What will life on the new earth be like?
Reigning With God and Christ. God will involve the redeemed in the affairs of His kingdom. "The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him....And they will reign for ever and ever" (Rev. 22:3-5, NIV; cf. 5:10).
We do not know the extent of their rule. However, we may safely assume that as an important part of their role in the kingdom, the redeemed will serve as Christ's ambassadors to the universe, testifying to their experience of God's love. Their greatest delight will be to glorify God.
Physical Activities in the New Earth. Life in the new earth will challenge the most ambitious for eternity. The glimpses of the categories of activities available to the redeemed there whet our appetites, but do not even begin to delimit the possibilities.
We have already seen the scriptural promises that the redeemed will "build houses and inhabit them" (see Isa. 65:21). Building implies design, construction, furnishing, and the potential for remodeling or rebuilding. And from the word "inhabit" we may infer a whole spectrum of activities relating to daily life.
The underlying motif of the entire new earth existence is the restoration of what God had planned for His original creation. In Eden God gave the first human beings a garden to "tend and keep" (Gen. 2:15). If, as Isaiah said, in the new earth they shall plant vineyards, why not orchards and grain fields? If, as Revelation indicates, they shall play harps, why not trumpets and other instruments? It was, after all, God Himself who implanted in humanity the creative urge and placed them in a world of unlimited potential (Gen. 1:28-31).
Social Life in the New Earth. We will realize no small part of our joy in eternity in relationships.
1. Friends and family. Will we recognize our friends and family after we have been glorified, changed into Jesus' image? After Christ's resurrection His disciples had no trouble recognizing Him. Mary recognized His voice (John 20:11-16), Thomas His physical appearance (John 20:27, 28), and the disciples from Emmaus His mannerisms (Luke 24:30, 31, 35). In the kingdom of heaven, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still bear their individual names and identity (Matt. 8:11). We may safely assume that on the new earth we will continue our relationships with those we know and love now.
In fact, it is the relationships that we will enjoy there—and not just those with family and current friends—that makes heaven our hope. Its many material benefits "will seem as nothing compared with the eternal values of relationships with God the Father; with our Saviour; with the Holy Spirit; with angels; with the saints from every kindred, nation, tongue, and people; and with our families. . . . No more shattered personalities, fractured families, or disrupted communion. Wholeness and wholesomeness will be universal. Physical and mental integration will make heaven and eternity the perfect fulfillment."
"The loves and sympathies which God Himself has planted in the soul shall there find truest and sweetest exercise. The pure communion with holy beings, the harmonious social life with the blessed angels and with the faithful ones of all ages. . .—these help to constitute the happiness of the redeemed."
2. Marriage? Some of Christ's contemporaries related the case of a woman repeatedly widowed who had had seven husbands in all. They asked Him whose wife she would be after the resurrection. It takes but little imagination to see the endless complications that would be introduced if the marriage relationships of this earth were renewed in heaven. Christ's answer reveals the divine wisdom: "In the resurrection they neither marry; nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Matt. 22:29, 30, KJV).
Then will the redeemed be deprived of the benefits now associated with marriage? In the new earth the redeemed will not be deprived of any good thing! God has promised that "no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly" (Ps. 84:11). If that is true in this life, how much more will it be true in the next.
The quintessence of marriage is love. The epitome of joy is in the expression of love. Scripture says, "God is love," and "in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (1 John 4:8; Ps. 16:11). In the new earth no one will lack for either love or joy or pleasure. No one there will feel lonely, empty, or unloved. We can trust that the loving Creator who designed marriage to bring joy in this present world will have something even better in the next—something that will be as superior to marriage as His new world will be to this one.
What Great Hope! Especially for those of us who have lost some one close. It is unimaginable, the wonders that God has prepared for us in heaven.
THE LORD IS COMING, SOON, AMEN, YES, COME LORD JESUS!
* Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church - Doctrine 28 "The New Earth"
* www.facebook.com/Secondcomingheaven
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