One of my favorite Dave Chappelle skits was when he played a blind black man who was leading a KKK rally, because he didn’t know he was black. Everybody liked him so much, that they didn’t have the heart to tell him he was black. Racial stereotypes are not about a person’s skin, but our ability to see a person’s skin allows us to apply stereotypes. With all of the racial tension going on these days, I wondered what we will look like in Heaven and beyond, and should that inform how we think about people today?
Biblical writers who describe Heaven or the New Earth seem to have received their information in the form of a vision. They passed on a verbal description, but what they learned they saw. Unfortunately, people are rarely described. I cannot say for sure whether those in Heaven looked like adults, children, seniors or something completely different. I would assume if they did not look like adults something might have been said.
There are both males and females who are saved, but will we retain our sexuality or at least the appearance of our sexuality or will we become sexually vague individuals? The one picture involving people in Heaven is Revelation 7:9-17. It gives no clue to the male or female, young or old questions, but it does say this:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes…
Revelation 7:9
John can clearly identify race. It suggests to me that we will retain our racial appearance because God has made it and it is considered beautiful.
This should certainly give you pause if you hold any racial animosity. Here, everybody has a sinful nature and anybody could be capable of doing wrong. It is not inherent to their race, it is inherent to their species, and expressed individually. Once we are cleansed of our sinful nature, we will be diverse, beautiful and righteous. Remember that.
In fact the mission of the Church to spread the Gospel to save people eternally will continue until all people groups have sufficiently heard it:
And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to the nations, and then the end will come.
Matthew 24:14
This is further verification that God values racial diversity.
With respect to sex or age, Isaiah 65, which writes about the New Earth, does speak about children being born and old men living out their years. These references make you wonder about how to interpret Isaiah 65, because the rest of Scripture speaks of eternal life and not being given in marriage. This would not preclude a literal understanding of this passage. It might refer to a different type of life cycle–one that might still include being male and female, young and old.
Without further information, I would expect that we would retain much of appearance. In Heaven, I expect that our heavenly bodies will reflect an ideal age, health, strength and retain our sex in some way. I do not expect us to be reproductive, but may have a way of physical bonding.
In the New Earth, I expect our resurrected bodies to have full health but to go through stages, never dying, but restarting. I expect we will retain racial characteristics and sexual characteristics and may even be reproductive. But there is much that is unknown.
The little information that God has shared, should be enough to understand your value to God as a female or male or as a member of any race. It should also move you to value others for what they are. Even people who are quite corrupted by sinful nature hold a value, because sinful nature is one thing that will go away. The ideal version of us all it still to be revealed.
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be have not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.
1 John 3:2
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