Travelers
In Job 1:6, the Sons of God came to appear before God. He does not go to where they are. They go to where God is. Satan (or The Adversary) came among them. This hints that he is of the “Sons of God” class of being. Later in the Bible he is assigned this title as a proper personal name. God asked Satan, What have you been up to? Satan answers, From roaming around on the earth. Apparently, at this point, Satan used to travel from heavenly places to the earth and back again, at will. Though Satan is a spirit without an earthly body, he moves back and forth between the spirit realm and the earth. He has, therefore, some kind of locality. Some speculate that the spirit realm operates at a frequency higher than the speed of light. As a spirit being, he is not visible while on the earth, either.
This traveling back and forth between heaven and earth was something that Satan and God and the good spirits were able to do. It seems that God had the custom of walking in Eden with Adam and his wife daily.
The patriarch Abraham had the privilege of talking with God on several occasions. His grandson Jacob had an unusual experience one night. He had a dream where he saw a stair case. The angels of God were ascending and descending on it (Gen 28:12). Jacob saw into the invisible realm. He saw travel between heaven and earth, between the spirit realm and the physical dimension. These angels were traveling from one realm to another in order to accomplish their responsibilities.
Jesus said something to Nathaniel we do not see recorded being spoken to anyone else.
And he (Jesus) saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. (John 1:51)
This is the same thing that Jacob saw in his dream, angels traveling between 2 different places.
The day of His resurrection, Jesus said to Mary, Stop clinging to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father (John 20:17 NASB). Later, Jesus invited the disciples to touch Him (Luke 24:39). Had Jesus returned to the Father between these 2 incidents? For the next 40 days Jesus would come and go, interacting with the disciples. He would appear and disappear until the day that He ascended into the clouds in the sight of the believers. That was the last time He was seen by the general group of believers. His promise, of course, is that, at the proper time, He would come again to receive us unto Himself.
When Jesus comes again for His people, we who are dead and we who are living will be changed physically. We will possess a resurrection body that is like the body of Jesus. They may be different from each other in “brightness” but we are all like Jesus in nature.
What will we be doing? It is my understanding that we, from the Church Age, will “help” Jesus administer His reign from heavenly places (Eph 2:6). We are also told that Christ is saving people from every nation who are going to reign on the earth (Rev 5:9, 10). It may be that we saints will be doing our administrative work both in heavenly places as well as upon the earth. We will travel from heaven to earth and back again as our work demands.
In the heavenly realm we will replace the original Sons of God watching over the inhabitants of the earth. When needed, we can travel to the earth to interact with natural humans. We would be “travelers” in the ancient spiritual sense. Unlike the original Sons of God we will never take worship for ourselves. They took advantage of their superior ability and passed themselves off as “gods”. The new Sons of God have the righteousness of Christ in them and are never able to violate the Life of God which directs us.
Some people have plans to travel when they retire. How about inter-planetary travel? It seems that the Lord has this in mind for His faithful servants when they retire from this life.
May 24, 2024