Beyond the Hiccup

Interviewer: You left us with a hiccup last time.
God: (chuckling) So I did.
Interviewer: So my curiosity is aroused. What is the hiccup?
God: Well, after the titanic struggle on earth at the time of the Antichrist, with the good side-Ours-winning, there is the resultant thousand years of peace and goodness. At the end of those thousand years, the Devil is then freed from his prison in the Bottomless Pit and we have somewhat of a reprise of the Battle of Armageddon.
Interviewer: What! We go through all that again? Why does the Devil get released, for goodness sake?
God: For the same reason that I let him hang around in the world today. He provides an alternative, and the people of this new world will once again have the freedom to choose which way they want to go.
Interviewer: So what happens?
God: The Devil and his forces are again defeated, this time permanently. The earth then gets a complete makeover. The surface is burned up and recreated anew, becoming an even better and more splendid world.
Interviewer: So why not do this at the beginning of the thousand years? Seems like we work for all that time, or at least some do, and then it all goes down the tubes.
God: It got as good as it could get under the prevailing conditions. Don’t you want to see it improved?
Interviewer: Yes, without question, but why not do it right after the Battle of Armageddon? Why wait till this reprise, as You put it?
God: It once again has to do with the training program for humanity. It is practice for the ultimate home I have for you.
Interviewer: Must be quite a place if we need to practice for a thousand years.
God: You’re a bit hung up on that, aren’t you?
Interviewer: Well, it doesn’t seem to be that logical. I would think a hundred years max would be all we would need to practice. Besides, all those who started off at the beginning would be dead even before a hundred years are up, let alone a thousand. Doesn’t seem much point to it if you are still practicing when you die and never get to live out what you learned.
God: Who said you would die?
Interviewer: Common sense dictates that not a lot of people are going to live to be a hundred.
God: In the thousand-year period, things will change so much that people will think that you are still a child when you are a hundred.
Interviewer: Oh boy, that’s a big one to swallow. I am talking about normal people here, not the ones with the new super bodies You talked about earlier. Normal people won’t be able to live that long, will they?
God: If I work it out so they can, they can.
Interviewer: But the body naturally ages. The rigors of the environment take their toll also.
God: The environment does take a pretty bad beating before Armageddon and there is a lot of fix-up to be done. But all that is going to be taken care of during the thousand-year period, and the environment is going to get back into pretty good shape. Besides, you keep leaving Me and My power out of the equation. I am going to do a miraculous number on the human body, and it is not going to age like it does now.
Interviewer: So if I have things right, we’ve got the people who went up in the Rapture with new super bodies, but then we also have the people who survive Armageddon getting a makeover too?
God: That’s right. There will be those who survive on earth through Armageddon. Those survivors will not necessarily get a makeover, as you called it, but with a few changes in the environment, the aging process will decelerate markedly. So although the initial survivors will benefit marginally, the real benefactors will be their children and their children’s children.
Interviewer: What are all these survivors going to do? It sounds a bit like they all go back to the Stone Age.
God: (chuckles) That’s not a very nice way to describe the nearly paradisiacal lifestyle that they will eventually enjoy.
Interviewer: I don’t think a lot of people are chomping at the bit to go rural.
God: Too boring?
Interviewer: Yes. I think many will think so.
God: Got a better idea?
Interviewer: Most people go for the urban lifestyle.
God: Millions of people being lonely together? That is a better idea?
Interviewer: Not everyone is lonely. I admit that apparently a lot are, but most have some friends, at least.
God: Man was not designed to be an urban creature. Believe it or not, he was designed with a rural or at least semi-rural lifestyle in mind. Okay, I see the wheels turning in there, and you are going to say that I, knowing the future and all, should have been able to anticipate cities. Of course I did. But I still didn’t design man for that. He functions best in a more quiet, peaceful, but regular life. Modern urban stress is a killer that is doing more damage than most people realize.
Interviewer: But You said earlier that the centerpiece of Heaven is a giant city. Isn’t this contradictory-that Your idea of Heaven is a city but those on earth need to live as country bumpkins?
God: “City” is not perhaps the best way to describe it, but it comes closest in your understanding. It is huge-almost unimaginably huge. It is in the shape of a pyramid, with a base of nearly six million square kilometers and an apex over 2000 kilometers high. Now I admit some of it might have the appearance of being urban, but there is a lot of parkland and open space in an area that big. And I assure you the lifestyle will be relaxed. Even though much work will still be done there, it takes place at a relaxed pace.
Besides-back to your apparent critique of My plan for earth during those thousand years-I can assure you that people will enjoy life there, or at least most of them will.
Interviewer: Most, but not all?
God: There will be those who will not be satisfied. Just like Adam and Eve were not satisfied with what I had for them in Eden, so some people will not be satisfied in a world that will closely resemble Eden.
Interviewer: You would think we’d learn.
God: You would, wouldn’t you? But take heart-those rebels who have problems with it won’t cause the whole thing to be ruined for everyone else.
Interviewer: So these are the ones that are involved in the “hiccup”?
God: Yes. When the Devil comes along at the end of the thousand years, they gladly follow him into another rebellion.
Interviewer: What then?
God: Well, I put an end to it pretty quickly.
Interviewer: I guess You sort of run out of patience with the bad guys.
God: You could say that. There is always a limit, and they will have reached it by then.