Before entering into the study of The Divine message to us, we must be under the influence of our Mentor, The Person of God who teaches us, and by whom we grasp spiritual phenomena, God The Holy Spirit. To worship God we must do it "in Spirit, and in truth (The Word)". But some reading this may be "carnal", or without The Spirit, which is easily amended. IJn 1:9 is the "purification verse"; "If we cite our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us of all wrong doing (unknown sin)." Instantaneously we are filled with The Holy Spirit and ready to glean from The Word.

Far from this veil of tears, beyond the known universe, there is a world more wondrous than we can possibly imagine. It is a realm of absolute light, and unbridled joy, a state of ecstacy so intense that we would be driven insane in short order if we experienced it in this body for an extended period of time. Imagine a rush of emotion and physical pleasure 1000 times more powerful that a sexual orgasm. One day, we will go there, and we will be in a body of incorruption, a body of light, which will never die, nor suffer pain, nor experience even a fleeting moment of discomfort or remorse. There is obviously a system of organization at work. God, in all His works, has consistently provided a system for the orderly function of a group, an entire nation, and ultimately, the human race. Our systems of law, and military, government, and all the insititutions, as well as the principle of authority in business and life in general, are systems installed by God for the organized and effective function of peoples and nations. Our eternal community will be organized. There will be some form of local government, but their purpose and scope will be a great departure from the bodies we elect, for there will be no taxation, no war, no crime. In fact, almost every single function of our human government will be unnecessary. There will be no zoning, no schools, no highways, no "federal lands", no territorial boundaries, no health care, no postal system, none of the laws which spew forth from our legislatures every year. According to medical science, humans just use a very small fraction of their brain. I suggest that God, knowing that many of us would kill millions of brain cells, gave us an overabundance in order that those who squandered their gray matter in this manner would have enough left to live out a meaningful life. In eternity we will yet have mentaility, but no burdensome brain to house it in. God will actually expand our intellect to phenomenal dimensions, able to process the immense body of knowledge which comprises His knowledge concerning all things in creation. We will tap God's infinite "data banks", as it were. In as much as all nuances of life originate in our intellect, we can grasp, in principle, how enhanced our lives will become in terms of capacity for life and happiness. The enlightened mind, unbridled by sin, will think pure thoughts, based upon the greatest motivation of all time; Love for God. Our emotional state will approximate ecstasy, as we would call it now, but the emotional response of our heavenly body will be so intense that our present phyche would be driven mad in short order if exposed to it for long. With the power of "eternal mind", the resurrection body will complete the handiwork of The Creator. Whatever frame of mind moves us, the body is designed to accomodate. We will travel at the speed of thought, instantaneous presence. The vast new universe will be our playground, with no time restrictions, or space limitations. Space and time cease to have the forbiding nature which inhibits this body. So eternity has a social structure, an elite and those on a lower strata. We, The Royal Family, are the elite, the lucky slobs born to the purple of The Royal House of God. Angels will be on a lower strata, although this, nor any distinction in Heaven will cause strife and misadventure. In Heaven we are who we are, and the angels likewise, and we will all share, first and foremost, a deep love and appreciation for Jesus Christ. In other words, we'll be tickled as hell to be there, and so will everyone else. Although the Word does not speak specifically regarding the nature of our lives in eternity, the principles for human government and jurisprudence which God elucidated in the beginning, are a clue as to another possible aspect of our eternal state. There will be commerce and trade. Those activities will not remsemble our commercial endevors in this life, for their objective will not yield a monetary reward, but one of mental proportions. We need an interest, and an ongoing system of productive activities, in order to cultivate a healthy mentality. I would hazzard a guess that our eternal "occupation" will be something creative in nature, expressive of our individualism. Something that we will barter and trade for the merchandise of our neighbor's labors, and so on. God promised us that we would "be like His Son", and share all that Christ is given, co-heirs of the universe. One possible aspect of this "Christ likeness" that fascinates me is that of creation. There is no reason to suspect that our similarity will