Paradise on Earth

[onewithhim]

When I learned that the Bible speaks of a restored Garden of Eden and the restoration of mankind to the perfection and endless life that Adam forfeited, I was thrilled. Who doesn't want to keep living on this beautiful earth, with our loved ones, and being able to do all the things we love to do---endlessly?

If God said to you today, "When do you want to die?" would you say "now!!"? I don't think very many people would say that.

We CAN live forever here on Earth. The Bible tells us that we can.

Matthew 5:5
Psalm 37:9-11,29

[marco]

Let me ask.....do you believe in a Creator or you think all this just happened by chance?

Neither. Inventing a being is a work of human imagination, just as Dostoyevsky invented Raskolnikov, Dickens produced Oliver Twist and Tolstoy created Anna Karenina. I find it absurd to believe an invisible being made the randomness that is our universe populated with silent worlds and swimming masses of debris, as from some explosion.

Chance can do a lot given an infinite area from which to select, or aeons of time to come up with a happy event. On earth the rare event can be dismissed statistically; in an infinite population of choices, the rare even will happen at least once.

But I am not arrogant enough to attempt to offer an alternative explanation for life. I am here. I may be the image on someone's computer or a shape in someone's dream. I need not speculate or attempt foolish explanations. Primitive people explained things using gods. I find this explanation, today, unsatisfactory.

[onewithhim]

Let me ask.....do you believe in a Creator or you think all this just happened by chance?

Neither. Inventing a being is a work of human imagination, just as Dostoyevsky invented Raskolnikov, Dickens produced Oliver Twist and Tolstoy created Anna Karenina. I find it absurd to believe an invisible being made the randomness that is our universe populated with silent worlds and swimming masses of debris, as from some explosion.

Chance can do a lot given an infinite area from which to select, or aeons of time to come up with a happy event. On earth the rare event can be dismissed statistically; in an infinite population of choices, the rare even will happen at least once.

But I am not arrogant enough to attempt to offer an alternative explanation for life. I am here. I may be the image on someone's computer or a shape in someone's dream. I need not speculate or attempt foolish explanations. Primitive people explained things using gods. I find this explanation, today, unsatisfactory.

You apparently lean toward everything coming into being by chance. I personally can't see this fantastic, complicated planet and all its inhabitants as debris. But thanks for your candidness.

[marco]

You apparently lean toward everything coming into being by chance. I personally can't see this fantastic, complicated planet and all its inhabitants as debris. But thanks for your candidness.

Onewithhim, I specifically said I lean towards neither chance nor God. As a mathematician I can understand that chance is not ruled out in a naïve way since we are dealing with infinite options. But I can also see that chance and God are both human attempts to make sense of what we seem to have. There are other possibilities and there may well be explanations beyond our present state of understanding. So I do not accept there is one or the other, God or chance.

[RightReason]

[Replying to post 1 by onewithhim]

Who doesn't want to keep living on this beautiful earth, with our loved ones, and being able to do all the things we love to do---endlessly?

Me. I think thinking this earth, even in some “perfected� form is the best we can hope for is to underestimate Our Lord. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard . . . “ -- doesn’t simply sound like some earthly utopia.

Do JW’s believe they will see the face of Christ when they die? Do you believe you will get to go home and live with your creator? Your Father in heaven? Because I do. And that’s what I want and where I would want to be. If we are truly sons and daughters of Christ (heirs) then we should expect to be with our heavenly Father. What Father doesn’t want to be with His children?

[onewithhim]

You apparently lean toward everything coming into being by chance. I personally can't see this fantastic, complicated planet and all its inhabitants as debris. But thanks for your candidness.

Onewithhim, I specifically said I lean towards neither chance nor God. As a mathematician I can understand that chance is not ruled out in a naïve way since we are dealing with infinite options. But I can also see that chance and God are both human attempts to make sense of what we seem to have. There are other possibilities and there may well be explanations beyond our present state of understanding. So I do not accept there is one or the other, God or chance.

Yes, I know you said that you don't believe in a Creator or chance. Then you went on to say, "Chance can do a lot given an infinite area from which to select, or aeons of time to come up with a happy event." From that I discerned that you leaned toward chance.

Anyway, there is no reason to argue this further. We both have our own thoughts on this. I am a bit surprised that anyone who is a mathematician would fail to see God in this mathematically involved universe. It's amazing how mathematics is involved in everything! Quite complicated, interesting, awe-inspiring.

