Man’s Eternal Home

“God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.” —Genesis 1: 28, Revised Standard Version

AT ONE TIME or another most people are confronted with the question, “Where will you spend eternity?” Many times this question is asked with the implication that unless there is a reformation of heart and life, eternity will not be pleasant. Our text implies that God’s design for man is that he should spend eternity right here on the earth. This was God’s blessing upon our first parents—they were to fill the earth and subdue it—that is, bring it all under control through cultivation, to be utilized for the sustaining of the millions of mankind who would result from God’s blessing upon his command to ‘multiply’.

There is nothing in the Genesis record of Creation which even hints that the Creator had any other purpose in the creation of man than for him to live forever on the earth. However, this plainly stated truth concerning God’s design for his human creatures to inhabit the earth forever has been lost sight of, as a result of Satan’s great deception concerning the divine penalty for sin.

Satan’s lie, “Ye shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4), meaning—as expressed in modern times, “There is no death”—implies that when one experiences what is called death he actually enters into another life, the environments of which are quite different from those of humans here on this planet. So the question, “Where will you spend eternity?” implies that it is not possible to spend it on the earth as a human being.

As we have noted in the previous article, out of the ‘no-death theory’ have arisen all sorts of vagaries concerning ‘after-death’ experiences, but we are mostly concerned now with more basic theories to which the professed Christian world adheres. Even these we have previously referred to briefly. The plain statement of the Bible is that “the wages of sin is death,” but the great mass of professed Christians say, No, this is not really so—the penalty for sin is torture.

Those holding this view are somewhat divided as to the length of time this torture will last. The Protestants claim, as we have previously noted, that it will continue forever, hence the expression, ‘eternal torture’. This error is so gross, and its implications concerning the character of the Creator so damning, that it justifies a detailed refutation, which will be undertaken in our next article.

The Catholic Church also teaches the doctrine of eternal torment but only for the grossest of sinners, and those who are heretics in the sight of the church. The Catholic Church claims that those who are not gross sinners and not heretics are too good to spend their eternity in hell. On the other hand, they claim that very few of earth’s millions are good enough when they die—or seem to die—to be ushered directly into heaven to spend eternity there. So they have a third place—purgatory. Here, through a long period of time the ‘too good for hell’ and ‘not good enough for heaven’ are purged of their ‘venial sins’, and thus made fit, finally, to enter heaven.

But there is nothing whatever said in the Bible about purgatory. Jesus said nothing about it, nor did Peter, whom they claim to be the first pope. Not even the word is to be found anywhere in the sacred writings. The Bible records the deaths of many of its personalities—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the prophets, the kings of Israel—to mention a few in the Old Testament. In its obituary notices pertaining to most of these is the simple statement that they “slept with [their] fathers.” (I Kings 2:10; I Kings 11:43, etc.) Abraham’s father was a heathen. All of those who are said to be sleeping with their fathers were of the ‘too good for hell’ type, yet many of them were certainly ‘not good enough for heaven’. If ‘purgatory’ were in the plan of God for such, it would be the place for them, yet the inspired writers of the Bible insist that they are all ‘sleeping’—unconscious, that is, in death. If we have the correct understanding of what conditions in purgatory are said to be, it seems to us a most unlikely place in which to sleep. If there is such a place as purgatory, it seems strange that none of the writers of the Bible mention it.

Who is promised Heaven?

The Protestant view is that all those who are not sufficiently wicked to be tortured in hell-fire forever, go directly to heaven when they die—that this is where they will have their eternal home. The Bible does contain promises of heaven, but that all those not sufficiently wicked to be tortured in hell forever will spend eternity there, is another error arising out of Satan’s lie, “Ye shall not surely die.”

But let us note briefly some of the Bible’s testimony concerning heaven. Jesus said to his disciples, “I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go … I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:2,3) Few have noticed the full implication of Jesus’ promise to ‘prepare’ a place. Obviously if this place was not prepared until after Jesus came to earth, it could not be a ‘place’ to which all the righteous from Creation until his day had been going when they ‘seemed’ to die. It is acknowledged that this ‘place’ promised by Jesus is a heavenly abode, and yet Jesus said, while he was here on earth, “No man hath ascended up to heaven.”—John 3:13

Jesus prefaced his promise to prepare a place for his followers by the statement, “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.” (John 14:2) Jesus did not promise these mansions to his followers. He simply observed that they already existed in his Father’s ‘house’. It seems reasonable to conclude that the Father’s ‘house’ is the entire universe. It all belongs to him, and is all his domain. And in this domain are ‘mansions’, or dwelling places—planes of existence, or spheres of life.