not exclude this phenomenal capacity. Let your imagination soar, for whatever is there will exceed it! With the very knowledge of God, which will also include great patience, wisdom, restraint and noble motivation, think of the magnificent kingdom you might conjure up for yourself! With a couple million square miles of the fertile universe as a "homestead", you might fashion magnificent cities, breathtaking scenery and a high standard of living for the residents of your world. Far fetched? I don't think so, after all, you are doubting God's ability to give us these things if you think so. My kingdom is already teeming with life in my imagination, and someday I will bring it into reality. At least one corner of my kingdom will be vast prairies, with chest high grass and the cheerful song of the Whipperwill of a crisp morn. The icy river tumbling over it's rocky bead, teeming with big, juicy salmon and trout. And as I sit up in my sleeping bag, I am greeted by the distant call of the bull elk, drifting across the misted meadow, a slumbering world awakening with the keen anticipation of a new day. I'll probably spend my first couple hundred years on the back of a fine Appolousa, or Buckskin, with my leg drapped over the saddle horn, breathing in the piquant pine and that one of a kind river smell, sweet and maybe a little damp. My eyes will look across thousands of miles of wilderness, pristine and unblemished, until I have seen enough. But I have a sophisticated side, too, bro! Maybe once a decade I'll have to toss my buckskins in the washer and don a tux for an evening of rich cuisine and a full bodied Cabernet Savignion. The theater will entertain us one night, and we'll catch an afternoon at the track, in our Royal Box, cheering in our favorite nags. I'm sure there will be so many things to do and fabulous places to go, that our first 300 or 400 years will be just meeting the neighbors, in the next galaxy over, and exploring until our thirst to take it all in is satisfied. These extraordinary powers are fun to contemplate, but let's not overlook the simplest of conditions; Sinlessness. In heaven there will be absolute tranquillity. Never will we see an angry face in the crowd, or suffer the slings and arrows of gossip or rumor. No person will ever again slight us, annoy us, insult us, or ignore us all together. We will exoress out deepest feelings to friends and loved one, never a hint of ambiguity, or hidden agenda. We will never again doubt the honor of a neighbor, or a stranger for that matter. Our dealings will be honest and rewarding, conducted with civility and mutual respect. This consideration, alone, is enough to make heaven a marvelous place. I have a great deal to say concerning eternity, and the status we will, or can potentially have there. As christians in the Church Age we have an unprecedented opportunity, priviledges never given before to any other Dispensation of believers. Eternity and time both bear the mark of the Creator who made them. Think of it as a "signature" charactaristic. Time is parallel to eternity, BUT...only as a reverse image. Have you ever looked at a newspaper in the mirror? Every word is there, every blemish on the paper, but in reverse. Mind you, this is only my theory, an educated guess, but all I can piece together of the mystery, with the clues we are given, is that God made a world here that reflects His world, a negative reflection. For example, consider these charactaristics that we know about; In eternity there is duration without succession. In time we have duration and succession. In other words, things develop here and become something. IN eternity they are, period. Anything created in eternity maintains a static existence. For example; if you transported a glass of milk into eternity it would retain it's charactaristics, as they were at the moment it entered eternity, forever. It would never get sour, change color or consistency, or even change temperature. I'll have more to add to this in a moment. In eternity we will have phenomenal powers, but we are powerless here. All that God can do, we will have the ability to do, but to a lesser degree. Do you have a dog you love to death? Well, animals don't go to heaven as far as we know, but it is reasonable to surmise that your powers will be sufficient to restore your pooch, if you want to, and anything created in eternity can never die. The body is the most fascinating thing to me. What will we be like? We are given the straight forward promise that God will make us "like His Son", so all that Christ is, we will be. Consider these facts; we will have no need of a digestive system and waste disposal, so the plumbing we have in this body will not exist. No poo poo ever again! We will be able to eat, because there is a huge celebration called the "Weeding Feast of the Lamb" just folowing the tribulation, and we are the Bride! So...apparently we will be able to eat. Christ ate supper with the disciples in the upper room after returning from tartarus, where he spent some time following His resurrection. Food, however, will not be a necessity, for our resurrection bodies will be immortal, incapable of death. So, we