Continuity

One factor that causes more misunderstanding than any other as to the nature of the hereafter is our failure to realize that there is an essential continuity between the present creation and the future one, as well as between what we are right now and what we are going to be.

To begin with, eternal life is not something that a person enters upon at the time of death. the Bible abounds in statements that a Christian has eternal life from the moment he begins to believe. What is more, the new earth is to be a purification or “regeneration” of the present one, rather than the creation of a new one from scratch. And it will be a literal, concrete earth.

We, in turn, are to have real, literal bodies. We will remain essentially the same individuals that we are right now, plus glorious changes comparable to those of Christ. But men will not become women, nor both become angels. Christianity does not teach Hindu transmigration, with God’s creatures changing into other kinds in the next world.

One important aspect of human continuity is memory, or recollection. Even if the Bible didn’t specifically teach it, we could infer the fact that we shall recall our earthly existence when we reach heaven, since without it the eternal praise of God for our salvation would be impossible. How can a person sing “the old, old story” in glory if he doesn’t remember what it was all about?

A remarkable inkling of all this may be found in the fact that already here upon earth a given person is entirely replaced–as far as his brain, body, and heart are concerned–a number of times in a life-time. And yet, by means of a brand new brain, a person remembers vividly what he did and thought in a body and a “mind” long gone.