[onewithhim]

[Replying to post 1 by onewithhim]

Who doesn't want to keep living on this beautiful earth, with our loved ones, and being able to do all the things we love to do---endlessly?

Me. I think thinking this earth, even in some “perfected� form is the best we can hope for is to underestimate Our Lord. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard . . . “ -- doesn’t simply sound like some earthly utopia.

Do JW’s believe they will see the face of Christ when they die? Do you believe you will get to go home and live with your creator? Your Father in heaven? Because I do. And that’s what I want and where I would want to be. If we are truly sons and daughters of Christ (heirs) then we should expect to be with our heavenly Father. What Father doesn’t want to be with His children?

Oh I overlooked this post. So...you don't think this earth is good enough a gift from God? His idea of what is wonderful for humans doesn't match your expectations? He gave us this set-up and told humans to fill the earth with people and take care of the planet and all of the things it contains. (Psalm 115:16; Isaiah 45:18; Genesis 1:26,28; 2:15) Why would you reject what He has offered?

There are 144,000 of Christ's disciples who will see the face of Christ. There are many more---8 million on the earth today---who do not plan to see the face of Christ. Our "home" is not in heaven, but here on the earth, as God planned from the beginning. Most of us are not "heirs" of the promise, but we are citizens of God's Kingdom, ruled over by Christ and the 144,000 heirs. Our heavenly Father will always be "with" us, just as Jesus has been "with" us since he went back to heaven (Matthew 28:20). Do you see that God and Christ can be "with" us even when they are in heaven? Jesus himself said so.

[onewithhim]

RightReason, are you there? I responded to your post. I would appreciate your response.

[onewithhim]

Well, at the end of the day whether we like the idea of living in paradise on Earth forever or not, the Bible indicates that it is a sure thing. For people like myself who love this beautiful planet and all of the wonders it contains, life on Earth in paradise conditions is a fantastic scriptural promise. All of our desires will be fulfilled as we righteously serve God in the realm He created for us in the beginning.

"You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing. The LORD is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds. The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He will also hear their cry and will save them." (Psalm 145:16-19, NASB)


"The heavens are the heavens of the LORD, but the earth He has given to the sons of men." (Psalm 115:16, NASB)

[RightReason]

[Replying to onewithhim]

Oh I overlooked this post.

And I yours – sorry about that.

So...you don't think this earth is good enough a gift from God? His idea of what is wonderful for humans doesn't match your expectations?

I could flip that on you. So you don’t think what we should expect for heaven “eye has not seen . . . “ could be anything beyond what we already know and expect minus pain and disease?�

He gave us this set-up and told humans to fill the earth with people and take care of the planet and all of the things it contains. (Psalm 115:16; Isaiah 45:18; Genesis 1:26,28; 2:15) Why would you reject what He has offered?

I don’t reject what He has offered. I love this gift of life and planet we have temporarily been given to reside in. I see it as a small taste of what awaits us. God wants us to be happy, even here and now, but He also wants us to know this isn’t the end of the story. We will never be perfectly happy until we reside with our creator.

There are 144,000 of Christ's disciples who will see the face of Christ.

Who told you 144,000 was to be taken literally? On whose authority do they speak?

There are many more---8 million on the earth today---who do not plan to see the face of Christ.

Second prize?

Our "home" is not in heaven, but here on the earth, as God planned from the beginning.

God, being omnipotent and all, would have known that Adam and Eve were going to blow it, so why wouldn’t you recognize He did not intend a literal planet earth for all eternity. Your theology starts with a false premise.

Most of us are not "heirs" of the promise

My Church teaches otherwise. Divine filiation is one of the most beautiful teachings of the Church and taken from Scripture.

Read the following -- backed by Scripture -- and I ask you if JW has as rich and beautiful and understanding of man’s role?

"To all who received Him [the Word made flesh] He gave the power to become sons of God" (Jn 1:12). For a Christian, this is not just a way of speaking, or a designation. Awareness of divine filiation is rooted in a divine gift that transforms a person from within. St. John puts it this way: "See what love the Father has for us, that He has called us sons of God, and so we are!...We are truly children of God" (1 Jn 3:1-2). St. Josemaria concludes that "whoever is unaware of this is unaware of his innermost truth;" he has not yet discovered the deepest reality of his being, nor the meaning of his existence on this earth.

