The prophets and the New Testament both teach that God’s final, decisive action involves not only the earth but also the heavens themselves (Hebrews 12:26). One writer says that God will transition to his new world with not only an earthquake but also, so to speak, a heavenquake,
1 a cosmic upheaval marking the transition from the old world to the new.
When God shakes the created order, everything temporary or unstable will fall away. What remains is the unshakeable kingdom of Christ, the kingdom where Jesus reigns as the righteous King and where God dwells with his people (Revelation 21:3). In that renewed creation, Christ himself is the everlasting Temple (Revelation 21:22), the true and greater sanctuary promised in Scripture (Matthew 12:6).2
The point is not destruction for its own sake but transformation: God is clearing away what cannot last so that what is eternal—Christ and his kingdom—stands forever.
6 For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.