and the earth which are now,’ the present order of things, are reserved of God to pass away with a great symbolic fire of trouble— revolution. etc.— which will utterly destroy the present spiritual powers and the present social arrangements. (2 Peter 3:6, 7; Galatians 1:4; Zephaniah 3:8, 9.) The third great period is to be a ‘world without end,’ under Divine administration. This will be the third heavens and the third earth, or the new heavens and the new earth, which will differ from the present condition of things in that they will be righteous! whereas the present arrangement is imperfect, unrighteous. The ‘new heavens’ will consist of the new spiritual ruling powers of the future—Christ the Head, and the Church His Body.

Russell also glosses the "old heavens" as being the apostate churches of Christendom, and the present earth is said to be burned by "hunger, and the misrule of beastly governments".