...is here today.
rev 21:1-4 = Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” [a] for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ [b] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
maybe this says a little about all of us. our old heavens and old earth passed away. no longer do we believe in a heaven with 144,000 useless kings and jesus and jehovah taking turns keeping look out. no longer do we believe in an earth that will soon experience a human massacre of untold proportions before becoming a paradise presided over by 144,000 useless kings, infinity angels and jehovah doing whatever.
jehovah is a mental construct. when we leave that old heaven and that old earth behind, we realize that jehovah, or at least the jehovah we had believed in as a witness, was not real. maybe we can say that we find he lives among us. maybe we can say jehovah is within each and everyone of us, after all he is an imaginary construct. maybe we can be our own gods.
there were a lot of tears, morning, pain, death, etc...but now it's different. before, the tears, pain and mourning for me were from the depth of sadness from not understanding why i didn't love god the way i needed to, from the hell i went through at school, for the life i thought i had lost. in the old system, everything i wanted to do was going to have to wait until the death old system and the start of the paradise earth. in the new system, LIFE and finding the people and passions that make you happiest in yours is the most important thing.
the possibilities are endless in this new earth. i've always wanted to learn a slew of languages and i can, today. there's a mltitude of free mp3 lessons for all sorts of languages on the net. i love math and science and i'm learning so much. in the old system, i wold never have been able to learn about political science (won't be any gov'ts), economics (no money), solciology (god will make it perfect), law (all you need is god's after all).
in the new system, in this new earth, there's nothing stopping any of us from experiencing "paradise" today
the gate was small, the road was narrow, and only a few of us ex-jehovah's witnesses find it, but that journey is worth it.
just a little encouragement for anyone feeling down on the way out of that biblical prison