The question of who do glorified Christians rule over is now answered

Over the history of this blog I've often puzzled over the question of just who glorified Christians in the new heaven and earth are to rule over. Considering that all in heaven will be glorified, and all else will be in hell.

It seems I actually came into understanding of it back in 2005 and just forgot. Or, didn't realize I had come into understanding of that particular question as I was focusing on some other topic in passing.

The key to seeing the answer is in the structure of a kingdom. Heaven and earth will be a glorious Kingdom of God manifest purely and totally. Here now we see it partly.

So a kingdom has a structure, a hierarchy. Levels. With the King of kings at the top, Jesus Christ (or, the Godhead perhaps as Jesus hands everything back over to the Father).

So what makes up the levels of this Kingdom?

The Bible speaks of level of being of each Christian. The Apostle Paul speaks of this. Like an earthly kingdom now has different levels of people. Peasants. Merchants. Aristocracy. Royalty. All of it not necessarily real in this fallen world, i.e. the aristocrats may not be so elite, the king may be syphilitic, but you can still see the pattern.

In heaven each level of glorified Christian will be real. Each will take their place based on their true level of being. No complaints. No resentment. And the higher levels will rule the lower, in some sense, in just the same way that a baron would rule his knights or his peasants.

Of course, though, we are talking about glorified men and women up and down the hierarchy of the Kingdom of God post great white throne judgment, so it is very different from a kingdom we might see or read about today. And in heaven there just may be vertical movement. Ability to rise a level. Legitimately. Not by insurrection against the higher levels. Not by rebellion against the Kingdom of God itself. Natural development that results in natural placement elsewhere in the Kingdom.

Yet you can see the answer to the question of who do we rule over in the new heaven and earth? If we're a baron we rule over knights and merchants and farmers (so to speak, those categories might not even exist in heaven, but you see the analogy).

Just as there seems to be a hierarchy of angels now.

So the question of just who glorified Christians in the new heaven and earth are to rule over is answered.

(We also rule over ourselves. Our internal kingdom. That is how we are each kings. Prophets, priests, and kings.)

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I also found this which should be in the mix. Dominion. Jesus says in Revelation we will rule over the nations. That is the confusion. Aren't non-Christians in hell? (I know the gravity of that statement, by the way. It is the terror of the situation for all of us.) Maybe this statement in Revelation just means at the Second Coming we, with Christ our King, will have rule over the nations. Then they will be judged, which we will have some part in as well.

But as for what we rule over after that I found this:

4. Humans are made in the image of God to have dominion.

Genesis 1 begins with the creation of the heavens and the earth, but then narrows in to a particular garden called “Eden.” This garden is where God dwells with his people on earth. In the Ancient Near East, the home of a god was a temple, and Eden is presented in these terms. But it is a temple with a difference. It is not a static, lifeless building but a growing garden. God is not a lifeless statue within this temple, but he walks and talks within the garden (Gen. 3:8). The images in the temple are not made of wood or stone, but are human flesh and blood named Adam and Eve (Gen. 1:26, 27).

All later tabernacles and temples within the history of the people of Israel are a reflection of Eden. The Garden of Eden is the exemplar of what it looks like when heaven and earth meet. God’s image bearers are given a purpose within the temple. They are bestowed with vice-regal authority to manage the development in God’s world, to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). This is why humans were created. It goes to the core of our reason for existence.