God’s Word Is Alive
Jesus Promises a Re-creation
“LOOK! We have left all things and followed you,” the apostle Peter is saying to Jesus. “What actually will there be for us?” Consider Christ’s remarkable reply: “Truly I say to you, In the re-creation, when the Son of man sits down upon his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also yourselves sit upon twelve thrones.”—Matthew 19:27, 28.
So Jesus is here promising that Peter and the other apostles will rule with him as kings, sitting on thrones. But when? “In the re-creation,” Jesus says. What is this RE-CREATION? And when will it be realized?
The Bible account by Luke of this same occasion helps to identify “the re-creation.” It reads: “Peter said: ‘Look! We have left our own things and followed you.’ [Jesus] said to them: ‘Truly I say to you, There is no one who has left house or wife or brothers . . . who will not . . . in the coming system of things [receive] everlasting life.’”—Luke 18:28-30.
So “the re-creation” is here identified with “the coming system of things.” When Christ sits down in heaven upon his glorious throne, along with those who will rule with him, there follows the re-creation of a righteous system of things. (2 Timothy 2:11, 12; Revelation 5:10; 14:1, 3) A consideration of the kind of start that God gave our first parents in Eden will give an idea of what the re-creation will be like.
Jehovah God created the first human pair, Adam and Eve, perfect and placed them in the garden of Eden. It was a paradise of pleasure. Jehovah originally purposed for humans to live forever on earth enjoying true peace and security, such as you see depicted here. Yet rebellion corrupted that original paradise, and, in time, resulted in the wicked system of things that now exists.
Will God’s purpose to have an earthly Paradise go unfulfilled? No, it will not! We have Christ’s own promise that the righteous system with which humankind began life on this earth will be re-created. There will be a restoration of Edenic conditions, and eventually these conditions will be extended earth wide. Thus the Creator will vindicate his original purpose to have an enduring righteous system of things. Surely we can rejoice in this Bible-based prospect!—Psalm 37:29; Revelation 21:3, 4.