Heaven Read online

  "I'VE NEVER THOUGHT THIS WAY BEFORE"

  A friend asked me the central premise of this book. When I explained it briefly, he looked at me wide-eyed, incredulous. I rephrased it, using different Scrip­tures and illustrations. Suddenly, the light went on for him. He said, "The more you restate it in different ways, the more Scripture you use, the more it makes sense. But I've never thought this way before. I don't think many people have. You'll need to make your case carefully, or people just won't believe it."

  I will try to make the case carefully and biblically. There is plenty in this book for everyone to disagree with. But I hope you'll find that most of it rings true to Scripture and opens up exciting doors to imagining and anticipating everything that awaits God's children in the magnificent world to come.

  INTRODUCTION

  THE SUBJECT OF HEAVEN

  Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Fathers house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a placefor you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

  John 14:1-3

  The sense that we will live forever somewhere has shaped every civilization in human history. Australian aborigines pictured Heaven as a distant is­land beyond the western horizon. The early Finns thought it was an island in the faraway east. Mexicans, Peruvians, and Polynesians believed that they went to the sun or the moon after death.1Native Americans believed that in the afterlife their spirits would hunt the spirits of buffalo.2 The Gilgamesh epic, an ancient Babylonian legend, refers to a resting place of heroes and hints at a tree of life. In the pyramids of Egypt, the embalmed bodies had maps placed beside them as guides to the future world.3 The Romans be­lieved that the righteous would picnic in the Elysian fields while their horses grazed nearby. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said, "The day thou fearest as the last is the birthday of eternity." Although these depictions of the after­life differ, the unifying testimony of the human heart throughout history is belief in life after death. Anthropological evidence suggests that every cul­ture has a God-given, innate sense of the eternal—that this world is not all there is.4

  EARLY CHRISTIANS' PREOCCUPATION WITH HEAVEN

  The Roman catacombs, where the bodies of many martyred Christians were buried, contain tombs with inscriptions such as these:

  • In Christ, Alexander is not dead, but lives.

  • One who lives with God.

  • He was taken up into his eternal home.5

  One historian writes, "Pictures on the catacomb walls portray Heaven with beautiful landscapes, children playing, and people feasting at banquets."6

  In AD 125, a Greek named Aristides wrote to a friend about Christianity, ex­plaining why this "new religion" was so successful: "If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby"7

  In the third century, the church father Cyprian said, "Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own na­tive land. . . . We regard paradise as our native land."8

  These early Christian perspectives sound almost foreign today, don't they? But their beliefs were rooted in the Scriptures, where the apostle Paul writes, "To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. . . . I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far" (Philippians 1:21,23). He also wrote, "As long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.... We . . . would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:6, 8).

  When Jesus told his disciples, "In my Father's house are many rooms. . ..I am going there to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2), he deliberately chose common, physical terms {house, rooms,place) to describe where he was going and what he was preparing for us. He wanted to give his disciples (and us) some­thing tangible to look forward to—an actual place where they (and we) would go to be with him.

  This place is not an ethereal realm of disembodied spirits, because human beings are not suited for such a realm. A place is by nature physical, just as hu­man beings are by nature physical. (We are also spiritual.) What we are suited for—what we've been specifically designed for—is a place like the one God made for us: Earth.

  In this book, we'll see from Scripture an exciting yet strangely neglected truth—that God never gave up on his original plan for human beings to dwell on Earth. In fact, the climax of history will be the creation of new heavens and a New Earth, a resurrected universe inhabited by resurrected people living with the resurrected Jesus (Revelation 21:1-4).

  OUR TERMINAL DISEASE

  As human beings, we have a terminal disease called mortality. The current death rate is 100 percent. Unless Christ returns soon, we're all going to die. We don't like to think about death; yet, worldwide, 3 people die every second, 180 every minute, and nearly 11,000 every hour. If the Bible is right about what happens to us after death, it means that more than 250,000 people every day go either to Heaven or Hell.†

  David said, "Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath" (Psalm 39:4-5). Picture a single breath escaping your mouth on a cold day and dissipating into the air. Such is the brevity of life here. The wise will consider what awaits us on the other side of this life that so quickly ends.

