LIFE FOR PEOPLE IN THE SECOND RESURRECTION

All the Bible commentaries available out there have been written by people who don’t really understand the Bible. Oh yes, many commentators were brilliant men and highly qualified scholars in Greek and in Hebrew and other Near Eastern languages. And they can provide a great deal of very helpful technical information. But they still didn’t really understand the Bible. For a brilliant mind like Albert Einstein it is easier to understand the theory of relativity and things like nuclear physics than it is to understand the Bible correctly (1 Corinthians 2:11).

Scholars can even get 95% or more correct when it comes to examining the Bible, and still have only an extremely faulty understanding overall, in much the same way that a cup which contains a liquid made up of 95% herbal tea and 5% arsenic is still highly toxic. In such a mixture the 95% of "the good stuff" doesn’t really do very much good, does it? In the same way, a seemingly small lack of understanding by Bible scholars in certain key areas will have a very profound effect in distorting the overall picture they present.

For example, while Bible scholars can understand very many technical things correctly, one major subject that no worldly scholars have understood correctly is the matter of the second resurrection. No matter how brilliant they may be intellectually, this is something basic they’ve never understood, because this can only be "spiritually discerned" with the help of God’s Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 2:14). And spiritual discernment has nothing at all to do with being highly intelligent as opposed to being only very average. Spiritual discernment really only depends on God revealing His truth "unto babes", intellectually speaking (see Matthew 11:25 and Luke 10:21).

So the world doesn’t really understand anything at all about the second resurrection. But you have been in God’s Church for many years. And you understand that there will be a second resurrection, right? In this area you are way ahead of all the brilliant worldly scholars. In fact, you actually have a fairly good understanding about this subject, right?

Or do you?

How well do you really understand the second resurrection? After you have finished reading this article, you might ask yourself this same question once again: How well had you REALLY understood the second resurrection?

Now we all understand that when Jesus Christ returns He will set up the Kingdom of God on this Earth. That will be the start of the millennium, the time when those in the first resurrection will live and reign with Jesus Christ for 1000 years. For 1000 years all those in the first resurrection will be kings and priests with Jesus Christ (see Revelation 5:10), ruling over mortal human beings.

Jesus Christ’s rule will usher in many changes, basically restoring everything that man’s actions over the millennia have destroyed. Jesus Christ will also remove all the penalties that God has poured out upon this earth in response to man’s evil ways. One of the things Jesus Christ will restore is the long lifespan as it was in the days of Adam. Where Methuselah had lived for 969 years, to then die in the year of Noah’s flood, Jesus Christ will give all people alive at the start of the millennium a total lifespan of 1000 years plus.

All people who survive into the millennium are destined to live for the entire 1000 years of the millennium, unless they actively oppose God’s way of life, like the group that will try to loot the wealth of those who live "in the land of unwalled villages" (see Ezekiel 38:10-12). People who are only born in the year 500 or 600 or 800 of the millennium will obviously have a progressively shorter physical lifetime than those people who were alive at the start of the millennium.

In the rebellion which is predicted in Ezekiel 38-39 five-sixths of the rebels are killed and one-sixth are left alive (Ezekiel 39:2). While there is no clear indication one way or another, I suspect that this rebellion will occur within the first 200 years or so of the millennium, at a time when Satan is not around. God leaves one-sixth of those rebels alive for the explicit purpose of witnessing to their own communities that rebellion against the rule of Jesus Christ will never work. The army of those rebels will be huge. This means that the remaining one-sixth of those people will still be a very large number of people, numbering into the millions. And they will remain alive for the rest of the millennium, as living witnesses within their own communities that all rebellion will be swiftly and emphatically destroyed. So for the rest of the millennium there will not be any further active rebellions against Jesus Christ’s rule.

HOWEVER, that does not mean that all people in the millennium will from then onwards gladly and joyfully embrace God’s way of life. That will not be the case at all! There will be many people during the millennium who will NEVER actually reach the point of joyfully submitting their whole lives unconditionally to the rule of Jesus Christ. And so those specific people in the millennium will also NEVER have the in-dwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. They will live long lives without ever fully submitting to God; but they will never openly show their opposition to God’s ways.

For a moment think about that rebellion during the millennium, predicted in the prophecy of Ezekiel 38-39. Here God predicts a rebellion by people who have not yet been born, and who will live their whole lives under the perfect rule of Jesus Christ in perfect living conditions, without ever being influenced by Satan.

Now it will not be a case of God "forcing those people to rebel" in order to fulfill this prophecy, not at all. This prediction of rebellion does NOT in any way express God’s wishes. It is nothing other than God’s acknowledgment of what human nature is like, even in the total absence of Satan. Ever since Satan chose to rebel against God, it has been clear to God that when individuals have a truly free will then it is inevitable that some of them will choose the way of disobedience. The prophecy in Ezekiel 38-39 is not only a recognition of that inevitability, but it is also an expression of God’s response towards that inevitability. God’s response is aimed at limiting active rebellion during the millennium to one single occasion.

So note! The reason why God will ensure that one-sixth of those rebels survive and go back to their various areas around the world is to establish a strong and age-lasting deterrent against anyone ever again, until Satan is set free, openly rebelling against God. If it was not for this desired deterrent effect, then God would destroy 100% of that rebellious army in Ezekiel 38-39.

The one-sixth that will survive from that army will be intimidated for the rest of the millennium from ever again attempting any open rebellion against the rule of Jesus Christ. And that intimidation factor will also be enough to squash any thoughts of open rebellion against God by anyone else. However, unless the individuals that comprise that one-sixth of the rebel army actually have a change of heart, they are likely to form the nucleus of the even greater army that Satan will round up once he is released for that short period of time at the end of the millennium (Revelation 20:8-9). And at that point ALL REBELS will then be destroyed by fire from heaven.

For multiple millions of people Satan’s influence will make the difference between being scared to ever openly show their opposition to God’s way of life, and being willing to openly gather in an army for the purpose of attacking Jesus Christ in Jerusalem.

To get back to the people who disagree with God’s way of life after that Ezekiel 38-39 rebellion: Outwardly they will comply with all of the requirements that Jesus Christ and those in the first resurrection will spell out for them. They’ll do whatever is required of them; but their hearts will not be in that "doing". For these particular people, who will hopefully percentage-wise be a minority of all people alive, it very much will be a case of "they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words ... and with their mouth they show much love, BUT THEIR HEART GOES AFTER THEIR COVETOUSNESS" (see Ezekiel 33:31). (It seems that is also precisely the way Satan had been before God had sent him to this earth with one third of all the angels; Satan had always done everything according to God’s wishes, showing much love "with his mouth", but on the inside he had all along been covetous.)

Even more than the right conduct and right actions, God really wants to know whether people have "a willing mind" (see 2 Corinthians 8:15). The mind is more important than the outward conduct.

God is never going to accept people with selfish attitudes into His Family. Therefore at the end of the 1000 years God will release Satan for a very short period of time (Revelation 20:7). That brief freedom for Satan is for an extremely important purpose. It is Satan’s task to bring all the hidden opposition towards God out into the open. These secret opponents to God’s ways are basically cowards, and it will take a catalyst to bring their opposition to God out into the open. And Satan is that catalyst.

Let me try to make this clear, because most people may never have understood this correctly.

You know that Satan is a slanderer and a liar, and he is the tempter (e.g. see 1 Thessalonians 3:5) and the deceiver (Revelation 12:9). But just WHY does God even expose us to Satan’s temptations? And isn’t God being unfair in not requiring all the people throughout the millennium to also be exposed to Satan’s temptations? And wouldn’t we today be much better off if Satan was already bound and he wasn’t free to constantly tempt us to sin? For that matter, is there something to the saying that "the devil made me do it"?

Just what is Satan’s role?

God does not just leave Satan around to make life difficult for us. There is a very important reason why God exposes us to Satan’s influence.

God created all the angels with totally free minds, free to choose God’s ways and also free to choose a way that is contrary to God’s way of life. While God made clear that every contrary way of life is totally unacceptable, God nevertheless expected all the angels to individually and independently make up their own minds in this regard. Mr. Armstrong used to very succinctly refer to these two opposing ways of life as "God’s way of GIVE" and "Satan’s way of GET".

When Satan rebelled and then persuaded all the angels under his control to join him in his rebellion against God, it became clear that it is inevitable that SOME free and independent minds will always be attracted to Satan’s way of thinking and reasoning, to "the way of GET". And those free minds would need to be identified so that they could then be removed from circulation.

God understood that it was inevitable that some free human minds would likewise be attracted to Satan’s way of GET. However, people who accept this selfish way of thinking will not necessarily always reveal their innermost motivations, which by the way are like an open book to God (see Hebrews 4:12). No, with many people their wrong motivations will remain hidden below the surface, as long as there is no particular reason or provocation to reveal their true motivations. Without some prompting many people with basically selfish motivations would like to portray an image and facade of being altruistic and generous and outgoing.