When he reflects on how God acts in him and in his brothers and sisters in the faith, the Apostle Paul exclaims: "It is the children of God who are led by the Spirit of God. You have not received a spirit that makes you fear returning to your former slavery; you have received the spirit of adopted sons that cries out Abba, Father! For it is the Spirit himself who gives testimony along with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, also heirs: Together with Christ, God is our inheritance. And so we suffer with Him in order to be glorified with Him" (Rom 8:14-17).

The Fathers of the Church never tire of contemplating this simple, yet extraordinary truth, or of teaching it to the Christian faithful: The Son of God "became precisely a Son of Man so that we might come to be children of God."

. . .in the life of heaven we will assume it perfectly in the glorious vision St. Paul speaks of: "When perfection comes, the imperfect will disappear.... Now we see as in a mirror, darkly; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in an imperfect way; then I will know as I am known" (1 Cor 13:10,12).

At the end there awaits us the face to face vision of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

http://opusdei.us/en-us/article/bishop- ... filiation/
^ This. ^ This is why I LOVE my Church! We are heirs!!!!! How do JW’s miss the most beautiful teaching of the Church?

but we are citizens of God's Kingdom, ruled over by Christ and the 144,000 heirs.

Sounds more like a Dan Brown novel.

Our heavenly Father will always be "with" us, just as Jesus has been "with" us since he went back to heaven (Matthew 28:20). Do you see that God and Christ can be "with" us even when they are in heaven? Jesus himself said so.

With us is not face to face. The beatific vision involves face to face. JW teaching falls short.

[onewithhim]

[Replying to onewithhim]

Oh I overlooked this post.

And I yours – sorry about that.

So...you don't think this earth is good enough a gift from God? His idea of what is wonderful for humans doesn't match your expectations?

I could flip that on you. So you don’t think what we should expect for heaven “eye has not seen . . . “ could be anything beyond what we already know and expect minus pain and disease?�

He gave us this set-up and told humans to fill the earth with people and take care of the planet and all of the things it contains. (Psalm 115:16; Isaiah 45:18; Genesis 1:26,28; 2:15) Why would you reject what He has offered?

I don’t reject what He has offered. I love this gift of life and planet we have temporarily been given to reside in. I see it as a small taste of what awaits us. God wants us to be happy, even here and now, but He also wants us to know this isn’t the end of the story. We will never be perfectly happy until we reside with our creator.

There are 144,000 of Christ's disciples who will see the face of Christ.

Who told you 144,000 was to be taken literally? On whose authority do they speak?

There are many more---8 million on the earth today---who do not plan to see the face of Christ.

Second prize?

Our "home" is not in heaven, but here on the earth, as God planned from the beginning.

God, being omnipotent and all, would have known that Adam and Eve were going to blow it, so why wouldn’t you recognize He did not intend a literal planet earth for all eternity. Your theology starts with a false premise.

Most of us are not "heirs" of the promise

My Church teaches otherwise. Divine filiation is one of the most beautiful teachings of the Church and taken from Scripture.

Read the following -- backed by Scripture -- and I ask you if JW has as rich and beautiful and understanding of man’s role?

"To all who received Him [the Word made flesh] He gave the power to become sons of God" (Jn 1:12). For a Christian, this is not just a way of speaking, or a designation. Awareness of divine filiation is rooted in a divine gift that transforms a person from within. St. John puts it this way: "See what love the Father has for us, that He has called us sons of God, and so we are!...We are truly children of God" (1 Jn 3:1-2). St. Josemaria concludes that "whoever is unaware of this is unaware of his innermost truth;" he has not yet discovered the deepest reality of his being, nor the meaning of his existence on this earth.

When he reflects on how God acts in him and in his brothers and sisters in the faith, the Apostle Paul exclaims: "It is the children of God who are led by the Spirit of God. You have not received a spirit that makes you fear returning to your former slavery; you have received the spirit of adopted sons that cries out Abba, Father! For it is the Spirit himself who gives testimony along with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, also heirs: Together with Christ, God is our inheritance. And so we suffer with Him in order to be glorified with Him" (Rom 8:14-17).

The Fathers of the Church never tire of contemplating this simple, yet extraordinary truth, or of teaching it to the Christian faithful: The Son of God "became precisely a Son of Man so that we might come to be children of God."

. . .in the life of heaven we will assume it perfectly in the glorious vision St. Paul speaks of: "When perfection comes, the imperfect will disappear.... Now we see as in a mirror, darkly; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in an imperfect way; then I will know as I am known" (1 Cor 13:10,12).

