Shaky Pillar #3
False Hope of Earth

“Even persons now dead will enjoy the paradise earth” (You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, Copyright 1982 by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Page 165).

So-called Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the saved who don’t make it to heaven will enjoy Paradise restored on this planet.

“For in hope were we saved: but hope that is seen is not hope: for who hopeth for that which he seeth?” (Romans 8:24). Salvation is bound up in hope! And the very nature of hope, meaning a confident expectation, is that it has not yet been seen. Earth, however, is quite visible. To anticipate eternal salvation happening right here is literally hopeless.

There is no reason to expect Paradise on Earth since the entire physical universe will cease to exist. “The day of the Lord will come as a thief; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in (all) holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? But, according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (II Peter 3:10-13). The elements are the building blocks of all matter; when they melt, there will be nothing left of the material realm. Everything will dissolve.

Human bodies stand to gain nothing in the resurrection because “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (I Corinthians 15:50). The goal of true believers is to be rid of the earthly dwelling in order to obtain the heavenly, as Paul encouraged, “we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. For verily in this we groan, longing to be clothed upon with our habitation which is from heaven” (II Corinthians 5:1-2).

“The Lord himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (I Thessalonians 4:16-18). The comfort of Scripture is that one day, the earth will be vacated when saints meet the Lord in the air!