True Ddzx, Jesus said of John the Baptist:
Matthew 11:11) Truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has not been raised up anyone greater than John the Baptist, but a lesser person in the Kingdom of the heavens is greater than he is.
(So John did not go to heaven when he died.)
Was Adam ever meant to live in heaven?
(Genesis 1:26) Then God said: “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and the domestic animals and all the earth and every creeping animal that is moving on the earth.”
(So, God’s purpose for Adam was that he be caretaker of the earth and of the animal life there. Nothing is said about his going to heaven.)
(Genesis 2:16, 17) Jehovah God also gave this command to the man: “From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will certainly die.”
(It was not Jehovah’s original purpose for man someday to die. God’s command here quoted shows that he warned against the course that would lead to death. Death was to be punishment for disobedience, not the doorway to a better life in heaven. Obedience would have been rewarded by continued life, eternal life, in the Paradise that God had given to man.)
Jesus taught his disciples to pray:
Matt. 6:9, 10: “Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified. Let your kingdom come. Let your will take place, as in heaven, also upon earth.”
(What is God’s will regarding the earth? What do Genesis 1:28 and Isaiah 45:18 indicate?)
Matt. 25:31-33, 40, 46: “When the Son of man arrives in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit down on his glorious throne. And all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will put the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. . . . The king will say to them [the sheep], ‘Truly I say to you, To the extent that you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ And [the goats] will depart into everlasting cutting-off, but the righteous ones [the sheep] into everlasting life.”
(Notice that these “sheep” are not the same as the King’s brothers, who are “partakers of the heavenly calling.” [Heb. 2:10–3:1] But these sheeplike ones would be alive during the time that Christ was on his throne and during the time when some of his “brothers” would still be experiencing hardship on earth.)
What will those who go to heaven do there? Rev. 20:6: “They will be priests of God and of the Christ, and will rule as kings with him for the thousand years.”
Over whom will they rule then? It will be over the "righteous ones [the sheep that go off ]into everlasting life.”
