God’s kingdom and plan of redemption are structured around two orders of being: The Adamic order of being will experience the Son’s 1,000-year restoration of humanity on the restored Genesis earth. The children of God will experience the Father’s new heavens and new earth as the eternal home for the sons of God. When I read the Scriptures, I try to discern whether the particular vision is describing an Adamic paradise on the Son’s restored earth, or if it is describing an eternal paradise for the sons of God in the Father’s kingdom of heaven.
Many of the problems associated with the current views on God’s endgame are due to the fact that theologians often confuse the two orders of being and their corresponding kingdoms. For example, premillennialists have the raptured saints in their eternal body that no longer experiences marriage repopulating the restored earth, which is incompatible with the prophets’ descriptions of the earthly kingdom as an Edenic paradise with men and women experiencing marriage and reproduction.
Amillennialists, on the other hand, do not believe in a 1,000-year restoration of this Genesis creation. As a result, they tend to impose the visions of an Adamic paradise described by the prophets onto the new heavens and new earth, which greatly distorts the nature of heaven. How can heaven be a human paradise given the fact that we will not even experience marriage?