The earth is one of the spheres of life. This is the sphere of life in which God designed that his human creatures should spend eternity—the ‘mansion’ which God created for man. And he “created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited.” (Isa. 45:18) However, as Jesus said, there are ‘many mansions’—many spheres of life. Some are higher than the human, and our finite minds can but vaguely comprehend them. But they do exist—“If it were not so, I would have told you,” said Jesus.

But, as Jesus promised his disciples, he was going away to prepare still another place for his followers. Much is said in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, concerning this place. It is vaguely foretold in the Old Testament, and in the New is referred to as an “inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven.” (I Pet. 1:4) Those for whom this place is prepared are said to be “partakers of the heavenly calling.”—Heb. 3:1

The use of the word ‘calling’, or invitation, implies that this place is not prepared for all. And herein lies the truth concerning this aspect of the Creator’s plan for the rescue of his fallen human creatures from sin and death. Heaven is not designed as an alternative for hell-fire. Nor is it the plan of God that all who are saved will be transferred from earth to the place prepared by Jesus.

Those who are invited to this high calling, and accept the invitation through belief in Christ and the full devotion of their lives to the service of God, are described by Paul as “New Creatures.” In other words, beginning with Jesus, a New Creation is being developed. Paul explains that the followers of Jesus who have become New Creatures are ambassadors for Christ, and ministers of reconciliation. He explains that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself,” and that now these New Creatures are fellow-workers with God and with Christ. See II Corinthians 5:14 to 6:1.

The Scriptures reveal that those who become New Creatures in Christ Jesus are, in all, but a “little flock.” (Luke 12:32) The eternal home of these will be in heaven, or in the spiritual realm—not because heaven is a substitute for life on earth, but because in the divine plan for restoring the fallen human race to life on earth there is a provision for the selection of a few of earth’s billions to be associated with Jesus in the work of restoration; and in order to be efficient workers in this divine arrangement these are transferred from the earthly ‘mansion’ to the ‘place’ which Jesus prepares for them.

To help us grasp this thought the Bible presents it from various standpoints. One is the thought of a kingdom, or a government, which will be established in the earth, and for a thousand years will administer righteous laws under which mankind will be disciplined and trained, and thereby gradually have the righteousness of the divine requirements of justice and love written in their hearts. We pray for this in the words, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”—Matt. 6:10

Those for whom Jesus promised to prepare a place will share with him in the work of bringing about this full reconciliation of humanity with God. They will be joint-heirs with Jesus in his kingdom. Consequently they will be highly exalted in the divine arrangement. Jesus promised, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” (Rev. 3:21) Jesus also promised, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”—Rev. 2:10

The expression, ‘crown of life’, suggests the highest, the very zenith of life. As we have seen, the ‘many mansions’ in the ‘Father’s house’ are planes of life. Jesus went away to prepare a place for his associates which was to be ‘crown’ of them all. The Apostle Peter wrote, “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature.” (II Pet. 1:4) The Heavenly Father, of course, always possessed the divine nature, and Jesus was exalted to this highest of all stations of life when he was raised from the dead, and highly exalted above all “principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named.” (Eph. 1:21) In this exalted position, “at the right hand of the throne of God,” he prepares a place for his followers, that they might be with him where he is.—Heb. 12:2; John 14:3

But let us repeat, this prize of the high calling is not an alternative to an eternal home on earth. It is not a case of man having sinned, and therefore he is provided with an eternal home at the right hand of God. God’s provision for his human creatures as a whole, still is, that upon condition of obedience to him, they may live on the earth forever. The redemptive work of Christ makes this restoration possible—“As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” (I Cor. 15:22) The followers of Jesus, for whom he prepares a place, are to be associated with him in restoring mankind to that which was lost through the disobedience of our first parents. The harmony of the Bible is discernible only when we recognize this distinction between God’s promises to mankind in general, and those which apply exclusively to the followers of Jesus.

The Hope of Immortality

Closely allied with the erroneous view that the earth is but a temporary dwelling place for God’s human creatures, and that at death all move on into other realms of life, is the belief that man by nature is immortal. This belief has no Scriptural backing. It is generally supposed that the words ‘immortal’ and ‘immortality’ are freely used throughout the entire Bible. But this is not true. They do not appear at all in the Old Testament. They do appear in a few places in the New Testament, but their use is extremely restricted, and at the same time very revealing. They are never used with reference to man’s natural endowments.

