How Perfect Is The Afterlife?

Tough Questions for Christians #22—Eternal Life HERE

I am so glad AZ went back to the original format. Much easier to watch now. And I can live with the new music.

AZ wonders what Christians think eternal life is all about anyway. We are told by many that we will spend eternity worshipping and serving God. AZ wonders how this is possible when God knows all things—like if we love Him—and He can do anything—thus not needing service. What could we REALLY be doing, he wonders.

AZ’s question is one that I’ve been working on lately! Yea! In fact, I had a brief discussion with a friend of mine, Steve Foltz, concerning his disagreement with me about what I consider eternal life to be about. Just after this post, I’ll put my post on “Misconceptions about Heaven”, but let me summarize my view here:

When God created humanity, our main task was to rule the earth. He wanted to mentor us in doing this ruling, but we decided that we would make our own decision and rules without God’s input. You can see how that turned out.

Eternal life is bringing us back to the place where we can rule the earth in God’s way. Jesus showed us the way to rule—through mercy, truth and God’s power—and eternity (especially the millennium for you pre-mils out there) is about the followers of Jesus creating justice and ruling the world in justice under Jesus.

That’s what I think eternity is about. Ruling the world with God. Worshipping is a part of it, but it won’t occupy all our time. The majority of our time will be spend continually establishing a world community of justice and peace under God.

This answer will prove problematic for the believers that hold that when Jesus comes that justice will be instantly created. I strongly disagree. Eternity is having all the faithful followers of Jesus raised from the dead and then ruling the world. You think that the job will be over then? No, it is just beginning. Even followers of Jesus in good standing have very different ideas of what makes justice, or how to rule the world. Jesus will help lead us, but it will take a thousand years—or more!—for the church to be in agreement about areas of justice and ethics and then to establish a huge nation that actually lives that out.

Once the millennium is over, is justice created? Yes, for the most part. Then it must be sustained. And since we are raised to rule, it will take some effort to do it. This is why we need to work so hard at creating justice today—to prepare ourselves for our future.