During the 1000 year period when Jesus is governing the planet, will heaven still exist? Will it be occupied by anyone or anything? If everyone in heaven up to that point returns to earth with Jesus, that is. That point hasn’t been cleared up for me yet, because some people in heaven might still be young children and bringing them back to a war zone doesn’t seem logical to me.
While thinking about that several other questions came up.
Who will be alive on earth when Jesus returns? Unchanged, mortal human beings. Men, women and children. Believers and non-believers.
What will happen to them when they die? And die they will, surely. The new heaven and new earth don’t merge into one until after that 1000 years, the way I read Revelation. The laws of physics that operate here on earth now, will no doubt operate here on earth during that time span. So, people will be born into physical bodies which eventually die. Since the present heaven was created for body-less believers, I think it will be necessary for a while yet.
When the believers in heaven return to earth with Jesus, what will they be like? Well, the mortals will have put on immortality; their bodies will be changed as Jesus’ earthly body was changed. Their new immortal physical abilities will be like his abilities.
When I read the Twilight books for the first time, what I liked the most wasn’t the good-guy vampires versus the bad-guy vampires story line, or the romance story line. It was the vampires’ physical transformation from mortal to immortal, with the resulting new abilities permitting them to survive in a hostile environment.
I’ve read many vampire stories this year and watched several television series, since getting interested in Twilight. I noted major and minor differences in the authors’ concepts, vampire abilities and weaknesses, even transformation methods. I’ve read opinion pieces on why most Christians don’t like the stories. And what people have believed or not believed throughout history — do these creatures exist? Are they totally myth, imaginary, or not?
One thing I know from personal experience, the supernatural isn’t fiction. This planet we inhabit has more than human inhabitants, and I don’t mean plants and animals that are visible to the eye. I’ve met a few of them and they are not pleasant. They are hostile. They don’t like the fact that we’re here and that Jesus plans to set up his headquarters here, permanently. And one really important fact about them: they are immortal, already.
I like Twilight because the stories give me a glimpse of what being an immortal good guy in a hostile environment might be like in the future. Training goes on in heaven today, training of immortal human beings to fight and defeat non-human immortals one future day here on earth. As I read about special gifts of individual vampires and about the unique ability that Bella had to train in using, I saw a similarity.
Of course these books have been somewhat sanitized. Vicious, inhuman, horrible combat and torture is not described graphically, yet it does go on in the world and will in the future. I don’t need to have it described in bloody detail to know about it and I’m glad the author didn’t include those details. There’s enough about the conflict, mortal versus immortal, immortal versus immortal, to earn my interest and my appreciation.
Speaking of heaven 