God’s Word Is Alive
Everlasting Life—Where Will They Receive It?
Jesus is here telling his disciples: “In the house of my Father there are many abodes. . . . I am going my way to prepare a place for you. Also, if I go my way and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you home to myself.”—John 14:2, 3.
Heaven was Jesus’ home. God had sent him from there to the earth. Now Jesus was promising his apostles that they would be taken home to live with him in heaven. But what will Jesus and his disciples do in heaven?
We know that God chose Jesus to be King of His Kingdom. Yet others are to be corulers with Christ in God’s heavenly government. “I make a covenant with you,” Jesus told his apostles, “just as my Father has made a covenant with me, for a kingdom.” (Luke 22:29) Paul and Timothy were to be among those rulers with Christ. For that reason, Paul wrote Timothy: “If we go on enduring, we shall also rule together as kings.”—2 Timothy 2:12.
But who will be the earthly subjects of God’s Kingdom? The man baptizing Jesus is his cousin, John the Baptizer. Jesus said of him: “Among those born of women there has not been raised up a greater than John the Baptist.” By faithfully preparing the way for Christ, even gathering together those who would later become Jesus’ first disciples, John indeed proved himself to be great. Yet Jesus said of him: “A person that is a lesser one in the kingdom of the heavens is greater than he is.” (Matthew 11:11) So John will not be among those who go to heaven to rule with Christ. He will be numbered among the many earthly subjects of the Kingdom.
The Bible shows that only a limited number of persons, a “little flock,” will go to heaven to be kings with Jesus Christ. The Bible gives their total number as 144,000. The rest of faithful humankind will live on earth as the subjects of these rulers.—Luke 12:32; Revelation 14:1, 3.
Under the righteous rule of God’s Kingdom, the earth will become a Paradise, even as God originally meant it to be when he put Adam and Eve in the Paradise of Eden. Then the Bible promise will be fulfilled: “The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.”—Psalm 37:29.