So as long as circumstances are favorable many people will hide their real selfishness behind a cloak of magnanimity. We need only think of some prominent sports personalities, actors, politicians, academics, etc. who are extremely gracious in victory, but angry and resentful in defeat, at times even to the point of bitterness. In victory it is easy to hide their totally selfish way of thinking (though many successful people actually flaunt it), but in defeat that selfish way will frequently come out into the open. However, there’s very little credit for being gracious in victory; the real credit is earned for being gracious in defeat. Graciousness in victory is often only a facade.

This is where Satan enters the picture.

God needs to know with absolute certainty that we will always resolutely reject Satan’s selfish way of thinking. God could say:

Now that is basically the way God is going to do it at the end of the 100-year period, at the time when this whole universe will be burned up. There will not be any more wars or fighting. No, God will just leave all those people from the second resurrection who have not accepted God’s way of life as physical beings, while all those who responded correctly will be changed into spirit beings. At the same time God will resurrect to physical life all those people from the time before the second coming of Christ, who had not been in either the first resurrection or the second resurrection (very likely a relatively small number, those who had committed the unpardonable sin), and all of those physical mortal human beings at that time will then be burned up in an instant in the universe-wide lake of fire that precedes the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. This burning up is not a matter of revenge or meeting out additional punishments or anything like that. This burning up is God’s way of officially and permanently blotting out all records of their existence. The people in that lake of fire will thereafter truly be as though they had never existed (see Obadiah 1:16). The memory of them is irrevocably blotted out.

But in this present age and also during the millennium God is NOT going to do it that way. No, at the end of the millennium God will use a different approach. At the end of the millennium God will bring about circumstances that will force or coax or provoke true attitudes out into the open for all to see.

So here is the point we should understand:

In good times true motivations and attitudes can easily be disguised for more noble and honorable ways of living. All the actions may be right, but the attitude is only right as long as everything is going well. However, IF a person does indeed have a selfish attitude, if that person deep-down really is motivated by the get-way of life, THEN it is only a question of providing "the right circumstances" to bring that wrong and selfish attitude out into the open.

It is Satan’s job to bring about those "right circumstances". And that is something Satan does with a fanatical and unrelenting zeal. Satan spontaneously does everything in his power to get human beings to embrace his selfish way of thinking.

So far this is all fairly straight-forward. Now comes the part that many people in God’s Church may never really have considered. Are you ready for this?

The human mind will without any kind of outside influence very easily originate a selfish motivation for most of its actions. And therefore God wants to see if we ourselves can reject and resist that inherent selfish tendency. This is what Jesus Christ was referring to when He said "greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

Now if we ourselves actively decide to put down selfishness, THEN God will help us to do so by giving us access to His Holy Spirit. But if we ourselves do not originate THE MOTIVATION and THE DESIRE to put down selfishness, then God isn’t going to help us either.

It is extremely important, something I cannot possibly overemphasize, that WE OURSELVES ORIGINATE THE MOTIVATION TO WANT TO RESIST SELFISHNESS! We ourselves must have that spark, that desire, that mindset to want to reject selfishness. And then God will give us the strength to do so.

So when we have selfish thoughts, we can’t blame Satan. Those are our thoughts, and we would have them even if we were living as mortal human beings in the year 500 of the millennium. In fact, human beings in the year 500 of the millennium will indeed have selfish thoughts. And the only question then will be: how do they deal with those selfish thoughts? Do they resist them and reject them, or do they entertain them and let them simmer under the surface without ever coming out into the open? The hope is that in the presence of enormous positive peer pressure the vast majority of those people will resist and reject those wrong thoughts. But unfortunately that will not be the case for every single person.

So here is the correct perspective:

The devil did NOT make us do it! We ourselves originated some or other selfish thoughts. We want to have something or to do something. What Satan then does is expound and compound and expand and exploit the selfish thoughts we originated. Satan is the catalyst that increases the potency of wrong thoughts one hundredfold.

The Apostle Paul explained how we ourselves originate the selfish thoughts, when he wrote "I see another law in my members ..." (see Romans 7:23-24). It is the human mind itself that freely originates thoughts of selfishness and lusting without any outside input; that’s "the law" Paul was referring to. And like a stalking leopard Satan pounces on any and all such selfish thoughts. And that is when we feel the pressure to retain and to entertain and to act on those selfish thoughts.

That brings us to the process of developing godly character.

Character development is the process of learning to build restraints to all the ways Satan tries to influence us against God’s way of life. And we also need to build restraints against our own innate tendency to put self first.

However, there is one important factor that many people don’t understand. And that is this:

This is where we need to apply a principle that Jesus Christ spelled out during His ministry, and which is recorded by Luke in his Gospel.

Before God right and wrong are absolute values. It is Satan’s way of thinking that says:

BUT THAT APPROACH JUST DOESN’T WORK!

Disagreeing with God "in that which is least" reveals to God a mind that will sooner or later also disagree "in that which is much"! That is just the way it works, always, without fail. And therefore it follows that before God unfaithfulness "in that which is least" is no more acceptable than unfaithfulness "in that which is much". Unfaithfulness on any and every level is always unacceptable to God.

When Amos asked the rhetorical question "can two walk together except they be agreed" (Amos 3:3), it really means that there must be agreement in everything, or else people will simply not be capable of "walking together". It is the tiniest and minutest differences that will prevent any "walking together". This is well illustrated by the insignificant difference that arose between Paul and Barnabas regarding whether or not to take Mark with them (see Acts 15:36-40). This mickey-mouse issue was enough to split what had been a powerful team. Paul and Barnabas had disagreed over "that which is least", though neither one of them would have seen it that way.

If God the Father and Jesus Christ did not agree in everything, then Their relationship would not work. That is why it is imperative that God the Father and Jesus Christ "are one" (see John 10:30 and John 17:22). There must always be agreement in everything in a relationship that involves God. In relationships between human beings in this age there are typically at least some disagreements, since two people will seldom agree on everything. However, the more disagreements there are, even if they are deemed to be minor, the less congenial the relationship is likely to be.

So let’s get back to character development.

The development of godly character requires a commitment and a very specific mindset even before we are exposed to any specific temptation! It doesn’t work too well when we decide to try to make a commitment at the time when we are faced by a temptation. That is usually too late, because that is the very moment when "the catalyst" (i.e. Satan) enters the picture. In the absence of a firm prior commitment that "catalyst" will almost always succeed in speeding up the reaction (i.e. in getting us to cave in to the temptation).

Before we are ever faced with any temptation, we must already have the resolve to resist any and every temptation that will come our way. That firm resolve must be made before the catalyst ever enters the picture. Before Satan enters the picture we must already be firmly committed to resisting any temptation to do anything that is contrary to God’s way of life.

Let’s consider a simple example.

When we get married then we must at that very moment already (actually even earlier) make the firm commitment to never commit adultery. Thus when any situation arises to be alone with another man’s wife or with another woman’s husband, then we must already be on guard against any potential situations that could create "an appearance of evil" (see 1 Thessalonians 5:22). And we terminate those "being alone" situations as quickly as possible by ensuring the presence of other people.

It doesn’t work when we naively spend time alone with someone else’s spouse, and then suddenly the situation becomes very tempting. To only then make the decision to try to avoid "doing wrong" is pretty hopeless! That approach drastically underestimates the awesome power of that "catalyst" which is about to spring into action.

When Solomon said "the prudent man foresees the evil and hides himself" (Proverbs 27:12), he was really saying: we need to already make the commitment to God before any temptation (i.e. any problem) even arises. We are resolved in what to do even before any temptation arises, be it regarding adultery or be it regarding any other issue. To "foresee" problems implies a prior firm resolve against any violation of God’s laws.

However, in actual practice many people stay on the right side of God’s laws without having any strong and resolute commitments. Their obedience is more a matter of circumstances rather than commitment. And that will also be the case for some people during the millennium.

I am reminded of a situation many years ago where a man came to me for advice. He had in some way helped a married woman who was not in the Church. And she then approached him and said: let’s go out together for some coffee and perhaps a movie. And he wasn’t sure how to respond to this woman, because she was attractive and he found her very likable. And he himself was an unmarried man. The answer was obvious, wasn’t it? You don’t ever "go out" for coffee or for anything else with another man’s wife! End of story! However, the point is, IF that man had agreed to go out with that woman, THEN "the catalyst" would have sprung into action, and the pressure "to do wrong" would have increased exponentially.

The point is that we need to do good in the good times, before any catalysts create a mountain of a temptation out of a molehill. We need to prove ourselves faithful "in that which is least" before temptations come along.

That is the way to develop godly character. Do what is right because of strong convictions and commitment before there is any major pressure to do what is wrong.

Now back to the people during the millennium.

The indications are that during the millennium many people will NOT make prior firm commitments to never knowingly transgress God’s way of life. They will live their lives on a case by case basis, doing whatever is the convenient thing to do in the specific circumstances in which they may find themselves. They do everything that Jesus Christ will require of them. But they don’t live their lives on a foundation of inflexible principles; they really live by expediency. They have never expectorated Satan’s way of doing things. The reason they don’t do wrong is because they fear the consequences of doing wrong, not because they intrinsically and as a matter of principle agree with doing what is right.

