When Jesus was on earth, he—as earth’s future King—could rightly say to the repentant evildoer impaled alongside him: “You will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43)
The Paradise that Jesus had in mind would be on earth, as God originally purposed.
This fact is well supported in the Bible. Consider the following texts.
“The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.” (Psalm 37:29)
“There will come to be plenty of grain on the earth; on the top of the mountains there will be an overflow.” (Psalm 72:16)
“The upright are the ones that will reside in the earth, and the blameless are the ones that will be left over in it.” (Proverbs 2:21)
“They [the blameless] will not do any harm or cause any ruin in all my holy mountain; because the earth will certainly be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah as the waters are covering the very sea.”—Isaiah 11:9.
In harmony with those statements, in his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said:
“Happy are the mild-tempered ones, since they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)
Later, the apostle John wrote: “The tent of God is with mankind . . . He will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3, 4)
Clearly, these Bible texts refer, not to a heavenly “paradise,” but to a physical one here on earth.