  God uses suffering and impending death to unfasten us from this earth and to set our minds on what lies beyond. I've lost people close to me. (Actually, I haven't lost them, because I know where they are—rather, I've lost contact with them.) I've spent a lot of time talking to people who've been diagnosed with ter­minal diseases. These people, and their loved ones, have a sudden and insatiable interest in the afterlife. Most people live unprepared for death. But those who are wise will go to a reliable source to investigate what's on the other side. And if they discover that the choices they make during their brief stay in this world will matter in the world to come, they'll want to adjust those choices accord­ingly.

  Ancient merchants often wrote the words memento mori—"think of death" —in large letters on the first page of their accounting books.9 Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, commissioned a servant to stand in his presence each day and say, "Philip, you will die." In contrast, France's Louis XIV decreed that the word death not be uttered in his presence. Most of us are more like Louis than Philip, denying death and avoiding the thought of it except when it's forced upon us. We live under the fear of death.

  Jesus came to deliver us from the fear of death, "so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (Hebrews 2:1415).

  In light of the coming resurrection of the dead, the apostle Paul asks, "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Corinthi­ans 15:55).

  What delivers us from the fear of death? What takes away death's sting? Only a relationship with the person who died on our behalf, the one who has gone ahead to make a place for us to live with him. If we don't know Jesus, we will fear death and its sting—and we should.

  SEEING THE SHORE

  Perhaps you've come to this book burdened, discouraged, depressed, or even traumatized. Perhaps your dreams—your marriage, career, or ambitions—have crumbled. Perhaps you've become cynical or have lost hope. A biblical under­standing of the truth about Heaven can change all that.

  In 1952, young Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, determined to swim to the shore of mainland Cali­fornia. She'd already been the first woman to swim the English
Channel both ways. The weather was foggy and chilly; she could hardly see the boats accom­panying her. Still, she swam for fifteen hours. When she begged to be taken out of the water along the way, her mother, in a boat alongside, told her she was close and that she could make it. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out. It wasn't until she was on the boat that she discovered the shore was less than half a mile away. At a news confer­ence the next day she said, "All I could see was the f o g . . . . I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it."10

  Consider her words: "I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it." For believers, that shore is Jesus and being with him in the place that he promised to prepare for us, where we will live with him forever. The shore we should look for is that of the New Earth. If we can see through the fog and pic­ture our eternal home in our mind's eye, it will comfort and energize us.

  If you're weary and don't know how you can keep going, I pray this book will give you vision, encouragement, and hope. No matter how tough life gets, if you can see the shore and draw your strength from Christ, you'll make it.

  I pray this book will help you see the shore.

  † To underscore the fact that Heaven and Hell are real places, I am deliberately capitalizing them throughout the book, as I would other proper nouns, such as Chicago, Nigeria, Europe, or Saturn. I also capitalize the New Earth, just as I would New England. Not to do so would imply that Heaven and Hell and the New Earth aren't real places. But they are—they're as real as the places we were born and the places we now live.

  SECTION ONE

  REALIZING OUR DESTINY

  CHAPTER 1

  ARE YOU LOOKING

  FORWARD TO HEAVEN?

  The man who is about to sail for Australia or New Zealand as a settler, is naturally anxious to know: something about hisfuture home, its climate, its employments, its inhabitants, its ways, its customs. All these are subjects of deep interest to him. You are leaving the land of your nativity, you are going to spend the rest of your life in a new: hemisphere. It would be strange indeed if you did not desire information about your new abode. Now surely, if we hope to dwell for ever in that "better country, even a heavenly one," we ought to seek all the knowledge we can get about it. Before we go to our eternal home we should try to become acquainted with it.

  J.C.Ryle

  Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan preacher, often spoke of Heaven. He said, "It becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven . . . to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labor for or set our hearts on anything else, but that which is our proper end and true happiness?"11

  In his early twenties, Edwards composed a set of life resolutions. One read, "Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can."12

  Some may think it odd and inappropriate that Edwards was so committed to pursuing happiness for himself in Heaven. But Pascal was right when he said, "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end."13 And if we all seek happiness, why not do as Edwards did and seek it where it can actually be found—in the person of Jesus and the place called Heaven?

  Tragically, however, most people do not find their joy in Christ and Heaven. In fact, many people find no joy at all when they think about Heaven.

