Outside the Camp

A cou­ple of months ago I pur­chased Heaven: A His­tory by Colleen McDan­nell. It traces human con­cep­tions of the after life from the early Jew­ish views to that of the early Chris­tians and then pro­gresses through the years down to the mod­ern era. I pur­chased it as a ref­er­ence because I’ve been really inter­ested in how the early (1st, 2nd cen­tury) Chris­tians viewed the res­ur­rec­tion. Of par­tic­u­lar note is the oral tra­di­tion of the apos­tles and those who walked with Christ that Papias ref­er­ences — that there are dif­fer­ent abodes (man­sions) for those res­ur­rected to life, some to heaven, and some to earth.

If you ask some­one their feel­ings about the res­ur­rec­tion you are quite likely to get mul­ti­ple view­points. For mem­bers of Chris­ten­dom that believe that all go to heaven you may get dif­fer­ent ideas about what they will be doing there. Some envi­sion them­selves sit­ting on clouds, play­ing harps. Oth­ers pic­ture them­selves golf­ing or fish­ing — doing the things they love to do now on Earth.

For those who believe in a res­ur­rec­tion to life on Earth there also var­i­ous ideas. Some may pic­ture life as it existed in the 1800’s — dri­ving around in car­riages and mak­ing your own but­ter. Some pic­ture a world of high tech­nol­ogy with indi­vid­u­als zip­ping around in non-polluting hover cars. And there are oth­ers numer­ous, vary­ing ideas: clothed or naked? meat or veg? chang­ing sea­sons or temperate?

I was read­ing this scrip­ture the other day and the beauty of the thoughts struck me:

“But just as it is writ­ten: “Eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nei­ther have there been con­ceived in the heart of man the things that God has pre­pared for those who love him.” — 1 Corinthi­ans 2:9

Cer­tainly we can imag­ine the splen­dors of heaven or envi­sion the joys of the new Earth — how­ever the actual beauty of such is incom­pre­hen­si­ble to mankind. Take your best pic­ture of the after­life mul­ti­ply it by a thou­sand and you are still nowhere close to the real­ity of it. It will be THAT good. What a lov­ing Father we have!

Today, due to sin and imper­fec­tion of the world and our­selves we cer­tainly go through a lot pain and suf­fer­ing. Our Father rec­og­nizes this. He is ready to make rec­om­pense and he gives back like no one else give back. This is seen in the account of Job. Job, a faith­ful man, suf­fered to the extreme and lost every­thing because of cir­cum­stances beyond his con­trol. His loss was his 7 sons and 3 daugh­ters, along with 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 spans of cat­tle, and 500 she-asses.

After Job’s trial was over Jeho­vah com­pen­sated Job dou­ble for what he lost. We read at Job 42:12 “As for Jeho­vah, he blessed the end of Job after­ward more than his begin­ning, so that he came to have four­teen thou­sand sheep and six thou­sand camels and a thou­sand spans of cat­tle and a thou­sand she-asses.”

We often state that Jeho­vah will give us back every­thing that our first par­ent Adam lost. I believe that. How­ever as seen in the account of Job it would not be unrea­son­able to believe that God will give us back even more than what was enjoyed by Adam and Eve in that splen­did Gar­den of Eden — all the joys of par­adise and then some!

It is inter­est­ing that while Jeho­vah pro­vided dou­ble the live­stock He only gave back the orig­i­nal the orig­i­nal num­ber of sons and daugh­ters. Job 42:13 con­tin­ues, “He also came to have seven sons and three daugh­ters.” We ask: Why only 10 more chil­dren instead of 20? Well this scrip­ture implies that he would receive his other sons and daugh­ters back in the res­ur­rec­tion. On the last day when he is res­ur­rected he will be joined by all 20 of his children!

So through the scrip­tures we can be assured that even when death takes our fam­ily and loved ones that we have the hope of see­ing them again.

Job was a right­eous man and as such became a tar­get from the Adver­sary and Slan­derer. He did not deserve what befell him. How­ever Jehovah’s lov­ing kind­ness is shown in how even when bad peo­ple are reap­ing what they sow that he is will­ing to com­pen­sate them if they turn around and repent of their sins. This is a com­mon theme of the Hebrew prophets.

