This future period of blessing is also described in the Bible as one of judgment, or trial. Isaiah wrote that when the Lord’s judgments are abroad in the earth, “the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” (Isa. 26:9) All the inequalities of the present will then be righted. Those who now will fully oppose God and his laws, and unjustly treat their fellows, will then receive appropriate discipline designed to correct their wrongdoing. All the circumstances relative to each individual will be considered, and the people blessed or punished accordingly.
Even those who have died in infancy will be awakened, will mature to adulthood, and have an opportunity to enjoy God’s blessings. In a comforting promise to mothers who lose their children, the prophet wrote: “Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith the Lord: Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy.”—Jer. 31:15-17
Having had real experience with both good and evil, each individual will be able to choose intelligently between good, and live forever, or evil, and again be sentenced to death; a death from which there will be no resurrection. Christ will then be King, and judge supreme. Peter also refers to him as a great “Prophet,” and informs us that it shall come to pass “that every soul which will not hear [or obey] that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.”—Acts 3:22,23
During the present nighttime of sin and death all die—believers and unbelievers, the innocent and the guilty, the righteous and the unrighteous. But during the reign of Christ only those who willfully disobey the laws of God will be destroyed. All others will continue to live and mature toward perfection. If they continue faithful, they will enter as perfect humans into the everlasting future ages of happiness and life “with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, … and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”—Isa. 35:10