Under Jesus Christ’s rule everything will flourish and people will prosper. On the surface everything worldwide will seem to be hunky-dory (except for that one rebellion). And then the 1000 years come to an end and Satan is released from his prison. Satan then goes out to "the four quarters of the earth", which means he sizes up and evaluates every single human being on earth at that point in time. And that will be precisely what God wants Satan to do. In this way every single human being alive then will be exposed to Satan.

It will be the people who had not made an unwavering commitment to God’s way of life that will then be very susceptible to and receptive to Satan’s influence. And their number will be "as the sand of the sea", a staggeringly and shockingly huge number of people (Revelation 20:8).

We need to understand that this vast number of people is not somehow drawn away from a commitment to God and swayed by Satan’s short-term sales pitch! They will all be people who had lived for decades and for centuries under the perfect rule of Jesus Christ. But they had never made a really firm and totally committed decision to always desire to live by God’s standards.

They are not drawn away from any commitment at all! In reality they will be the people who had never at any time made a real commitment. Living by God’s laws when it is expedient and convenient to do so is not an indication of a commitment "to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes" (see Revelation 14:4). Their lack of commitment only becomes apparent when Satan is released and he then starts to act as a very powerful catalyst on their lack of real commitment to God. And logic flies out the window! Where they had previously known that any opposition to Jesus Christ is doomed to failure, as per the witness of the one-sixth that had been spared from that earlier army, now with Satan very powerfully broadcasting his selfish attitudes, they are immediately attracted to Satan’s way of thinking, and they willingly soak it up like a sponge, giving them Dutch courage.

In releasing Satan it is not God’s purpose to shake up people who had already made a firm commitment to God’s way of life. No, God’s real purpose is to expose and bring out into the open all those who had lived under Christ’s rule without ever committing fully to God.

That’s not unlike what we in God’s Church have gone through in recent decades.

Tens of thousands of people joined God’s Church during Mr. Armstrong’s time. Many were fully committed. But many others were not fully committed, even though they also did all the right things. What the Apostle John explained regarding some people at his time applies equally well to our age and also to people at the end of the millennium.

God’s purpose in releasing Satan is to "make manifest" all the people in the millennium who all along had not been "of us". Satan is the instrument to help separate the tares from the wheat; and until the harvest God will allow the tares to grow together with the wheat (Matthew 13:30). This principle also applies to how God will deal with all people during the millennium.

So Satan rounds up all those who throughout the millennium have never fully embraced God’s way of life. All human beings alive at that point in time will be divided into two groups. All those who are unconditionally committed to God will be "the sheep" as per Matthew 25:33. And all those who are not unconditionally committed to God will follow Satan, and they will be "the goats" as per Matthew 25:41.

Then fire "from God out of heaven" (Revelation 20:9) will kill all those who had followed Satan. The devil will have fulfilled his final purpose. And therefore Satan and all the demons will then be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, which will be their "holding cell" for the next 100 years. They will never again be released. But when God later creates the new heaven and the new earth, at that time Satan and all the demons will be banished to "the blackness of darkness for ever" (Jude 1:13).

When that army of rebels at the end of the millennium is blotted out by fire from heaven, then everything is ready for the second resurrection.

At that point in time the situation will be as follows:

1) There will be a population of multiple billions of mortal human beings, who will range in age from young babies to old men and old women who will be just over 1000 years old (i.e. those people who were already alive at Christ’s second coming, and who then survived the pouring out of the seven last plagues and continued to live into the millennium). Every age level from babies to millennarians (not a word in our present age, centenarians is the best we can do today) will be represented in that worldwide population.

2) All the rebels have just been weeded out. So all of these people that are left are fully committed to God’s way of life, and they all obey God joyfully and whole-heartedly. They all love God’s way of life and the incredible blessings which God so freely pours out upon them.

3) All people will have perfect health, and there will be no diseases and no sicknesses and no physical afflictions of any kind. Neither will there be fears of any kind amongst these people.

4) All of those people will be living within family units, consisting of parents and children and grand-children and great-grand-children, all within the same general community. On a higher level, all people will be structured into different nations.

5) Throughout the millennium they will have built tens of thousands of beautiful towns and cities around the world with beautiful homes for all people. And all people will be fully self-sufficient in producing their own foods, joyfully sharing their bountiful crops with neighbors and with strangers alike. For 1000 years all people will have lived without the concept of money and without any buying or selling or trading. Freely they have received from God and freely they give to other people (see Matthew 10:8). And they are happy and content.

6) For the entire 1000 years of the millennium they will have been planning ahead to make provision for the vast number of people who will come up in the second resurrection. They will have built extra houses and made extra furniture and extra clothing and other furnishings, so that all those in the second resurrection can be smoothly and efficiently absorbed into an existing society. It is Christ’s intention to resurrect those people in the second resurrection into a utopian world with a utopian society fully established.

7) Having lived their first lives in a world that was controlled by Satan, all people in the second resurrection will be able to experience instantly what life under the rule of Jesus Christ will be like. They will see the fruits of God’s way of life from the instant in which they are resurrected. It will be a staggering and mind-blowing contrast to the world they knew. They had lived by "Satan’s get-way of life", and now they will instantly be immersed in "God’s give-way of life", with all the other people already there doing everything to provide for the needs of these resurrected people.

8) There will be houses available for them, and there will be clothing available for them. And they will be fully integrated into communities with those people who have lived throughout the millennium. There will be established fields for them to grow their own crops and to raise their own domestic animals. And there will be established fruit orchards and vineyards for them to take over in due time for their own use. And they’ll learn the godly philosophy of "having food and clothing let us therewith be content" (1 Timothy 6:8).

9) And they will be taught. They will find out what has happened from the time they died until the time they came up in the second resurrection. They will hear what 6000 years of human history produced, and how it all ended. Then they will hear about the 1000-year rule of Jesus Christ, and how that ended. Specifically, they will find out that God released Satan for a short period in order to weed out all the tares, all those that didn’t really embrace God’s way of life, and that this happened very shortly before they were resurrected.

10) They will be told that God will give all of them a 100-year lifespan, to decide for themselves whether they really want to live for all future eternity under God’s way of life or not. And they will understand that at the end of their 100-year second physical lifetime God will burn up this earth and this entire universe. They were exposed to Satan during their first life, and they will never again be exposed to Satan’s influence. During their 100-year second life it will just be between them and God (i.e. they will deal with Jesus Christ and those in the first resurrection), without any Satan around. IF they during that 100-year period genuinely embrace God’s whole way of life, THEN at the end of that period they will be changed into immortal spirit beings. And IF they don’t fully embrace and internalize God’s way of life during that 100-year period, THEN at the end of that period they will NOT be changed into spirit beings, and they will simply burn up with the rest of the universe, and in that case they will permanently cease to exist.

That summarizes the situation at the time when the second resurrection takes place.

Now let’s take a closer look at what life will be like during that 100-year period.

Marriage is a physical union until death.

Nobody in the second resurrection will come up as already married. Everybody will be single. Also, there will be millions of babies and young children in that resurrection, who will need parents to immediately take care of them. And of course there will be all the well-established families of the people from the millennium. Many people in the second resurrection will have been married two or more times, which means that two or more of their former spouses are also likely to be in that resurrection.

There will also be many people in the second resurrection who had been involved in inappropriate and totally mismatched marriage relationships in their first lifetime. Many people had been pressured into marriages they did not want to be involved in. There will also be many people in that resurrection who fathered or gave birth to children out of wedlock, women who never married the fathers of their children, and men who never married the mothers of their children. There will also be many people who raised the children of other people as their own children. Many people will have been exposed to varied and complex and complicated circumstances. Many people will have been involved in polygamous relationships.

So when these billions of people are resurrected, there will not be any binding relationships between any of them. They will all be free to make their own decisions, completely independently of whatever decisions they may have made during their first lifetime. They will obviously be required to repent of all the sins they had committed. But, as far as their previous relationships are concerned, nothing they ever did in their first lifetime will be binding on them when they are resurrected. They will be truly free to make their own decisions at that point in time. After real repentance they will be able to start their second life with a completely fresh slate.

So if your great-great-grandfather, for example, lived to be 92 years old, and he had been married four times because he had been widowed three times, and he had fathered children with all four of his wives, and he then comes up in the second resurrection: what will happen to him? What will happen to his four wives? He could marry any one of those four women, or he could marry some other woman in the second resurrection who may even have lived in a totally different time, perhaps one hundred years before or after his time? The point is that, within God-given guidelines, he will be free to make his decisions, which decisions will be binding for the 100-year lifespan that lies ahead for him, without regard for anything that happened in his first lifetime.

I expect that in the second resurrection there will be very many cases where "granddad will not marry grandmother" because circumstances will be completely different from when "granddad and grandmother" lived their first lives.

That brings us to the next point.

All the people in the second resurrection will have died of some cause. Many died of natural causes; many starved to death; many died from sicknesses and diseases; many were brutally killed; many died in accidents; many had been disfigured or maimed or mutilated; many people had lived their lives with congenital problems due to the sins of their fathers; etc. The majority of people will have been adults, but there will also be multiple tens of millions of people in this group who died in childhood and even in babyhood.

And God will take care of all these things.

