The earth at the time of judgment will be destroyed but not destroyed so that nothing exists. It will be destroyed in its present form and amazingly rejuvenated, reconstituted, and made spiritual. It is as though heaven and earth will come together and there will be the eternal, heavenly earth for believers, and we will have glorified, physical bodies. We won’t become angels but we will be as the angels, in a sense physical, yet much more glorious than anything we know at the moment. Physical relationships between husbands and wives will be at an end. Our capacity to love each other, all of us, will be so much greater. We will need no physical assistance, or supplementation and there will be no procreation. We look at each other, we will see Christ in each other. His image will be vastly more wonderfully imposed upon each one of us. There will be no jealousy, no discord, only sublime harmony between us all. We also believe – though we cannot be certain – that in a remarkable way special affections that existed on earth, such as between husband and wife will be cherished in the heavenly hereafter. There are a number of texts that indicate this, such as the word given by the apostle Peter, calling us ‘heirs together of the grace of life.’ There are hints that there will be a continuation of certain cherished affections in some way.
Supposing that some believing couple was married, and husband or wife died and in due time that person married again. Can somebody have two wives in heaven, or two husbands in heaven? There is no subordination to husbands any more, all that is gone, we are as the angels. We relate freely, wonderfully, deeply to each other. If you have seven children, then hopefully you love them all equally. There is no favourite. You would go to the ends of the earth to save the life of any one of them. That is how it would be in heaven if you have special, cherished relationships successively with husbands or wives on earth. You can have those in heaven without any jealousy, favouritism, ‘as the angels’.
It is the same, of course, with atheists today. Some of those writing atheists who command so much attention. It is a strange thing – it was true of the Sadducees here – they really thought they could embarrass and humiliate and belittle the Lord! They were out of their depth but, you see, with unbelief comes a tremendous confidence in your unbelieving position. The two things go together. If I am an atheist, I have unassailable confidence in my atheism. So you get some of the famous names, the writing atheists with their best-selling books and it is painful to read these books. When they talk about Scripture, they are so ignorant, they say such foolish things. They don’t even begin to understand the obvious sense of what they are quoting and this was the case with the Sadducees.