can conclude that eating, what there is of it, will be a form of recreation, not survival. As for waste, the body evidently atomizes the food, or something to that effect. There is no discharge. Christ also left some other clues behind when he came back from tartarus, before the ascension. Once again, at the upper room, He walked through a closed door. That was without bothing to open it, ofcourse! Apparently the molecular structure of the R-body is unlike anything we are familiar with now. He also appeared to the disciples as another man, which leads us to believe that we can appear in other forms if we wish. There is also the fact, pertaining to our appearance, that we will appear as we are here, but in glory. The resurrected Christ even bore the scars of the nails in His wrists and feet, for Thomas, that famous "doubter", felt of the scars before he would believe it was Christ. So, we will retain the basic form we have in this life, but beautified by the glory which eminates from the R-body. As for transprotation, save your money that you put aside for that new car, the R-body will be capable of speeds which we cannot even approximate. My theory is that we will travel at the speed of thought, instantaneously from one place to another. Just think it, and you're there. This supposition is derived from the fact that Christ arose, and was seated at the right hand of the Father, in a short period of time. In other words, He travelled from here to the third heaven, beyond our universe, in a matter of minutes. One other utterance, concerning the body, we will not be capable of sex. Chirst stated this in answer to a question from a disciple. Sorry folks, no hanky panky! Just what He meant we cannot say, for His answer was, 'Know ye not that your Father is not the Father of the dead?" You figure it out. By the way, the spectacular speed and maneuverability of the R-body is bad news for you UFO buffs, because every sighting of UFO's in flight has a remarkable similarity to this very subject. In as much as Satan is in the business of disorienting us, my guess is that UFO's are angelic beings, for they too have a body of light. Why would he do this? Who knows? All we can say for certain is that it is one of his many strategies designed to confuse and beguile us. Apparently, there are people who believe so strongly in extraterrestrial life that they are disabled as far as the gospel is concerned. And while we are on this subject, I want to state that the possiblility of life on other planets is remote, not because it is not feasable, but because the One who imputes life would have to be involved, and there is no reason to believe that any other life but man and angels exsist in this universe. The Bible does not say, unequivocally, that there is not other life, but considering the nature of our exsistence, and the role God plays in our history, it is a safe assumption. My reasoning on this is that it is clear that any creature, high or low, that God creates would go through this same salvation scenario. Remember, He must give a creature with reason and a volition freedom. This is His criteria, not my own. As I pointed out in The Garden, He could have made creatures sinless, and with the ability we will one day possess, with a soul which is not capable of sin, but this would have denied them a free choice as to their destiny. Even we, as lowly as we are, can arrive at a limited understanding of God's reasons. If you had the incredible power He does, and you could create and sustain life, and furthermore, you wanted to share yourself with your creatures, it would be an empty gesture to make them faultless by an act of creation, would it not? What I'm trying to say is, that you would want creatures around you that had to declare their love for you, and all the better if they did so against great odds. Only then could you bestow perfection on them. Even though they have no idea how magnificent this gift is it still involves the issue of making a choice. So, to get back to where this detour began, it stands to reason that God would not plant people of dozens of planets, for He would have needed to provide for their salvation just as He did ours. Ofcourse, this is not impossible, but it just sit well with my understanding of God. He is the quintescence of pratical economy, never a wasted motion, never a minute mistake. All that God wanted to accomplish could be done on one planet. As for numbers, there will be billions of saved souls when history finally closes. In any case, it is of little consequnce whether there is life or not. The Bible is silent on this subject. I'll let you in on some personal schmooze; My christian friends and I like to invent exciting scenarios for eternity. One, a Marine Corps tanker, is going to pair off with me in a tank battle, and the winner will have to blow the other guy to smitherines. Ofcourse, our R-bodies will be impervious to fire or any other cause of injury, so whoever loses (probably me!) will climb from the flaming wreckage with a big grin on his face, and ready for a rematch! Me and my Dad are going to stage some dogfights, as in jet fighters. I'll probably lose that one