We begin our life’s journey in this world, the physical world – Olam Ha Ze in Hebrew. We spend our first years, 80 or so if we are able, here. We grow, we learn, we develop in the physical world and as we do we hopefully become aware of the spiritual world that is all around us and The Bible that tells us about this spiritual realm. As that awareness grows, we will learn about God, about His supernatural angelic host and about Jesus His Son and His salvation of grace!
We will also learn the reality that there are fallen angels who are opposed to God and work to thwart Him and those who follow Him. They are the source of the evil we all perceive in this world. Fortunately, we can also learn from The Bible that God is sovereign over the peoples and nations of the earth and that there is divine protection against Satan, the chief fallen angel, and his demonic servants. That protection helps us to live and thrive in this fallen world but doesn’t exempt us from all attacks. Rather it gives us the means to fend them off.
Why is this the situation? It seems that this world has an aspect of training, testing and sorting (or perhaps an apprenticeship where we learn about our God). God wants us, His created children, as part of His family, but He wants us to be willing members of His family. Willing to live with Him and our fellow brothers and sisters as He lives with them; with love and grace and caring for each other. For that reason, God gives us free will that allows us to choose for Him or against Him. The ultimate magnanimous act! We also clearly see what a mixed world with people who follow God and people who don’t looks like and gain an understanding of how difficult and chaotic that world is – not what God wants for or is offering us in a life with Him.
How we live our earthly lives in this world, who we acknowledge, what we do, what we say and how we act with each other declares our choice – explicitly and implicitly. When we stand before God one day, divided into the sheep (for Him) and the goats (for ourselves) our die is cast. We must, and do, choose now and prayerfully choose wisely. We have every opportunity to choose for God right up to our last breath in this world. After that our ticket to either heaven with God or hell without God has already been “punched”! Choose wisely! It is an eternal choice that we get to, and will, make here in this world (or default to “no” if we fail to choose)!
One final thought. As I read the scriptures, once life is created it continues eternally, unless God ends it. At the Great White Throne judgment those who have chosen to be with God (the sheep) are ushered into the new heaven and the new earth to be with Him here for eternity, Olam Ha Ba (The World to Come in Hebrew). Those who have chosen not to be with God (the goats) are sent to the lake of fire, called the second death. Is this a literal death as we understand it or an eternal, living separation from God? The first death was a transition from life on earth to a pre-resurrection, temporary life in the “spiritual” world – the present heaven for believers. Is this second death then the outcome, the destination, of these peoples’ transition with God giving them what they’ve believed, that there is no heaven or is this a literal end of their life as they have believed that there is no life after death? A puzzling question, but one I do not need to decide, nor perhaps one I need to know the answer to, since I have chosen to be with God.