Chapter 2 | An Everlasting Kingdom of Glory

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (Revelation 21:1-3)

As indicated previously, this new creation is at the core of every Christian’s expectation and faith in their Lord and Christ. Nothing can ring truer for each of those called, chosen, and faithful believers than the words – I will be his God and he will be my son. (equally rendered – I will be her God and she will be my daughter.) (Revelation 21:7)

This is the glorious completion of the work of God in Christ, and it finds the dwelling place of God coming down to a new earth and abiding with a new humanity, a glorified humanity. This redeemed humanity now possesses the full likeness of God[1] in the image of their Lord, Savior and elder brother, Yeshua the Christ. It is from this vantage point at the completion of God’s work in Christ and our participation in his everlasting kingdom that we can now look backward in time and observe all that has transpired to bring about its completion.

What has been achieved?

Yeshua the Christ is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, for whom all this has come about. This is the consummation of his work to lead many sons and daughters to glory in the form of an everlasting kingdom handed over to the Father.

Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” (1 Corinthians 15:24-27)

It seems appropriate to pause and consider what has been accomplished by his work:

• The Son, who is the express image of the invisible Father,[2] has glorified those who are the express image of the Son.[3]
• He who is the Logos and author of the first creation is rightly the one who completes the new creation. His work throughout human history prepared the children of God from their infancy into the image and likeness of the Son.[4]
• He has destroyed every rule and authority and power. In this everlasting kingdom the Godhead and his children rule not just the earth, but in heaven and on earth.[5]
• He has destroyed death which exists no more.[6] That which humanity and all creation were subjected to by God is no more. At this point in time all creation has been freed from the bondage of corruption it was subjected to.[7] No longer will this restrainer of mankind, introduced to us by God’s command,[8] have power over the children of God.
• The faithfulness of God’s hope in Christ[9] was proven by the gift of abundant mercy and grace of God poured out on all,[10] of which many were made the glorious recipients.
• By the work of the Son of Man, humanity now possesses the complete image and likeness of God in the new creation; the righteousness and eternal life (immortality) gifted to all those who receive the abundant grace and free gift in Christ our Lord.[11]
• That which started in the physical realm has now been born into the spiritual realm.[12] This mortal has put on immortality by the source of immortality – Yeshua the Christ our King.[13]
• Over the last one thousand years, during the kingdom of the Son, Yeshua has made the Father known to all the world, both living and resurrected dead.[14]
• By the close of the kingdom of the Son, the devil, the beast, and the false prophet have been cast into the lake of fire where they are said to be tormented forever.[15]
• Christ has judged heaven and earth in righteousness;

• Harvesting the wheat into his barn
• Casting the tares into the fire to be consumed (burned up)

Through the Son of Man, God has completed his kingdom-building process to make the children of God into a new creation. These children, who were seeded from the dust of the earth and planted in Eden,[16] have emerged from the garden and are sown into the glorious image of the Son. That process of growth and maturation, which began in the physical realm, has been completed in the spiritual realm with innumerable sons and daughters bearing fruit to eternal life.

All of this was achieved through the death of the kernel[17] so that the body of the plant might emerge and bear a glorious and everlasting fruit.[18] It is for this reason that we find such value in the resurrection of our Lord and Christ. Without Christ’s resurrection all humanity perishes and will remain in the grave.[19] But thankfully, Christ was resurrected to glory, being the first of the firstfruits. Yet that resurrection to eternal life came through death, having lived a life in the flesh and being made from the dust like all men. Yeshua the Christ is the firstfruit of the kernel emerging from the dust to bear the fruit of the earth, died, sprouted, and was resurrected, giving birth to righteousness and eternal life. Unlike Adam, who was made from the dust and returned to the dust, the last Adam came from heaven and returned to heaven. Like Adam, who introduced humanity to the awareness of death and our own mortality through his disobedience, so the last Adam reintroduces humanity to the Tree of Life and immortality through his righteousness.[20]

How has it been achieved?

This is what we’ll delve into and discover within the pages of this book; that the significance of the two trees in the garden in Eden cannot be overstated. Though they’re often dismissed and ignored by many, both trees represent key traits of the divine image and likeness which humanity lacked and that Yeshua, the Son of Man, was preordained to fulfill on our behalf. Though Adam and Eve would enable humanity to participate in the one, and this came through disobedience, the last Adam is and always was intended to be the only source of eternal life and immortality. Not surprisingly, that too would come through death, a death he freely accepted according to the will of the Father, being established before the foundations of the world were even laid. In this way, God willingly subjected his creation to futility and even death. Yet he did not do this in futility, but in hope,[21] and that assurance is in Christ; the Son of Man and the Son of God.

Moreover, if God willingly subjected his creation to futility and death in hope, he would likewise faithfully redeem it in a glory which surpasses any of our suffering.[22] Is that not what we see in hindsight as we stand in the glorified inheritance promised by the gift and power of his Holy Spirit? Did not our Lord suffer all these things the same as we; putting the cross before the crown? Should our lesser path from dust-to-glory be any different than his greater path from glory-to-dust-to-glory?

As we look back from this glorious kingdom in which we now dwell we can see that very reality; that by a man from heaven, Christ’s death was sufficient for all humanity.[23] In dying for all humanity, it’s all humanity then which has died.[24] So all come to their respective ends through life and death. And this is as it should be since death was an integral part of the first creation; made incomplete, imperfect, and mortal.[25] The new creation in Christ completes what the first creation couldn’t, just as Christ, the last Adam, completes what the first Adam couldn’t. The first creation was only intended for the physical/natural aspect of the creation process. The spiritual new creation was always intended to come through the Son of Man, the man from heaven.[26]

That some on the earth lived and died without the knowledge of the Son of God is not lost on God. For it is God who calls according to his will, purpose, and timing. Since our Lord has already died for all who have ever lived, past, present, and future, there only remains those who know Christ has died for them and those who don’t know. But for those he has called over the many millennia who’ve come to know him and to be known, they’re compelled to live for their Lord. Humanity’s history is a continuous revelation by God to make himself known, whether through life or through death; a work that the Son of God continued, together with the Holy Spirit, until this glorious kingdom was handed over to the Father. By that point in time the knowledge of the Lord had filled the earth, and only those unwilling to repent and surrender to the obedience of faith find their names missing from the Book of Life and are consumed in the lake of fire.[27]

The work of Yeshua to reveal the Father in a salvific way, through the new covenant, is not limited to the called, chosen, and faithful firstfruits drawn to him since his incarnation. God had an order to his kingdom-building process long before the mystery was revealed in Christ our Lord.[28] Though it begins with the revelation of Yeshua the Christ to faithful descendants of Israel[29] and Judah[30], it was also shared with chosen Gentiles. By the time of his second coming and the establishment of his kingdom on earth, it is also revealed to the disobedient of Israel and to the nations of the world; that all might be called out of darkness and into his glorious light.[31]