too. My thought on that is that it will be hard to confine myself to a rinky dink jalopy like an F15 when my body can go a zillion times faster and maneuver better, etc. Thus, we had to state the rule that we cannot use our bodies to enhance the performance of the vehicle in any way. Goofy, huh? It's fun to do it now, but I suspect that we won't be the slightest interested in such antiquated matters in the R-body. Another aspect of eternal life we know about is our intellectual capacity. Jesus said that "we will know even as we are known". That, my friends, is one huge mouthfull! He was saying that we will possess the knowledge of God! This is, in fact, the single most important charactaristic of resurrection we are informed of, for everything depends upon soul capacity. Happiness, excitement, stimulation, animation, serenity, fulfillment, appreciation, love, these and many other factors depend upon our mental faculties. Let's look at a few other tid bits; When Christ appeared to John on Patmos He was glorified, in contrast to the first time He saw them as resurrected, but not glorified. John cowered in fear of the person before Him and only recognized The Lord after some time; "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;" (Rev 1:14) Apparently, the limited capacity of our vision cannot see a glorified person as they truly appear. Consider the following verse: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." (1John 3:2) I have given considerable thought to what eternity will be like, in the day-to-day organization of God's world. What will we do to stay busy forever? My thoughts on this subject, first off, remind me that the eternal state is a place as far from our mental capacity to visualize it as it is in physical distance. Christ said that no thing there is "made of hands", which kind of knocks the construction trade out of the box, wouldn't you agree? I mean, with all this great power to create running around, who would bother with building an edifice by hand? Not when you can abracadabra the thing done in minutes! But the probability of creative powers also presents some very fascinating possibilities. As I mentioned, we will have intellectual abilities which only God will surpass, so it will be fun to use this vast knowledge to build our own dwelling by a set of architectural standards which don't even exist yet. There will be no need of air conditioning, or heat, or air filtration, for there will be no foul weather, nor even dust in the air. So that pretty much bumps a fireplace from the running, too I guess. But nothing will prevent us from fashioning a home after the pattern of other famous buildings in human history, like the pharoah's digs, or even the White House. As for me, sweet pea, I'm going to have a kingdom of waist high buffalo grass, and rivers that run clear and cold from the snow capped peaks to the lush low lands. I'll have forever to enjoy it, so I'll spend alot of time on a fine horse, an Arabian thoroughbred, riding across the pine studded vistas, and enjoying every mile. There'll be beaver and otter in the rivers, and elk in the highlands, venison and wolf, grizzly and falcon, mountain cat and thrush, trout and salmon teeming in the rapids...At night I'll camp under the wide sky and gaze up at the stars with a different attitude than I can have now; I could go up there if I wanted, and explore every far away place at my whim. But there'll be time for that. I won't want to spend too long abroad, though it will be a gas to call on friends and family and see what wonders they have fashioned for themselves. I think I'll ask the Lord to create my place, just give Him a rough sketch, because I want there to be lots of exciting surprises, and I couldn't have that if I made it all myself. On second thought, I won't live in an ostentatious setting. Nothing glitzy, but a suitable chalet, made of logs. Nothing entirely primative, mind you, but rustic and appropriate to the wild country it will occupy. Just for grins, I suspect I will have a short winter, just because I love the smell of pine smoke on a chill day, and the aroma of frying bacon and fresh coffee of a morning. Maybe, after the centuries dim the memories of this place, I will do a makeover to something more "eternal", you know?. Given that God is Who He is, I may just ask Him to do it all, even the house, for He knows best what will thrill and excite me. Yeah, that's how I'll do it, just ask the Lord to whip something up. One thing is certain, we won't be bored for so much as an hour, even with "time" on our hands. This is difficult to imagine as we are now. But God's infinite intellect and power can provide us something new and remarkable, unusual and exciting, every day forever, without ever repeating a scenario. Not that we'll need stimulation as such, for our perpetual state of ecstacy and other dimensions will give us complete tranquility on a scale we can only dream about in this existence. We will want nothing, or lack anything. AND, all that in a weightless body with killer looks and energy that will never leave us fatigued. Re:21:23: And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. [ HOME ]