Paradise Between Eden and the New Jerusalem
The Local Church (Acts 2:40-47)
God is the God who creates paradises. He began man’s life on earth by putting him in a paradise called the Garden of Eden. Everything Adam and Eve needed was there. It was perfect: plenty of food, health, prosperity (there was gold in Eden), and basically, it was heaven on earth.
God will end time by creating a new earth and it will be a paradise called the New Jerusalem. You’d probably be surprised how similar Eden and the New Jerusalem are. Read Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22 and you will see they are described in very similar ways. God is the God of paradise. He wants His people to live in paradise, the paradise He Himself gladly provides.
Wouldn’t it be just like God to provide a paradise on earth between the time of Eden and the New Jerusalem? It would. His heart desires that and Jesus taught us to pray it with these words: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” That is the will of God.
The paradise God has for us on earth between the two paradises is what we call the local church. Remember, we walk by faith, not by sight. We can only see and experience this paradise by faith. And we can see and experience it. It is the will of God. That paradise is found in Acts 2:40-47, where we find Jesus is the Second Man, the Head over a body of people. This paradise is full of saved, Spirit-filled believers; there is no poverty, no sickness, abounding love and joy unspeakable. This paradise is described for us in Acts.
The local church at Jerusalem was the ideal church, the thing we must all by the grace of God be continually striving for. The problem with this present paradise, the difference between the two at the bookends of time, is that it is placed in the middle of a “perverse generation.” And it has people who sometimes act in the flesh. But it is nevertheless God’s ideal given to us at the beginning of the church age. Between the ascension of Jesus and the descension of Jesus we have this ideal geographical location called the local church.
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