054 Our Idea of Heaven

One of the outstanding (some probably say outlandish) factors about the belief in the 6 day creation of the world as described in Genesis, is that God created the earth before all the other stars and planets. What an utterly preposterous statement to make in the light of all that we "know" today about Evolution... or all that we think we know.

Who is man to think that his tiny little planet should be the first ever created? Certainly one could easily agree that behind all this stuff in Genesis wasn't much more than wishful thinking... merely one of the steps in the human mind's process of creating God: a child-like attempt to figure out how a God Whom we just invented, created us.

One would think.

UNLESS there's something we're missing. A few details about our future, and why our crummy little planet (compared to some of those huge monsters out there) should have been No.1, at least according to the Creator's timetable.

If one is to believe in the Bible at all, without interpreting every verse as "symbolic" or mataphorical, then we find at the other end of the Book, namely the final 2 chapters, Revelation 21 and 21, that there's a greater purpose in store for the earth than just to serve as a garbage heap for present day industrialists: As unbelievable as it may sound, according to Revelation 21:3,4, this puny planet, howbeit in a wonderfully restored form without seas (rendering quite a bit more living space for its populace), is going to be the Home of the vast Heavenly City, New Jerusalem. In other words, God has chosen this little, not-so-old planet for His future Headquarters, and it doesn't sound as if He were planning to move elswhere anytime soon after that.

So, if God has chosen the Earth to be His eternal HQ, it puts His making of that thing called earth in a slightly different light, doesn't it? All of a sudden, this place wouldn't just be one more insignificant spec of dust in a haystack of galaxies anymore, but quite something special...

Providing you have the childlike faith to believe all that, of course.

Maybe Earth is and was always meant to be only the beginning, the place from which the rest of the physical universe is going to be populated... I'm saying physical, because there's already a lot going on in the other, what we'd call non-physical dimension, a.k.a the Spirit World, the place where God momentarily abides, that we don't know of. Talkin' 'bout aliens! Even in the Bible, as old as that Book may be, you'll find aliens and U.F.O.s gallore, as described in chapters like Ezekiel 1 or Revelation 4...

So, Heaven is going to be pretty down-to-earth someday. It's definitely not going to be anything much like the way most people imagine it, floating around on fluffy white clouds. Nor can I imagine that folks in that Heaven on Earth are going to walk about dressed in suits, the way we see them depicted in "Watchtower."

Our idea of Heaven is somewhat different...