Any person who died before reaching full physical maturity will be resurrected with a body that will reflect the age at which they died, though not necessarily with the same looks. If those earlier looks in any way had involved undesirable features (e.g. deformities, mongolism, scarring, mutilations, etc.), then those features will not be present in that resurrected new body. So they will not necessarily be recognizable to people who knew them based only on their physical appearances. But a little girl who died at age 10 years will be resurrected as a little girl that is 10 years old; and a baby that died in the first week of life will be resurrected as a baby of a few days old.

Let’s consider life in the days of Adam and Eve. Adam lived to be 930 years old. Seth lived to be 912 years old. Methuselah lived to be 969 years old. Noah lived to be 950 years old. In fact, Noah was already 600 years old at the time of the flood. And at age 500 years Noah had been involved in building the ark. So here is the point:

We today are accustomed to judging a person’s age by how they look. They look like they are 80 years old, or they look like they are only 35 years old. But we today are totally incapable of judging what Noah might have looked like at age 100 years. Did Noah look older at age 200 years? Did Noah then look twice as old when he reached age 400 years? Was Noah too old to repeatedly have sex with his wife when he had reached age 500 years? How old did Noah look when he fathered a son at age 500 years (Genesis 5:32), and a year or two later fathered another son, and a year or two later fathered a third son, since Shem, Ham and Japheth were assuredly not triplets? It seems that other old men over the age of 500 years were before the flood likewise still fathering children, and therefore old women in a similar age bracket were still giving birth to babies.

That’s totally incomprehensible from our perspective, right? We find it almost impossible to even picture a man who is 500 years old, let alone that he is still having regular sex with his equally old wife, to the point where they have a baby every few years. And we certainly wouldn’t picture a man of that age building a staggeringly huge barge, manually sawing planks and dragging around pieces of timber that weigh a few hundred pounds, doing physical labor that few 60-year old men today would be capable of doing.

So here is the point I am trying to make:

Yes, people during the millennium will show signs of aging. But such signs of aging will be on a completely different level from the signs of aging in our present world.

For a start, your great-great-granddad who died at age 92 years, at which point he looked really old and frail and fragile, will be resurrected with a healthy and strong body that will look mature, without looking old. This means that all those who knew him when he died will not recognize him when he is resurrected, because he will look quite different.

If men during the millennium still father children at age 500 years, as did Noah, then this would imply that at age 500 years they don’t yet look "over the hill"; at that age they will still look like mature middle aged men (500 years being the middle between birth and 1000 years).

I suspect and expect that during the millennium men and women will look in the prime of life from perhaps age 40 years to age 700 or 800 years. I suspect that during the millennium it will be difficult to guess the approximate age of anyone who is between the ages of 100 years and 700 years, because there will not be many discernible physical differences between the appearances and the activity levels of people of these age groups. And then from perhaps age 800 years or so onwards people may gradually become a part of the group that is identified as "every man with his staff in his hand for very age" (Zechariah 8:4), although that may also only start around age 900 years or so? Certainly Noah had not been in that category at age 500 years or even at age 600 years, judging by his activity level.

The army of rebels that Satan brings together at the end of the 1000 years will include many people who will be multiple hundreds of years old. They still get involved in warfare, feeling up to the task of attacking Jerusalem. They don’t stay at home because they feel too old to do any fighting. No, ALL rebels of every age will be a part of that army which Satan brings together. This also implies that the range of physical activities for people during the millennium will not diminish with age, except perhaps very gradually over a number of centuries.

The second resurrection is limited to people who were born after the flood that took place in the days of Noah, and who died before the second coming of Jesus Christ. Now after the flood nobody ever again reached the age of 500 years, except for the eight people on the ark who had all been born before the flood. This means that the second resurrection will only include people all of whom were less than 500 years old, and most of whom were far less than 200 years old (i.e. from about the time of Abraham onwards).

Next, all the people who will be born after the year 500 during the millennium will also be less than 500 years old when the second resurrection takes place. And none of these people that will be born during the last 500 years of the millennium will look older than middle aged at the end of the millennium.

Therefore I suspect that when God gives perfect physical health to everyone in the second resurrection, that those who had been "old" in their first lifetime will in the second resurrection appear as mature and middle aged. And since everybody will live for only 100 years, this means that nobody in the second resurrection will achieve a combined total for both lifetimes of even 600 years. But for people during the millennium even 600 years of age will most likely still be only middle aged.

The point here is that even though all in that second resurrection will receive a 100-year lifespan, none of them will get anywhere close to what will be considered as "old" during the millennium, not even when the years of their first lifetime are added to that 100-year period. The only people on earth at that time who will perhaps look "old" will be those who were born before the year 200 of the millennium, since at the end of that 100-year period those are the people who will be from 900 to 1100 years old (and even a few years older if they had been 30 years or 40 years old when the millennium started).

In other words, when God raises people up in the second resurrection, then none of them will ever have to experience old age, because when that 100-year period comes to an end, they will all still be very much in their prime.

Now we come to one major aspect of life during that 100-year period.

Let’s start by considering our present age. Since the time of the flood there have been hundreds of millions of adults who have never either fathered a child or else given birth to a child. A vast number of human beings throughout human history have been childless, even though many of them were married. That is a fact of human existence. Amongst those people in the second resurrection there will also be multiple tens of millions of women who had aborted their babies, because for one reason or another they didn’t want babies. And millions of others had practiced contraception to make sure that they would not have a baby.

When God gives people the chance for a second physical life, in order to have their minds opened to God’s truth so that they can really decide for themselves whether they want to have a part in God’s Family or not, then God will give them the opportunity to experience life as God had originally intended for Adam and Eve to experience life. God will provide perfect living conditions. And once again God will say to human beings that "it is not good that the man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18). And people in the second resurrection will marry.

[COMMENT: When Jesus Christ in Matthew 22:30 said "in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Mark 12:25 is the parallel verse), Jesus Christ was clearly speaking about the first resurrection. That is clear from Christ’s statement that in the resurrection they are "as the angels of God in heaven", a clear reference to life as spirit beings. Furthermore, the Sadducees didn’t believe that there would be any resurrection at all. That was their position. So when they, for the sake of argument, referred to "the resurrection", they assumed that there is only one resurrection under discussion, and that would be the resurrection that the Pharisees believed in, which was a resurrection to spirit life. And Jesus Christ answered their question by describing the resurrection into the Family of God, a resurrection to spirit life. Matthew 22:30 and Mark 12:25 do not in any way apply to the second resurrection.]

However, one significant thing that will be different for women in the second resurrection is this: none of them will be capable of bearing children. That is the most likely way that God will ensure that every single person in that resurrection will get a lifespan of at least 100 years (see Isaiah 65:20). Having their own children is the one opportunity that will be denied to people in the second resurrection. While I obviously don’t know for certain, I suspect that all the women and girls and female babies who will be in the second resurrection will be resurrected with empty ovaries. My reasons for believing this to be the likely course are as follows.

We tend to almost take the ability to have children for granted, like an inalienable biological right of our status as human beings. And we easily forget that in reality children, all children, "are a heritage of the LORD", and that "the fruit of the womb is HIS reward" (see Psalm 127:3).

The ability to have children is NOT a right at all! It is a gift and a privilege, bestowed upon us by the Almighty Creator God! And simply because God gives most of humanity the staggering and undeserved gift of an opportunity to live again in the second resurrection, that does not mean that therefore God has to also give them the added privilege of begetting and bearing children.

Consider that while many adults throughout human history have chosen to not have children of their own, there are also millions of other people who really fervently wanted to have their own children, but from whom that special blessing and privilege was withheld. For whatever reasons, God has withheld that "reward" from millions of people since the time of Adam, and He is also not going to give that "reward" to people in the second resurrection. Those people are not really in line for any "rewards" of any kind.

The begettal of a child is the result of a sperm from the father uniting with an ovum from the mother. If there is either no viable sperm or else there is no viable ovum, then a child cannot be conceived. But there is a major difference between men and women regarding how these reproductive cells are produced.

To express this in simple layman’s terms:

When a baby boy is born, there are no sperm present in the baby’s testicles. The testicles will only start producing sperm around the age of puberty. On the other hand, when a baby girl is born, all of the ova that she will ever produce throughout her life are already present in her two ovaries. At birth they are immature and incapable of functioning like mature ova (i.e. incapable of conception), but they are there nonetheless. Throughout her life a woman will not produce a single ovum that was not already present in her ovaries in an immature state at the time she was born.

So the point is this:

To prevent any woman in the second resurrection from ever conceiving a child does NOT require God to in any way interfere with a woman’s biological functioning. The only thing it requires, and one that will absolutely guarantee that no child will ever be conceived, is that God in resurrecting people in the second resurrection gives all women and all girls and girl babies "empty ovaries". When these women marry they will be able to have a normal sexual relationship with their husbands, but they will never menstruate and they will never have children. But the actual sexual relationship between a husband and his wife is not affected by this inability to conceive children.