At the end there awaits us the face to face vision of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

http://opusdei.us/en-us/article/bishop- ... filiation/
^ This. ^ This is why I LOVE my Church! We are heirs!!!!! How do JW’s miss the most beautiful teaching of the Church?

but we are citizens of God's Kingdom, ruled over by Christ and the 144,000 heirs.

Sounds more like a Dan Brown novel.

Our heavenly Father will always be "with" us, just as Jesus has been "with" us since he went back to heaven (Matthew 28:20). Do you see that God and Christ can be "with" us even when they are in heaven? Jesus himself said so.

With us is not face to face. The beatific vision involves face to face. JW teaching falls short.

There are two or three premises that we absolutely differ on, and that explains why you don't see God's original purpose for mankind to be life on earth forever.

(1) You say that God actually did foresee the disobedience of Adam, so therefore His gift of the earth to humans was not meant to be permanent. You are assuming that God foresaw the Fall. Did it ever occur to you that God might have chosen not to foresee what Adam would do? (Just because we CAN do something, do we do it all the time?) Why is it that God would be thought to be imperfect if He did not foreknow ALL matters? I think the implications of the predestinarian view are interesting enough to ponder. The predestinarian concept would mean that before creating the angels and mankind, God foreknew all that would result from that creation, including Satan's rebellion and that of Adam and Eve. It would also have included knowing all the bad consequences of that rebellion, from then to our day and beyond. That would mean that all the wickedness that history has recorded once existed (before the beginning of creation) only in the mind of God in the form of his foreknowledge of the future in all of its details. CONSIDER WHAT THAT WOULD MEAN. If God foreknew all that history has seen since man's creation, then the full weight of all the wickedness that resulted afterward was deliberately set in motion by God when he spoke the words: "Let us make man." (Gen.1:26)

When we combine that reasoning with our knowledge of God's qualities, it is impossible for some people to imagine that He would do such a thing. He is honest, just, impartial, loving, merciful and kind. He also gave humans FREE WILL. That would be a farce if He already knew what they would do. We believe He exercises "selective" foreknowledge, choosing NOT to foreknow all the future acts of His creation of mankind. In this way He can honestly say to people that they can CHOOSE to accept or reject Christ as their Redeemer or Jehovah as their Supreme Sovereign. He couldn't offer life to everyone with a straight face if He already knew what they were going to do.

(2) We see the earth as God's original idea of mankind's permanent home, and we don't see any indication in the Scriptures that He has changed His mind. We have explained why we shouldn't necessarily ASSUME that God knew everything before Adam rebelled. Therefore, the creation of the earth was undoubtedly meant to be humans' eternal home.

"The heavens are the heavens of the LORD, but the earth He has given to the sons of men." (Psalm 115:16, NASB)

"For thus saith Jehovah who created the heavens, God himself who formed the earth and made it, he who established it---not as waste did he create it: he formed it to be inhabited---I am Jehovah, and there is none else." (Isaiah 45:18, Darby)

The only reason that Adam is not still alive is that he disobeyed his Father. God's purpose has not changed. This earth is still a beautiful gift to us to enjoy forever.


(3) You assume every righteous, believing person is destined to go to heaven. May I ask, If God was planning on bringing everyone to heaven in the first place, why didn't He just make everyone like the angels to begin with and have us living in heaven from the beginning? Why put us on a physical planet for a few thousand years and then transfer us to the spirit realm?

We don't consider the earth "second prize." There are, as I said, millions of us who think of the earth as "first prize." Those that are going to heaven are actually servants of those on the earth. The heavenly brothers and sisters will have the job of guiding and directing us here on earth in the renovating and building work that will follow Armageddon. They will have to make sure that we all have what we need and desire. That is the sole reason that anyone goes to heaven. Jesus died so that we here on earth could regain what Adam lost....eternal perfect life here on the earth.

The Christian Greek Scriptures (N.T.) are full of language directed to that servant class of people chosen to rule with Christ. Christ's first goal was to rally a "little flock" of spirit-anointed Christians to rule with him. He first offered it to Israel. They rejected him. Later God turned to the nations (Gentiles) to take out of them a people for His name (Acts 13:46; 15:14). So we can see, upon scrutiny, that the N.T. speaks of "a little flock" and also "other sheep." Two groups of people.

"Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12:32, NASB, see also Revelation 7:4; 14:1)

"I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice." (John 10:16, NASB, see also Revelation 7:9,14)


There is substantial evidence that what I'm saying is true. To see things your way, we must do a lot of assuming. We have to look at things with God's character in mind, not like humans who are willing to play games, as if God played charades.