See the series here
The Lord is THE most STRATEGIC being in existence! The breadth and depths of His various strategies are unknowable to us. BUT, The Bible gives us more than adequate repetitive patterns and insights into His thoughts, ways and preferences for us. He must intend us to study them diligently, and to perceive well beyond the written texts with the aid of His Holy Spirit. Apostle Paul’s writings collectively signal to all bona fide saints that the mysteries of God are hidden FOR us believers, but FROM sinners. But their availability does not mean they are automatically known by all of us. That requires diligent, Holy Spirit-guided study and meditation, followed by diligent Spirit-led efforts to share with interested others what we have perceived, just as Jesus, the prophets and the apostles did.
Ergo there must be a deeply strategic rationale for The Lord’s plan to govern the post-apocalypse world via assigned roles for all of His then immortal saints, aided by all of His angels! 1 Might The Bible give us several hints to enable us to deduce a plausible strategy?
In The Last Army-like Church-types (Series), I posit that The Lord’s ultimate plan appears to be the creation and development of 7 tested, proven, and faithful ‘church-types’. Don’t just think of ‘church’ as we know it today. I intuit this aggregate ‘church’, comprised of angels and immortal humans, will be the ultimate population of the two GLORIFIED zones (i.e., the eternal New Jerusalem and nations surrounding it), possibly located in the northern hemisphere of the MASSIVE, new, eternal Earth Apostle John described in Revelation 21 and 22. Read that point again. (See: Revelation 21, and also Ephemeral then Eternal Earth (Series))
I intuit each ‘church-type’ will have been thoroughly screened (2 or 3 times) and proven acceptable by/to Jesus, The Lord God and Father God—angels thrice and humans twice. His ultimate objective might be to ensure Heaven will NEVER experience, and suffer loss from another sinful rebellion like the one Lucifer/satan initiated in ‘eternity past’. 2 The Lord’s possibly deep passion to achieve this might reveal what I perceive might possibly be His progressive performance probation plan.
A Possible Parallel, Progressive Performance Plan
For proven, faithful angels:
The Lord created angels as untested immortal agents with the gift of free-will. Consider the time before Lucifer’s rebellion as their first internship program to determine how they might exercise their free-will. Only two-thirds of them proved faithful to The Lord when Lucifer exercised his free-will to launch a rebellion (coup d’état) against The Lord God. (See: Revelation 12)
Some time after The Lord created humans, He assigned a cohort of angels to serve mortal humans who would faithfully embrace His ‘salvation internship’ program. Consider that as angels’ first field assignments on Earth during the first 4 Biblical ages of human history. At the end of the apocalypse, ALL of The Lord’s holy angels will return to Earth with Him and all of His faithful, then immortal saints from across those initial 4 ages of human history. Those angels will join those saints in facilitating The Lord’s ‘iron rod righteous rule’ during His Millennial Reign age. Consider that as their second field assignments on Earth. Thus, thrice they will have been tested and proven faithful.
For faithful humans to become immortal saints:
Similarly, The Lord created Adam and Eve as untested, immortal agents with the gift of free-will. Consider their time in the garden in the land of Eden, before satan tempted Eve, as their first internship program to determine how they might exercise their free-will. Their sin plunged both of them and every human who they would produce, into a state of unredeemable sinfulness. They were created in The Lord’s image as immortal tripartite beings—spirit, soul and body. When they sinned, only their bodies became susceptible to physical death. Their spirit and soul remained immortal—as is yours today!. 3
From their offspring, a few people learned about their ‘fall’ from The Lord’s Grace, and how to be faithful to The Lord by perceiving and shunning devilish deceptions and temptations. These people unknowingly became ‘interns’ in what would become The Lord’s salvation internship program. Recall, after Jesus died, His immortal spirit/soul twins descended into the protected upper region of hades, where He preached His Gospel of Salvation to people who had died as saints. (See: Missed Insights from Matthew 27 (Series)) Since then, the number of saints has greatly expanded during this current 3rd Biblical age of our history.
By the start of The Millennial Reign age, all bona fide saints from the initial 4 ages of humanity who will have passed The Lord’s internship program, deceased and alive, will have been resurrected and received to Him as an immortal saint. During the MR age, we will have our first field assignments as glorified immortal beings, working with the angels during their second field assignments on Earth. Saints in the 'little while 6th age' will experience a relatively short 'salvation internship', but apparently will not have a relevant field assignment, per se. Rather, I intuit they will have had a substantial opportunities to OBSERVE/WITNESS and LEARN from the field assignments of saints from the earlier ages of history. If so and as such, perhaps what they will have learned during The MR age, will facilitate both (a) their testing, salvation internship during their first ever encounter with demonic temptations and deceptions in the post-MR age, (b) also their likely evolving, rotating roles in eternity. 4
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1 Curiously, that appears to signal Heaven may be emptied for a while! See: Moving Heaven to Earth.
2 The result of Lucifer’s rebellion was Heaven’s loss of a third of all holy angels. See: Revelation 12:7-12, Luke 10:18, Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:11-15. The many references to ‘a third’ during the early ‘trumpets’ apocalypse judgments in chapters 8, 9 of Revelation, seem to signal that loss might still weigh heavily on The Lord’s mind!
3 Humans only became susceptible to physical death when Adam sinned in Eden. Our ‘immortal twins’ (spirit and soul) never, nor will ever lose their immortality. They will survive our physical death until they will be reunited with our resurrected, physical body, to once again, become an immortal, tripartite (spirit, soul, body) being, exactly as Adam and Eve were created. This prediction echoes across The Bible, and this blog ministry. It behooves us to prepare accordingly.
4 In Salvation in the Millennium? (Series), I ponder and posit an idea about why Revelation 20:4 appears to accentuate the word, ‘MUST’, and why there might not be any salvation during the MR age as we currently know it.