Consider also the parallel:

In my recent article entitled "THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF GOD’S PLAN OF SALVATION AND HOW THE LAST GREAT DAY CAME TO BE A PART OF IT" I have explained the circumstances under which God added the second resurrection to His plan for mankind. Somewhere around the middle of that article I discuss the point that Genesis 6:3 shows that for the last 120 years before the flood no more babies were born to anybody on earth, except that up to six of the eight people on the ark were perhaps born during those last 120 years (i.e. certainly Noah’s three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth and perhaps also their three wives?). But apart from those six people no human beings were born for over a century before the flood.

And so God will do the same thing at the end. For the 100 years allotted to the people in the second resurrection likewise no babies will be born. Children are ALWAYS the gift of God, because it is God who at the birth of a child has to put the spirit in man into that child. Without the spirit in man that child would never be able to function as a human being.

To make this quite clear:

The spirit in man is something that God gives to every human being at birth, and at the time of death that spirit "returns unto God who gave it" (see Ecclesiastes 12:7). It may seem to be automatic that every child has the spirit in man at birth, but it isn’t automatic at all. For example, God took that spirit in man away from the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar for a period of 7 years (see Daniel 4:23 and Daniel 4:31-37), and for those 7 years Nebuchadnezzar was an incomplete human being. (For a more detailed discussion of Nebuchadnezzar’s case and the effect of the spirit in man see my article on the subject of "Abortion".)

The point we need to recognize is this: God is very intimately involved in the birth of every single human being, far more than we tend to realize, because it is God who provides that spirit in man to every single human being. In this way children are literally "the gift of God", because God actually "gave" them something at birth, the spirit that enables them to have a human mind.

We need to understand that the spirit in man is NOT a physical entity. Therefore the spirit in man is NOT somehow present in either a sperm or in an ovum. And neither does the spirit in man somehow "appear" when a sperm unites with an ovum. And "an untimely birth" (see Ecclesiastes 6:3; Psalm 58:8 and Job 3:16), a reference to an aborted embryo or foetus, did not have the spirit in man, and "untimely births" have no part in the second resurrection.

Neither a sperm nor an ovum is capable of generating the spirit in man. The entire process of the begettal and birth of a child is a physical process without any spiritual components. It is in fact very closely paralleled by the birth of an animal baby, which is also nothing more than a physical process. Ecclesiastes 12:7 states quite clearly that God "GAVE" that spirit in man to every human being, a statement that implies that human beings could not somehow generate it on their own simply by having sex; it has to be given by God!

Now consider one other point.

When God created Adam and Eve, it was not yet God’s intention to ever resurrect any human being to a physical life. The second resurrection was only added to God’s plan at the time of the flood. After they had sinned, God said to Adam and Eve "dust you are and unto dust shall you return" (Genesis 3:19), a reference to what happens after we die.

Without getting too technical, let’s look at some aspects of genetics.

Every human being has a unique genetic makeup. Our genes consist of long molecules called DNA, and this is unique for every single person. (It was thought that identical twins also have identical DNA, but in a number of studies in 2008 scientists found out that even identical twins show some variations in their DNA. As Professor John Witte of the University of California, San Francisco, said at the time about this research regarding identical twins: "you’ve got a little bit more genetic variation than (was) previously thought". Thus even identical twins aren’t really "identical".) By the way, about 99.9% of any one human being’s DNA is exactly the same as the DNA of any other human being, irrespective of race or color; so the genetic differences between all people are really very minute, and between identical twins the genetic differences are even more minuscule.

Now when God created Adam and Eve, He made Eve out of Adam’s genetic material, by taking one of Adam’s ribs (see Genesis 2:21). Then it was God’s intention that Adam and Eve would be fruitful and that they would multiply and replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28). So when the Apostle Paul said that God has made all human beings "of one blood" (Acts 17:26), this is a reflection of the common genetic composition of all people. In spite of seemingly great variations in our outward appearances (different colors for hair and eyes and skin, differences in features, etc.) we are all 99.9% the same, genetically speaking. That may not sit too well with people for whom "racial purity" is very important?

Anyway, the genetic system God established, with dominant alleles and recessive alleles was aimed at producing variety amongst Adam’s offspring, while at the same time maintaining overall genetic integrity. But the whole system was based by God on the premise that every human being would only have one physical life. And so God said to Adam: dust you are and unto dust shall you return.

[Comment: "Allele" is the name given to the unique form of a single gene. In common speech the word "gene" is frequently used in place of "allele".]

In this regard King Solomon added the following:

It is the spirit in man that upon death returns to God. It is the spirit in man that has recorded the person’s character, personality, memory and the whole life experience. It is the spirit in man that bestows a sense of identity upon every person. And it is the spirit in man which God uses to resurrect people.

But the spirit in man does NOT record the person’s genetic code. The genetic code is 100% physical, and it has nothing to do with man’s potential after death.

The genetic code of every human being dies (i.e. disappears) when the person dies. All the genetic material returns to dust; and the genetic code is permanently lost. And God has never had any intention to recreate the genetic code of any human being who has died. Ecclesiastes 12:7 establishes the contrast between what goes to God at death and what disappears into oblivion. The genetic code is physical, and it will never be restored.

To state this very plainly:

As Jesus Christ said:

Our genetic code is very much a part of "the flesh", and the flesh doesn’t profit for anything at all. God does not keep any part of the flesh for a future record, neither the genetic code nor fingerprints nor any other part of the flesh. The genetic code of any one human being has never been "a big deal" to God, and it certainly does not feature in God’s plans for the future. It is the mind that is important to God.

Consider also that no human being alive has a flawless genetic makeup. The genetic code of every single human being today is flawed in some way or other. Some diseases, like Huntington’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis, etc., are carried in the genes. Other diseases or physical shortcomings are influenced by the genes a person inherits from his parents; they don’t necessarily succumb to the physical problem, but the risk factors are greatly increased by certain genetic factors. These inherited diseases are passed on in a complex way, since frequently multiple genes are involved, creating a wide spectrum of potential risk, ranging from very little to highly likely. Other deficient genes don’t necessarily create any disease, but they may create conditions that are less than ideal for optimum physical well-being under certain circumstances, conditions such as color blindness and albinism.

The point of all this is as follows:

Their original genetic code perished when they died. And that code will never be resurrected. People who had deformities or physical or mental deficiencies will be resurrected without those problems or deficiencies. They will have a different genetic makeup in the second resurrection. People who were old and weak and frail will not be resurrected looking old and weak and frail. People whose appearances had been marred by accidents or by acts of violence and brutality will be resurrected with perfect health and perfect physical looks. People who were born blind or maimed in some way will be resurrected with perfect health. They will not have the same genes. Today vast segments of the world’s population bear evidence of degeneration, ranging from moderate to severe, and in the second resurrection nobody will have any symptoms of degeneration. It is not the same body that is resurrected.

Let me state this very plainly:

It is not their physical bodies that gave them identity in the eyes of God during their first lifetime. That’s what God explained to Samuel.

God is not in the process of preparing people for a racial pedigree pageant. God does not look on the outward appearance! If all the people who place so much importance on racial pedigree, both within the Church and on the outside, could only understand the real significance of 1 Samuel 16:7, the world would already be so much better off.

It is always the mind (i.e. "the heart") that is important before God.

Next, WHY should anybody in the second resurrection possibly look like they looked during their first lifetime? WHY should Winston Churchill come up looking like the old or the young Winston Churchill, and WHY should Napoleon come up looking like the Napoleon Bonaparte of old? And why should John Doe come up looking like the old John Doe? WHY? So that 50 people or 100 people out of perhaps 50 billion people in the second resurrection can recognize them from their first lifetime? WHY would it be important for anyone to "recognize" anyone else by their physical appearance? It is NOT their physical appearance that identifies them, but the spirit in man that gives them identity. The flesh is nothing!

And in the second resurrection God will give everybody the opportunity to make a new start WITHOUT being in any way encumbered by the sins of previous generations. Nobody who is resurrected at that time will have a physical appearance that will be viewed by other people with disdain or as being inferior or less desirable.

Yes, there will be differences and variety. And I am confident that there will be certain racial differences amongst people in the second resurrection. But I believe that those racial differences will reflect God’s original intentions for racial variety.

Anyway, now let’s get back to the matter of women not having babies during those 100 years.

The immature ova that are present at birth in the ovaries of every baby girl today are a reflection of the physical attributes of her two parents. Those physical attributes, known as traits in genetics, reflect certain features and attributes, both dominant and recessive, possessed by one or both of her parents. Those traits are like a trail that leads all the way back to Adam.

But the women that are resurrected in the second resurrection will not in their resurrected bodies have any genetic heritage from their own human parents. So if they did have any ova in their ovaries, which they will not, then those ova could not reflect any of the physical attributes they possessed in their first lifetime. They wouldn’t be capable of passing on traits from their own forebears if they don’t have the genes they had in the first lifetime. But since God will not give them the ability to conceive children, therefore their genetic makeup in the second resurrection is not an issue one way or the other.

And even though men in the second resurrection will most likely produce sperm, those sperm will likewise not reflect the traits of the forebears of those men; they will only reflect the traits of the new bodies God gave them when He resurrected them. But since their wives will be incapable of conceiving, therefore the traits which their sperm may have are also inconsequential.