To be explicit, the word immortal appears once, and is applied to the Lord. We quote: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever.” (I Tim. 1:17) Surely this does not prove that man is immortal! The word immortality appears only five times in the Bible. One of these—I Timothy 6:16—also refers to the Lord, and declares that he alone inherently possesses immortality.

The word is used again in II Timothy 1:10, where we are informed that Jesus brought “life and immortality to light through the Gospel.” This is very interesting, for it reveals that prior to Jesus’ coming, which was four thousand years after Creation, the people of God knew nothing about immortality—that it was brought ‘to light’ by Jesus. And even then, Jesus did not say that man was inherently immortal. Rather, he brought to light an opportunity, upon certain very rigid conditions, for a very few of earth’s millions to attain immortality. These are the ones for whom he went away to ‘prepare a place’.

In Romans 2:7—one of the remaining three texts of the Bible in which the word immortality appears—we read that through “patient continuance in well-doing” we “seek for glory and honor and immortality.” Obviously, people do not seek for that which they already possess.

Because we do not by nature possess immortality, Paul wrote to those who are seeking for it, saying, “This mortal must put on immortality.” (I Cor. 15:53) The word immortality appears only once more in the Bible, and that is in the next verse. Here Paul speaks of the time when “this mortal must put on immortality.”

There are no other uses of the words immortal and immortality in the entire Bible. And, as we have seen, the few times they do appear in the Word of God they tell us either that the Lord alone possessed the quality of deathlessness which they describe, or that Jesus was endowed with the divine nature upon his resurrection, or the followers of Jesus may hope to ‘put on immortality’ if through patience continuance in well-doing they faithfully seek for it.

Thus we have found that there is no Scriptural support at all for the almost universally accepted theory of human immortality. Immortality means deathlessness, or indestructibility. How inconsistent it would have been for God to sentence man to death, if he could not die! Inharmonious though it may be, it is just this incongruity that Satan has foisted upon the world by his falsehood, “Ye shall not surely die.”

Angels—Holy and Unholy

One of the higher orders of God’s creation is the angelic. The Bible is the revelation of God’s purpose concerning his human creation, so it furnishes very little information concerning the angels except through its many references to their use as the messengers of the Lord in his dealings with man. In Hebrews 2:7, in a quotation from Psalm 8:5, we are informed that man, in his creation, was made “a little lower than the angels.” Man is the highest order of God’s earthly creatures, and since he is but a ‘little lower’ than the angels, we judge that they are probably the lowest of the spirit creations, dwelling, as it were, in one of the many mansions mentioned by Jesus.

We use the word ‘spirit’ in referring to the angels because it implies that which is beyond human perception. The angels, in their normal state, are invisible to human eyes, and they are not at all limited to our methods of communication and activity. The Bible reveals clearly that they are used as God’s messengers, and in the Old Testament we have accounts telling of occasions when they materialized in human bodies in order to converse with those to whom God sent them. Note the case recorded in Genesis, chapter 18; and the reference to this in Hebrews 13:2.

Our reason for mentioning the angelic creation is that Bible informs us that some of these angels deflected from full obedience to their Creator, and allied themselves with Satan, who at one time was one of the chief ones among them. Thus Jesus refers to “the Devil and his angels.” (Matt. 25:41) At least many, if not all, of the angels who went over to Satan did so just prior to the Deluge of Noah’s day. They are referred to in Jude 6 as the “angels which kept not their first estate,” and the information is given that they are now “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” The Apostle Peter speaks of these as the spirits in prison, which sometimes were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.”—I Pet. 3:19,20

The language used concerning these ‘fallen angels’ clearly suggests that they are under restraint, limited to undercover activities—or “under darkness,” as Jude states it. These angels who before their fall were used freely by God as messengers to communicate with his human creatures, had their freedom of operation and communication taken away. But this does not mean that they have not continued to do all they could to make contact with humans.

Since these fallen angels are no longer loyal to God, it is reasonable to expect that to whatever extent they have been permitted to reach the minds of humans, their intent is always to deceive and to mislead the people with respect to God and the straightforward truths of his Word. Furthermore, since Satan’s first and most basic of all deceptions is contained in his statement to Eve, “Ye shall not surely die,” it is to be expected that he would use his allies—the fallen angels—to the fullest extent possible to foster this lie. And this is exactly what he has done.

