Who Exactly Will Go to Dwell Eternally in Heaven?
The short answer is the believing Gentiles of "the church, body of Christ" who were saved, regenerated by the Lord’s “Spirit of life” during “the dispensation of the grace of God.” But God has another people, the Nation Israel who will inherit the earth when Christ come again in His 2nd coming.
Most people are surprised when they learn that the Old Testament, though three times as large as the New, does not contain one single promise about going to heaven. God’s people, in Old Testament times, looked forward to a glorified restored earth, with Messiah as its Ruler. Israel is never promised heaven.
This was so even when our Lord was on earth and it continued to be so through Pentecost. Peter, addressing his kinsmen just after Pentecost, said in essence: “Repent, and God will send Jesus [down here]” (See Acts 3:19-20), but Paul, in his epistles, says by divine inspiration:
“20 For our conversation [Old English for ‘citizenship’] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. Philippians 3:20-21 (KJV)
Paul, the apostle of grace, teaches us that God has already given believers in Christ a position and “all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 2:4-6; 1:3). And he teaches further that at the close of this dispensation of grace “the dead in Christ shall rise” and “we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together …to meet the Lord… and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (I Thes. 4:16-17).
Thus, it is that Paul, God’s special apostle for our day, declares that “our conversation [or citizenship] is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20) and writes of “the hope which is laid up for you in heaven” (Col. 1:5).
And thus, he writes even of death:
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle [physical body] were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (II Cor. 5:1).
“…to die is gain….to depart and to be with Christ…is far better” (Phil. 1:21, 23).