When I say that in the second resurrection women will not have any ova in their ovaries, but that men will produce sperm, some people may feel that I am biased against women. After all, it just doesn’t seem fair that women will be resurrected without any ova in their ovaries, while resurrected men can produce sperm.

Yes, this is speculation on my part. But it is assuredly not based on any bias against women. It is based on the following reasoning.

1) At some point before the end of the millennium conception must cease universally. That is to ensure that no more babies will be born after a certain point in time.

2) It seems clear that the last babies to be born to people during the millennium must at the very latest be born days or weeks before the end of the millennium, though God may have an earlier cut-off date?

3) So for argument’s sake, let’s say that God decides that no more babies will be conceived from Day 1 of the first month of the last year before the end of the millennium. That would be the 1^st Day of the 1^st Month of the Year 1000.

4) Now there will be billions of married couples alive at the start of that last year of the millennium. And all of them will continue to have the sexual relationship within their marriages. None of them will sense anything being different, when comparing their relationship in the months before Day 1 of the Year 1000 to their relationship after Day 1 of the Year 1000. Nothing will change for them.

5) Now in our present age in which we live very many women experience clear symptoms when they go through menopause (hot flashes, etc.). However, menopause (the time when ovulation comes to an end) need not involve any symptoms at all. And even today there are also very many women who experience no symptoms at all when they go through menopause, other than that their periods have ceased. But they have no discomfort of any kind in the process.

6) The point is that while in practice many women today experience unpleasant symptoms when they go through menopause, that need not be the case at all.

7) So I suspect that (in our theoretical example) on the 1^st Day of the 1^st Month of Year 1000 God will trigger a completely symptomless menopause for all women and all girls (this is still one year before the second resurrection). They will not notice anything unpleasant in their bodies (no hot flashes, etc.). But they will never again have a monthly period. And for little girls they will never in their lives experience any periods.

8) Nothing physical happens with the husbands at the start of Year 1000. They continue to produce sperm and they continue to have a sexual relationship with their wives, something that would not be possible if the men were no longer producing sperm.

9) Now while some couples at the end of the millennium will be around 1000 years old, there will also be other married couples that will be only around 50 years old (i.e. people who were born around the year 950 of the millennium). And these married couples around 50 years of age will be normal physical people who have a normal relationship, the same as couples in our age today may have. And God’s only intervention in their lives is that from a certain point in time onwards the wife is no longer capable of conceiving a child; she is suddenly post-menopause. But nothing has happened to the husband.

10) Now these 50-year-old couples will live for another 100 years, together with the people in the second resurrection. They will continue to enjoy a normal relationship throughout that 100-year period. God didn’t remove any ova from any of the wives’ ovaries. God didn’t intervene in any way, other than bringing on premature symptomless menopause, to prevent conception.

11) So for married people who were born around the year 950 of the millennium the sexual relationship during that 100-year period will be based on the man producing sperm as he has always done throughout the marriage, while the wife is no longer capable of ovulating. That is the same as it is today for couples where the wife has gone through menopause.

12) It makes sense to expect the relationship for people in the second resurrection to be identical to the relationship between people who were born 50 years before the second resurrection took place, and with whom they are going to be contemporaneous. So if for couples born 50 years before the time of the second resurrection the inability to have children is based on the man regularly producing sperm, while the wife is incapable of ovulating, it follows that for marriages between people from the second resurrection the inability to have children will have the same basis.

13) Now if the women in the second resurrection are NEVER going to ovulate, then there is no point in creating immature ova in the ovaries of these resurrected women in the first place. There was a purpose in the ova being present in the ovaries of women born during the millennium, that purpose being to enable them to have children. But when new physical bodies are specially created for women in the second resurrection, then those specially created bodies are not intended to ever have babies. And that is the main purpose for ova ... to give a woman the potential to have children. But ova do not affect the woman’s ability to have a sexual relationship with her husband. [Note! God can enable the "empty ovaries" to produce the same hormones as they produce in our age today. Also there are other organs in the woman’s body that even today can help to supplement the production of hormones in women after the age of menopause.]

14) While the main purpose for sperm is to enable the man to father children, sperm also have another major purpose. It is the presence of sperm that enables the man to have a sexual relationship with his wife. So if the man does not have any sperm, then not only is he incapable of fathering any children, but he is also incapable of having a sexual relationship with his wife. So for sex within marriage the man must have sperm while the woman does not have to have any ova for this relationship.

15) Pointing out that in the second resurrection women will be created with "empty ovaries" is in fact anything but a bias against women. It is in fact an enormous blessing for women! Never will a woman have to experience menstruation. In Old Testament times a woman was considered to be "unclean" during menstruation, and that will never be the case for any woman in the second resurrection. Menstruation is a burden, and frequently treated as an embarrassment; and taking this burden away from women in the second resurrection, by giving them "empty ovaries" is a blessing. It makes life easier for women. So I don’t believe that this speculation on my part is in any way a bias against women.

Now let’s continue.

When the second resurrection takes place, then the time for men and women to multiply and to replenish the earth will have come to an end. That time will have ceased at the end of the millennium.

God’s original intention had been that the last human beings to be born would be born at some point before the end of the 7000 years. And that intention has not changed! So when God appended 100 years to the end of His 7000 year plan, then the only purpose for that additional 100-year period was to provide a genuine opportunity for salvation for people who had been born BEFORE the end of the 7000 years. But it was NOT God’s intention to somehow extend the period for new human beings to come into existence. God is NOT looking for ways to create more human beings! God is simply providing a very merciful way for the vast majority of human beings who have ever been born to have a genuine opportunity for salvation, by providing ideal circumstances in which they can live a second physical life.

So now let’s get back to the time when the second resurrection takes place.

So if none of the people in the second resurrection are married at the time they are resurrected, how will all the babies in that resurrection be cared for? Will they be given to their own mothers, who will still be unmarried at that point in time? Or will some other people raise those babies?

A woman had a baby at age 23. That baby died within the first week of life. The woman went on to have four more children, who also had their own families. Eventually the woman died as a great-grandmother at age 90 years. In the second resurrection will this 90-year old resurrected woman be responsible for raising her 4-day old resurrected baby?

An unmarried woman became pregnant, but she decided not to marry the father of her child, and instead married another man. While married to this second man she had her baby. She then divorced the second man (or he died) and married a third man. He helped to raise the baby as his own child, but at age 9 years the child died in an accident. The woman went on to have more children, and eventually died as a 70-year old grandmother. In the second resurrection all of them are there: the 70-year old woman, her 9-year old child and the three men. Who will act as a father to that 9-year child: the biological father who never married the woman or one of the two men to whom she had been married and who had both cared for that child?

In the majority of cases where a baby or a young child died, the father and mother very likely continued to live into old age, frequently having other children and then later grandchildren. The possible permutations in such situations are endless. The hypothetical example of the Sadducees (seven brothers all sequentially marrying the same woman) didn’t include any children. Throwing some children into that mix would complicate things even more. What if a woman had four children by four different men and all the children died before age six years (not uncommon during the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages with plagues and starvation ravaging whole populations), and all of them are in the second resurrection? There is a different father for each of the four young children, but only one mother for all of them. So which of the four men gets to live with that woman? And with whom do the three children by the other men live?

What about the 1000 women Solomon was married to? Some of them had children. Solomon himself seems unlikely to be there, so who will raise those children (if any of them died in childhood)? And who do those 1000 wives get to marry?

A married couple has a child that dies as a baby or perhaps the child dies before age 5. The parents then come into God’s Church and end up being in the first resurrection. But their child that died as a baby or at age 5 years will only be in the second resurrection. So the parents will be spirit beings when their baby or their 5-year old child is resurrected. Will they as spirit beings raise their own child on the physical level?

In the second resurrection my biological father will not be my father! And my biological mother will not be my mother! And my biological sons and daughters will not be my sons and daughters! THE EXACT SAME THING IS ALSO TRUE FOR YOU! (Assuming for the moment that we would all be in the second resurrection.)

I realize that you may not like that, because your family is yours, and nobody can ever take that from you, right? So how on earth dare I to suggest that in the resurrection your children will no longer be your children?

I "dare" to say that because I have to tell you the truth!

Look, when something belongs to you, then it doesn’t at the same time belong to God. And if something really belongs to God, then it does NOT belong to you. It is a matter of either-or. Now God has said very directly and unequivocally "ALL SOULS ARE MINE" (Ezekiel 18:4). That includes not only you and me, but also YOUR children and YOUR grandchildren; they are all God’s "souls".

If they didn’t end at death then a widow or a widower would never be allowed to remarry. When dust has returned to dust, then all the relationships that particular "dust" had been involved in have also been terminated.

Every single "soul" that is in the second resurrection will belong to God. When we say that marriage is until death parts us, then we need to understand that all the relationships that spring from marriage are also only until death parts us.

So note carefully!

The marriage relationship ends when one dies (either the husband or the wife). But the other relationships (parent - children relationships) continue as long as the surviving spouse still lives. However, when the surviving spouse then also dies, THEN those relationships also come to an end. The parents no longer have children because the parents are both dead, and dead people don’t have anything. Likewise, the children no longer have parents because both their parents are dead. The dead parents know not anything (Ecclesiastes 9:5), and the living children know that they no longer have any parents. The past is past!

