All the others who have attained the first resurrection will be raised and then clothed with a body that will directly reflect the decisions they have made during their discipleship. That which we have practiced in the body will be given to us in that day.

The mark set before us is an inner nature transformed into the image of Christ by being infused with the Divine Nature of Christ; a transformed inner nature filled with the Presence of the Father and the Son. All of this will be contained in a flesh-and-bone body that has been clothed with a house from Heaven that reveals in itself what we have become as we have lived by the body and blood of the Lord Jesus.

This is salvation and the fullness of eternal life. This is the first resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the kingdom of priests who will govern the creation of God forever.

How Our Transformation Will Affect Our Life in Paradise

Paradise is a place of indescribable love, joy, peace, and beauty. Paradise was at one time on this earth in or near present-day Iraq. It was a garden containing all that people would ever desire, including the Presence of God Himself.

God made man and put him in the garden, and this is where God intends for man to be—in a beautiful garden of delight on the earth.

But man at that time was not "man" as God intends man to be. The Lord Jesus is the first Man to appear on the earth as God wants man to be—in the moral image of God, capable of union with another, capable of limitless fruitfulness and limitless dominion.

The garden was perfect but man was imperfect.

The garden will be brought back to earth with the coming of the Lord. But what about the people?

The description of the new heaven and earth, given in the last two chapters of the Bible, portrays the new world of righteousness that is to come. The new Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb, the Kingdom of God, will come down out of the spiritual Heaven until it is visible in the sky and then descend to remain forever on a great and high mountain of the new earth.

On the new earth will be nations of saved people who will be governed forever by the Bride of the Lamb, the royal priesthood, the Israel of God.

The new Jerusalem will be the Throne of God now dwelling among saved mankind.

All the earth will be a paradise where there is no more pain or death.

The glorified Church, the new Jerusalem will be available to any of the people of the new world who wish to come and be refreshed with the Presence and Virtue of God in Christ in the saints.

And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:3)

To be continued.