At Joel 1:4 a great famine is proph­e­sied against God’s way­ward peo­ple, “What was left by the cater­pil­lar, the locust has eaten; and what was left by the locust, the creep­ing, unwinged locust has eaten; and what the creep­ing, unwinged locust has left, the cock­roach has eaten.” In addi­tion to the famine in Joel 2:1–11 a great, pow­er­ful mil­i­tary force is fore­told to come up against his name people.

Jeho­vah implores the peo­ple, “come back to me with all YOUR hearts, and with fast­ing and with weep­ing and with wail­ing. And rip apart YOUR hearts, and not YOUR gar­ments; and come back to Jeho­vah YOUR God, for he is gra­cious and mer­ci­ful, slow to anger and abun­dant in loving-kindness, and he will cer­tainly feel regret on account of the calamity” — Joel 2:12,13

If the peo­ple do this what is the result? Jeho­vah says ” And I will make com­pen­sa­tion to YOU for the years that the locust, the creep­ing, unwinged locust, and the cock­roach and the cater­pil­lar have eaten, my great mil­i­tary force that I have sent among YOU. And YOU will cer­tainly eat, eat­ing and becom­ing sat­is­fied, and YOU will be bound to praise the name of Jeho­vah YOUR God, who has done with YOU so won­der­fully; and my peo­ple will not be ashamed to time indef­i­nite.” — Joel 2:25,26.

Our Heav­enly Father is mer­ci­ful! Even when we do not deserve it if we turn around and make an effort to make our way straight He will pour out his bless­ing upon us. Why? He does this because He is a lov­ing Father and will­ing to give good gifts to His Chil­dren. He is that lov­ing Father keep­ing watch for the return of his way­ward son.

I love how Jesus expresses it:

“Keep on ask­ing, and it will be given YOU; keep on seek­ing, and YOU will find; keep on knock­ing, and it will be opened to YOU. For every­one ask­ing receives, and every­one seek­ing finds, and to every­one knock­ing it will be opened. Indeed, who is the man among YOU whom his son asks for bread—he will not hand him a stone, will he? Or, per­haps, he will ask for a fish—he will not hand him a ser­pent, will he? There­fore, if YOU, although being wicked, know how to give good gifts to YOUR chil­dren, how much more so will YOUR Father who is in the heav­ens give good things to those ask­ing him?” — Matthew 7:7–11

While we await future bless­ings we even get good things today. In par­tic­u­lar how won­der­ful it is to have God’s com­plete writ­ten Word avail­able to us! We also have the Holy Spirit, the “helper” that Jesus promised to request that his Father send to his dis­ci­ples. When we make use of these won­der­ful gifts we can draw close to our Father. The spirit is pow­er­ful and can open our hearts to the scrip­tures. In fact scrip­tures that we have read one hun­dred times or more sud­denly pop off the page and illu­mi­nate our minds and make our hearts leap for joy!

We can­not com­pre­hend the depths of our Father’s love for us nor can we fully appre­ci­ate all the won­der­ful things he has in store for us nor can we com­pletely rec­og­nize what good things he pro­vides for us each and every day! But we need to keep seek­ing to get to know Him bet­ter to get an even bet­ter glimpse into Him.

And while there is a lot of mis­ery that we have to go through we need to keep the future promises in our hearts. Speak­ing of the heav­enly res­ur­rec­tion, Hebrews 6:19 expresses it nicely “This [hope] we have as an anchor for the soul, both sure and firm” We need to con­tinue to hang onto Jeho­vah and our Lord Jesus because in due to time we will fully get to know all of what awaits us on heaven or earth — even being able to “reside” with God forever!

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the for­mer heaven and the for­mer earth had passed away, and the sea is no more. I saw also the holy city, New Jerusalem, com­ing down out of heaven from God and pre­pared as a bride adorned for her hus­band. With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peo­ples. And God him­self will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, nei­ther will mourn­ing nor out­cry nor pain be any­more. The for­mer things have passed away.” — Rev­e­la­tion 21:1–4

Praise Jah!

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Note: My blog has been down for awhile. I’ve been super busy with life and work. Then when I finally got time to post again I guess I for­got my pass­word. But things are bet­ter now. So sorry for the absence.

–anthony