Our Home by W. M. HEALEY

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 21, 1878

Our Home.

By W. M. HEALEY

Where will be the future home of the people of God?

When the Lord made man he did not put him in heaven where the angels are, but on the earth, and gave him dominion over it, and all upon it. Gen. 1:26. This dominion he could hold as long as he lived and obeyed God. But when man ceased to obey God he lost his dominion and his life. Gen. 3:19. God formed the earth to be inhabited. Isa. 45:18. Adam and Eve proved themselves unworthy of their trust, and put themselves with all the dominion they had into the hands of the enemy. But God had provided means by which the dominion could be regained, if the first man allowed it to be lost. God never gave man power to control the motions of the earth, or the change of seasons. Man's power was more of a political than physical nature, and not absolute in any particular.

Christ comes, the last Adam, 1 Cor. 15:45, to redeem and restore that which was lost. And when he has gained a right to the dominion of the earth by being faithful to every trust, and also gains the right to redeem man from death by himself dying on the cross, will he now take those whom he has redeemed away from the earth forever, and thus abandon the dominion? I think not. I find that God promised Abraham that he and his seed should have the land. Gen. 13:14–16. This promise Paul says, Rom. 4:13, embraced the world; and it could not have embraced less, for his seed were to be like the dust of the ground for number. Stephen says God did not give Abraham so much as to set his foot on. Acts 7:2–6. Paul declares the same in Hebrews 11, but says Abraham and his children died believing they would have the land. When could they expect it? Certainly not in this life, for they died believing in the promise. Of course it could only be fulfilled to them after the resurrection.

Paul says, Heb. 11:10, that Abraham looked for a city that was made by God. Then he speaks of his dying in this faith, and in verse 16 says God hath prepared for them a city. John in Rev. 21:2, says he saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven. Verse 1 says this was on the new earth. Peter, in second epistle, third chapter, verses 10–13, says the elements shall melt with fervent heat the earth, also, and the works therein shall be burned up. Notice, the earth is not burned up but melted and the works are burned up. Then he says we look for new heavens and a new earth. Isaiah says God will create new heavens and a new earth, Isa. 65, and he says Jerusalem will be there, and God's people will rejoice in her. The heaven here spoken of is the same as it is said God created in the beginning. Gen. 1:1. Simply that heaven which belongs to this earth, or the atmosphere that surrounds it, and not the third heavens, or the dwelling place of God. It is in the earth when thus freed from the curse that Abraham and his seed come into their possessions; and if we are Christ's then are we Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Gal. 3:29. Reader, you may have a part in that beautiful land, where no curse infests the ground. Christ, in wearing the crown of thorns, redeemed the earth from that part of the curse.

There will be no more sorrow. All tears are wiped away. Rev. 21:4. Then will be fulfilled Christ's words, Matt. 5:5: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” There, also, will be the reward for keeping the fifth commandment of the decalogue: “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

This is our final home if we are Christ's, and we are his if we keep his words; and he says the words are not his but the Father's that sent him. John 14:24.

That beautiful city, New Jerusalem, is now in heaven, ready at the appointed time to come down upon the earth. Christ has now gone there to prepare mansions for his people, and after the preparation is all made he will come for them and take them there, John 13:36, and 14:2–3, where they will be till the city descends, and then they come with it to be “recompensed in the earth.” Shall we be there?

W. M. HEALEY.