Likewise, when siblings die, then that sibling relationship has also come to an end.

Now every person in the second resurrection will have been dead. And everyone in the first resurrection, those who will all be ruling with Jesus Christ at that point in time, will also have been dead (or changed in the twinkling of an eye, the equivalent of having died) in the past. So irrespective of whatever the relationship between two or more people may have been, ALL PARTIES WILL HAVE EXPERIENCED DEATH!

And death ends all relationships. And when both parties (i.e. the parents and the children) in a relationship have died, then that relationship has also permanently ceased to exist, being replaced by a direct relationship with God the Father instead!

So here is what the situation at the start of the 100-year period will look like:

1) All the people in the second resurrection will have different DNA from their first lifetime, and it is highly unlikely that anyone in that group will be recognizable to other people based on their previous physical looks.

2) Let’s say there are perhaps 10 million babies under the age of one month in that resurrection (it may very well be far more?), none of whom have the same DNA they had in their first short life. There is no way that anybody in the second resurrection will be able to identify "their baby" from the majority of other babies in that resurrected group.

3) The resurrected parents of those babies also have different DNA from their first lifetimes. So there will not actually be any PHYSICAL bonds between the resurrected parents and the resurrected children. DNA-wise they will not be related to one another. Death severed that genealogical link between the parents and their children. This lack of biological linkage indicates God’s view on this subject. If God had wanted the family links to be carried over into the second resurrection, then God would also have preserved every person’s DNA, because without the same DNA as in their first lives there simply are no familial connections at all between any people in the second resurrection.

4) Without being told "these were your parents" the children would not know who their parents had been. And without being told "these were your children" the parents would not know who their children had been. Nobody will recognize anybody else based on appearances. So any responses towards any resurrected children cannot possibly be based on intuition, of somehow "knowing" that "that is my baby"; it cannot be based on spontaneous feelings of "mother-love", because it will be impossible for the mother to know which child was hers in the previous life, without being told this information.

5) All adults are resurrected as "not married". And since God will certainly not allow for any "single parent families" in that resurrection, therefore no resurrected adults are in any position to immediately take care of small children.

6) Millions of parents made a total mess of their child-rearing, and God will not allow that to happen again!

7) Since it is not the outward appearance that is the clue to a baby’s identity, but the spirit in man, it follows that God is really the only One who can correctly identify which baby has which identity, because it is God who will put one specific spirit in man into each and every one of those babies.

8) Now let’s consider one of the more important points for us to understand: God will not resurrect the babies to satisfy the emotional needs OF THE PARENTS! The emotional needs of the parents don’t enter the picture one way or the other! The only reason God resurrects babies in the second resurrection is to give those babies THE BEST POSSIBLE CHANCE to receive eternal life in the Family of God! God resurrects babies to give them the opportunity to eventually become THE SPIRIT-BORN CHILDREN OF GOD, without any regard for whose physical children they may have been. The potential relationship with God is far, far, far more important than any physical relationship that may have existed in the previous life!

9) When God resurrects your children to a physical life, then they are no longer YOUR children. That resurrection to physical life has made them God’s (physical) children, since God will have given them that life. And your personal physical relationship will assuredly have to take a backseat to the relationship God will nurture with your children. Put another way: your part in bringing your children into existence was to provide "the body" and God’s part was to provide "the spirit in man". Now when the body returned to dust, then your part had disappeared and only God’s part remains. So when God then puts that spirit in man into a different body, then your part in that child no longer exists. IT IS 100% GOD’S CHILD, because God will provide both, the body and the spirit to make a physical resurrection for your former child possible.

10) YOUR PART at that point is to rejoice that you had been given the incredible privilege to have had a small part in bringing into existence another potential member of the Family of God. "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say REJOICE" (Philippians 4:4).

11) Now all those who come up in the second resurrection will be clueless as to how to practice godly child-rearing. They’ve had no experience at all in leading children into a right relationship with God, because in order to do that the parents themselves need to first have a right relationship with God. And the fact that they are in the second resurrection proves that they didn’t have that right relationship with God themselves. So therefore they are all, without exception, unqualified to lead children into a right relationship with God.

12) The people who have lived through the millennium, by contrast, will have had centuries of established correct child-rearing experiences. They KNOW how God instructs us to rear our children. They will KNOW when and how discipline needs to be applied. When we are told that "foolishness is bound in the heart of a child" (Proverbs 22:15), then that will also be true for the babies and children that will come up in the second resurrection. And there is a right way for parents to deal with such "foolishness". But the adults in the second resurrection will not yet understand this.

13) Understand also that God will NOT let anybody "practice" on children during that 100-year period.

14) Now all the people who survived the end of the millennium and are then also living during that 100-year period will be deeply committed to God, because the ones that were not committed to God joined Satan in that rebellion, and they were all burned up by fire from heaven (Revelation 20:9). So all the families who are there to welcome the people in the second resurrection will be deeply converted, and they have all been tested. And they are knowledgeable of God’s ways, having lived happily under God’s rule for a very long time.

15) By contrast, every single adult in the second resurrection will still be unrepentant! Their first concern will be to repent and to establish a right relationship with God. But before they can repent they first need to be taught God’s ways and laws. Understanding is a prerequisite for repentance. Now I believe that the vast majority of the people in the second resurrection will indeed repent, as implied by Jesus Christ in Scriptures like Matthew 11:21-24 and Matthew 12:41-42. And God will give them time to reach that point. But at the same time, God will not give babies and young children into the care of unrepentant people. God will not allow small children in the second resurrection to be exposed to unrepentant minds. That’s something they were exposed to in their first lives, and it will not happen again.

16) At that time instead of "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children" (Exodus 20:5) God will short-circuit that process by dealing directly with "the fathers" when and as needed. This is clear from the total removal of Satan for this entire period of time. During that 100-year period God will not allow bad influences to adversely affect any other person. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father (Ezekiel 18:20), and neither will God allow the son to be exposed to a father’s unrepentant attitude, without at the same time providing for clearly pointing out to the son that (sometimes) the father’s attitude may not be right. That’s the principle of Isaiah 30:21.

17) Thus while I have no way of proving this, I believe that all babies and all children will be entrusted by God to deeply converted families to raise and nurture, families that in the course of the millennium have proved themselves to be faithful to God, and that have a good track-record in how they raised their own children. There is no genetic link between any resurrected child and any other human being, thereby providing considerable latitude regarding which families God may select for these responsibilities.

18) I suspect that all the children in the second resurrection will be given to families that already have children of their own in similar age brackets, families that will be in the same racial grouping as the resurrected children. They will all be integrated into families where they will have siblings (not by DNA but by being assigned to those families by God) and parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. These families will adopt these children as their own children. And this will enable all the children in the second resurrection to experience family life to the full. They will be immersed in the environment described in Psalm 128.

19) Consider that God the Father Himself delegated the raising and nurturing of His own Son to a specific family (i.e. the home of Joseph and Mary). God the Father didn’t feel the need to be there all the time while Jesus Christ was 3 months old and then 6 months old and then 2 years old and then 5 years old. No, God the Father entrusted that responsibility to "other people", leaving it totally up to them to fulfill that responsibility. Now since that is the way God the Father provided for the raising of His own Son Jesus Christ, why should it be strange that God would also select highly competent families to take care of all the babies and children that God is going to resurrect at that time?

20) Consider also that there was no genetic connection between Mary the mother of Jesus and the Apostle John. Yet Jesus Christ Himself told John to accept Mary as his own mother, and He told Mary to accept John as her own son.

So why should it be a problem at the time of the resurrection for Jesus Christ to say to resurrected children "behold your parents" and to say to the selected married couples "behold your child/ren"?

21) We might also notice that Jesus Christ here did NOT address His mother as "mother". It is unlikely that any of us would ever address our own mothers as "woman". Yet that is what Jesus Christ did. And while Jesus Christ did not address His own mother as "mother", He did tell the Apostle John to look upon her as his "mother". In this passage Jesus Christ is showing that His previous relationship with Mary was about to end; as soon as He died He would no longer be her "Son" and she would no longer be His "mother". That mother-son relationship was about to end. And so Jesus Christ addressed His mother with the non-personal designation "woman".

22) Consider also the occasion when Mary and some of her other children came to speak with Jesus Christ, recorded in Matthew chapter 12.

At the very least we’d have to say that Jesus Christ did not place any great importance on family relationships in this present life. He continued to say:

Jesus Christ was making the point that the relationship with people who also whole-heartedly submit their lives to God is far more important than the relationship with parents and siblings. The indication is once again that God (since Jesus Christ is also God) is not all that concerned with maintaining relationships with our physical families. These verses give us God’s perspective, and that perspective is different from the subjective personal perspectives we are likely to have on this subject of the importance of family relationships. We would do well to keep the perspective Jesus Christ revealed here and also in John 19:26-27 in mind when we think about the second resurrection.