The fallen angels possess superior powers, and are able, under limited circumstances, to read the minds of humans, especially those minds which yield readily to occult suggestions and influences. Thus, for example, a woman who has lost her mother in death holds in her mind precious memories of her mother. She would like to see her mother again, and talk with her. So at a seance she hears a voice which she identifies as her mother’s voice. The voice reveals personal incidents which the mourning woman is positive no one but her mother and herself knew about. This convinces her that she is in communication with her mother.

But more important to Satan and the fallen angels who have perpetrated this fraud, it has been proved to this woman that the dead are not really dead at all. How could her mother be dead when she heard her voice, and by that voice revealed secrets which no one else could have done? This woman does not realize, of course, that the tone of her mother’s voice, and her manner of speaking, are registered in her brain, and the superior powers of the fallen angels are able to read and reproduce them. Neither does she realize that the fallen angels could have had knowledge of her mother while she lived.

This, then, is the true, and the Bible’s explanation of spiritualism. It is also the explanation of occult phenomena of all kinds, including the alleged ‘proofs’ of reincarnation. It is the explanation of the deception which was foisted upon King Saul of Israel when he asked the witch of Endor to communicate with the dead prophet, Samuel. (I Sam. 28:7-25) The record of this is presented in the Bible without comment, but a moment’s reflection reveals that the dead Samuel did not actually appear to Saul. While Samuel was alive, God had forbidden him to in any way communicate further with the wicked King Saul. Would he disobey God after death? There is nothing in what is reputed to be a message from the dead Samuel to Saul that the wicked king did not already know.

In all the seances held throughout the centuries, including those of modern times, no really worthwhile information has ever been obtained. When God sent one or more of the holy angels to communicate with his servants, a definite and needed message was imparted by them. But the fallen angels are not sent by God. They are directed by Satan. They have no real information to impart. Their use by the Devil has as its chief purpose the establishing of the great deception that there is no death.

We hold much sympathy for all who in any way are deceived by Satan’s lie, “Ye shall not surely die.” Man was created to live. Death is foreign to him. In his search for comfort in the face of the inevitable, it is pleasant to be told that death is not an enemy, but a friend which ushers him into a new and happier life in which for all eternity he will be free from the sorrows which haunt the lives of humans, and where there will be nothing to mar his peace. It is also natural that those of us still alive as humans should like to make contact with our dear ones who have, as the spiritualists would state it, abandoned their corporeal bodies. We enjoyed fellowship with our beloved friends while they were with us, and why should we not wish to converse with them after they are dead? However, were it not for the fact that Satan’s lie, “Ye shall not surely die,” has changed the meaning of words, we would know that we could not converse with the dead, for the reason that they are dead.

How much better is the hope held out to us in the Word of God—the hope of actually seeing our loved ones again, and freely conversing with them—yea, of spending eternity with them: not because they are now more alive than ever, but because by the power of the Creator, they will be restored to life. What this means is that God’s original purpose in the creation of man is yet to become a glorious reality, for there is to be a resurrection of the dead.

The command to ‘fill’ the earth has been carried out under adverse conditions of sin, selfishness, and pain, as each generation has, in turn, gone into death. But God in his love provided a Redeemer, one who tasted death “for every man.” (Heb. 2:9) This guarantees that the human creation, expanded to fill the earth as God commanded, will yet have the opportunity to subdue the earth, making it all one glorious paradise, in which, restored to life, and reconciled to God, humanity will live forever.

This glorious consummation of the divine purpose so clearly expressed to our first parents in Eden, awaits only the completion of that ‘little flock’ to whom the promises of glory and honor and immortality are made, and for whom Jesus went away to prepare a place. These representatives of the human race are, as we have seen, to be exalted to immortality. And Paul writes that when “this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying, that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.”—I Cor. 15:54

This saying, “Death is swallowed up in victory,” is quoted from Isaiah 25: 8,9—a wonderful promise assuring us that death is to be destroyed, and that the people of the whole earth will rejoice in the salvation from death which God has provided for them. The earth will then be man’s eternal home, for death will no longer disrupt the continuity of life in the glorious ‘mansion’ of the Father’s ‘house’, which he has given to the children of men.—Ps. 115:16

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