Answer # 86

Perhaps living forever conjures images in your mind of boredom, ennui, or eternal sterility. Perhaps you have not fully pondered the possibilities of such a plane of existence. Talk about mind expansion! You would be able to operate unfettered by the pain and weakness of a physical body. You would be free from the limits of time and space, able to will anything and have it immediately occur. You would be able to instantly communicate mentally or telepathically with a host of other sons of God like yourself anywhere in the entire universe.

When we are born into the Kingdom of God, we will be able to see colors we never dreamed existed, hear sounds that have never been experienced and have life on an incredible level of accomplishment.

Think of the power you would have!

The vast wealth of the whole universe would be yours to share with those born into the family of God.

You would manage the activities of angels (1 Cor. 6:3). Every sense would be expanded and accelerated and you would grow forever, learning and creating new things, and delving into areas our minds can't begin to comprehend now.

If eternal life were not worth striving for, then why did Jesus Christ go to such lengths to regain it for Himself and open the way for us to attain it? If there were something wrong with living forever - if it were dull, boring, or otherwise undesirable - He had every opportunity to get out while He had the chance.

As a mortal human being, all He needed to do was sin, and He would have reaped the wages of sin, which is death (Rom. 6:23).

It would be logical to assume that as a spirit being, you, too, would have the same option Christ had. But Christ Himself desperately wanted to regain His former state of being. Just before He was crucified, he prayed: "And now, Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made" (John 17:5).

Paul also had been given a glimpse of life on a spirit plane (11 Cor. 12:2-4). He was ready to do anything to be in the first resurrection, to gain that kind of existence (Phil. 3:7-11). God says that "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him"(1 Cor. 2:9).