23) I further believe that in the second resurrection the biological parents will joyfully agree with whatever arrangements God will make in regard to any young children they may have had in their first lives. And I believe that most of those people will come to repentance. Now the truly repentant view of this will be as follows. The biological parents will say to the selected parents:

24) Instead of looking at this question from our perspective today, let’s try to view this from the perspective of the people in that second resurrection. Here they are resurrected with perfect health, in the prime of life, good looking and attractive, and they see a perfect world all around them. And they come to understand that if they will repent, then their entire past lives will be blotted out; all their guilt will be forgiven, and they can start a 100-year existence will a totally clean slate, living in utopian circumstances. And if during their first life they had any young children who died, then those children will also be taken care of by God. No responsibilities for anything they had done in their past, if they truly repent.

Instead of feeling deprived of any small children they may have had, I believe those people will be relieved that God is taking that responsibility off their shoulders. They will not look at this issue with our present selfish mind-set. They will be grateful for the way God will do things. And they will understand that God is indeed looking after their children.

25) The approach of "I want my children back" is a totally selfish approach when applied to the time of the second resurrection! You may not like that statement? But it is true! In the second resurrection incompetent people will simply not be entrusted with the responsibility to rear children. In that resurrection people will have the attitude of: not my will be done, but the will of God will be done (see Matthew 26:39; Matthew 26:42; Matthew 6:10). And even as God selected a human family to raise His Son Jesus Christ, so God will select human families to raise the babies and all the children that will come up in the second resurrection. It will be the best possible arrangement. And the adults who come up in the second resurrection will greatly appreciate that God has relieved them of all responsibility for the children they had in their first lifetime.

So how do things then develop during that 100-year period?

Before the second resurrection takes place, Jesus Christ will know exactly how many people will be in that resurrection. And He will know precisely how many of those resurrected people will be babies under the age of one year, how many will be under five years, how many will be pre-teenagers and how many will be teenagers, etc. At that point in time Jesus Christ will know the exact number of people in every possible category. And He will plan where all of those people in the second resurrection will be placed.

Now once the army of rebels has been destroyed by fire from heaven, everything will be ready for the second resurrection. I suspect that the 144,000 in the first resurrection will help with placing all the children that will be in the second resurrection in suitable families, taking racial and national considerations into account. All will be placed in families that will be compatible with the racial and national features of the resurrected children. And the resurrected children will be fully accepted just like the other children in those families. I suspect that the existing children in those families (i.e. those who were born in the last few years of the millennium) will be prepared with statements like: "God will soon give you another brother or sister; so let’s start preparing the room for your new sister", etc.

However, the greater picture is this:

In very general terms, perhaps 20-50 billion people survived the end of the millennium. All of them will be living in established communities around the world. The entire globe will be inhabited.

Now the second resurrection may involve an additional 20-50 billion people. There is the real possibility that with the second resurrection the world’s population will double overnight.

In our world today an overnight doubling of the world’s population would be a monumental catastrophe, because we are simply not equipped to cope with an overnight 100% population increase. Everything would grind to a standstill with shortages of food and water and housing and clothing, etc. Even sewage would present an almost impossible problem if our population today was doubled.

So throughout the millennium Jesus Christ and the 144,000 in the first resurrection will have guided humanity to prepare for this monumental event, of from 20 to 50 billion people coming into existence overnight. I suspect that the way this earth will be prepared for the second resurrection will in principle, though not literally, be along the lines by which God used Joseph to prepare Egypt for the seven years of famine.

Throughout the millennium people will build housing that is suitable for large families, with plenty of rooms available for guests. Keep in mind that people will own the houses they build for the entire 1000-year period; so they will build with quality to ensure that these houses will endure the passage of time. People will establish fields and orchards and gardens that will also be generous in scope, exceeding their personal needs.

Perhaps during the last 100 years of the millennium every family will be encouraged to build "a second home", like a vacation home. By the end of the millennium there could be just as many second homes worldwide as there will be "first homes". The idea is to furnish those second homes just like their primary residences, with furniture, decorations, paintings, ornaments, bedding items, eating utensils, pots and pans, clothing, a pantry that is stocked with all the basics, gardening equipment, tools, etc. Those second homes should also include fruit orchards and vegetable gardens.

Now a wealthy family today may well own several homes in different locations around the world. And when the parents die then those different homes pass on to the various children of that family. Likewise, when the second resurrection takes place all these second homes are available for giving to those resurrected people, much like parents today passing on an inheritance to their children.

Note!

I expect that these second homes will not just be given to the people in the second resurrection. I only said that they will be "available for giving" to them. However, I strongly suspect that BEFORE these resurrected people will be given their own homes, they will FIRST be expected to live as guests with families. Keep in mind that all of the people in the second resurrection will be single! And single people don’t need to have their own houses.

I personally think that every single family unit on earth at that time (or at least the vast majority of them) will provide housing for one or more of the people in the second resurrection. The children in the second resurrection will immediately go to the families that will be "their families". But the "single adults" (i.e. everybody else) will live as "boarders" with established families, like Jacob was a "boarder" with Laban before he got married. In this way they will be introduced to living by God’s laws and the established customs and traditions of the millennial period. They will see practical examples of how to apply God’s laws to daily life. They will see happiness and contentment and a generous giving attitude that will be universal. (Can you now see why God had to first weed out all the rebels before resurrecting all these people?)

These people will learn God’s ways, and I expect that most of them will come to real repentance. And once they have repented, then they could start looking for a suitable mate, someone to marry. They will receive marriage counseling and help and advice from every side. They will also have contact with Jesus Christ and those ruling with Christ.

Instead of saying "I WANT to marry THAT particular person", these repentant people will say to their hosts, and especially to the specific individuals amongst the 144,000 from the first resurrection that they happen to have direct contact with: "You know me and my personality. Tell me, who do YOU feel would be the right woman (or the right man, for a woman asking the question) for me to marry? There are so many attractive people out there. Can you give me some guidance?" And once they have selected someone they would like to marry, then they will ask: we were both married in our former lives, and we both had less than perfect marriages; so can you give us some marriage counseling to help us prepare for the responsibilities of marriage? And they will be taught.

And when they are ready to get married, THEN their host family could say to them: "You know that vacation home we have down the road, the one with the vineyard and the olive orchard? Well, that’s our wedding gift to you. We have enjoyed having you live with us, and it has been a privilege to have you here. We hope you will like your new home."

In this way, as people come to repentance and then get married, so all these second homes could be given to these people. Everybody will know that at the end of those 100 years the entire planet will be burned up, to be replaced by an infinitely better "new earth"; so these second homes may as well be enjoyed by people who don’t yet have a home at all.

With this system, instead of forming their own blocks of society, the people in the second resurrection would be absorbed into a worldwide population that is already God-fearing and happy and prosperous and relaxed. They will be accepted as full members of the communities amongst which they will be placed. And they are still free to either accept God’s ways or to reject God’s ways.

This is total speculation. But in a scenario like this I would expect over half of the mature adults in the second resurrection to be married and settled in their own homes within the first five years of that 100-year period. And once they are in their own homes, then they are fully established members of the community.

By the time we get to year 20 of that 100-year period all children will have grown to at least age 20 years. Those children that were resurrected at age 10 years will at that point already be mature 30-year olds. And so those who had come up as children in the second resurrection will start to get married. By the year 50 of that 100-year period I expect almost all people to be married. So everyone will have the potential opportunity to experience at least 50 years of being happily married.

I believe that the likelihood of people in the second resurrection still rejecting God’s way of give is far less likely than it was during the millennium for one significant reason:

NONE of the people who rebelled against God during the millennium and at the end of the millennium had ever experienced death! The people in the second resurrection, on the other hand, will know one thing with absolute certainty. They will all know that they had already been dead, and that God had very mercifully given them a second opportunity at living a physical life.

They all (except for the babies and small children in the second resurrection) will understand the stark contrast between the world in which they had lived their first lives, with wars, famines, diseases and natural disasters being the norm, and the world into which God had mercifully resurrected them, where peace, joy, happiness and a genuinely outgoing attitude for the well-being of all people are the normal way of life. All of them know that they did not deserve to be resurrected. They all know that God has dealt extremely mercifully with them. And I believe that the vast majority of those people will reject selfishness and embrace God’s way of life.

If that is correct, then the vast majority of our relatives who are not in God’s Church today, and the vast majority of our ancestors will eventually also become a part of the Family of God.

At any rate, there is no indication that there will be any open rebellions during the course of that 100-year period. People will enjoy life to the full. And access to God will be instant. As God has told us through the Prophet Isaiah:

Life during the 100-year period will be the best that physical life has ever been! It will be the culmination of a way of life that was started at the beginning of the millennium. And God has called YOU to have a part in establishing that perfect environment for all of your own ancestors and other family members who have never been involved with God’s Church in this age, as well as helping all other people in that resurrection.

And so the Apostle Peter says to all of us:

Well, in this article I have obviously presented a great deal of speculation. In this regard I don’t claim to have everything perfectly correct. But I am confident that the overall picture I have presented here is far closer to the way things will actually be when the second resurrection takes place, than anything the Church has presented previously. We all need to continue to grow in the knowledge and the understanding of God (see 2 Peter 3:18). This article is intended to work towards that goal. So ... how good was your understanding about the second resurrection?

Frank W Nelte