  A pastor once confessed to me, "Whenever I think about Heaven, it makes me depressed. I'd rather just cease to exist when I die."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I can't stand the thought of that endless tedium. To float around in the clouds with nothing to do but strum a harp . . . it's all so terribly boring. Heaven doesn't sound much better than Hell. I'd rather be annihilated than spend eter­nity in a place like that."

  Where did this Bible-believing, seminary-educated pastor get such a view of Heaven? Certainly not from Scripture, where Paul said to depart and be with Christ was far better than staying on a sin-cursed Earth (Philippians 1:23). My friend was more honest about it than most, yet I've found that many Christians share the same misconceptions about Heaven.

  After reading my novel Deadline, which portrays Heaven as a real and excit­ing place, a woman wrote me, "I've been a Christian since I was five. I'm mar­ried to a youth pastor. When I was seven, a teacher at my Christian school told me that when I got to Heaven, I wouldn't know anyone or anything from earth. I was terrified of dying. I was never told any different by anyone. . . . It's been really hard for me to advance in my Christian walk because of this fear of Heaven and eternal life."

  Let those words sink in: "This fear of heaven and eternal life." Referring to her recently transformed perspective, she said, "You don't know the weight that's been lifted off of me. . . . Now I can't wait to get to Heaven."

  OUR UNBIBUCAL VIEW OF HEAVEN

  When an English vicar was asked by a colleague what he expected after death, he replied, "Well, if it comes to that, I suppose I shall enter into eternal bliss, but I really wish you wouldn't bring up such depressing subjects."14

  Over the past fifteen years, I've received thousands of letters and have had hundreds of conversations concerning Heaven. I've spoken about Heaven at churches and conferences. I've written about Heaven and taught a seminary course titled "A Theology of Heaven." There's a great deal I don't know, but one thing I do know is what people think about Heaven. And frankly, I'm alarmed.

  I agree with this statement by John Eldredge in The Journey of Desire: "Nearly every Christian I have spoken with has some idea that eternity is an un­ending church service. . . . We have settled on an image of the never-ending sing-along in the sky, one great hymn after another, forever and ever, amen. And our heart sinks. Forever and evert That's it? That's the good news? And then we sigh and feel guilty that we are not more 'spiritual.'We lose heart, and we turn once more to the present to find what life we can."15

  Gary Larson captured a common misperception of Heaven in one of his Far Side cartoons. In it a man with angel wings and a halo sits on a cloud, doing nothing, with no one nearby. He has the expression of someone marooned on a desert island with absolutely nothing to do. A caption shows his inner thoughts: "Wish I'd brought a magazine."

  In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain portrays a similar view of Heaven. The Christian spinster Miss Watson takes a dim view of Huck's fun-loving spirit. According to Huck, "She went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. . . . I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said, not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together."16

  The pious Miss Watson had nothing to say about Heaven that appealed to Huck. (And nothing, if we're honest, that appeals to us.) What would have at­tracted him was a place where he could do meaningful and pleasurable things with enjoyable people. In fact, that's a far more accurate depiction of what Heaven will actually be like. If Miss Watson had told Huck what the Bible says about living in a resurrected body and being with people we love on a resur­rected Earth with gardens and rivers and mountains and untold adventures—now that would have gotten his attention!

  When it came to Heaven and Hell, Mark Twain never quite got it. Under the weight of age, he said in his autobiography, "The burden of pain, care, mis­ery grows heavier year by year. At length ambition is dead, pride is dead, vanity is dead, longing for release is in their place. It comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing; where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness."17

  What a contrast to the perspective that Charles Spurgeon, his contempo­rary, had on death: "To come to Thee is to come home from exile, to come to land out of the raging storm, to come to rest after long labour, to come to the goal of my desires and the summ
it of my wishes."18

  We do not desire to eat gravel. Why? Because God did not design us to eat gravel. Trying to develop an appetite for a disembodied existence in a nonphysical Heaven is like trying to develop an appetite for gravel. No matter how sincere we are, and no matter how hard we try, it's not going to work. Nor should it.

  What God made us to desire, and therefore what we do desire if we admit it, is exactly what he promises to those who follow Jesus Christ: a resurrected life in a resurrected body, with the resurrected Christ on a resurrected Earth. Our desires correspond precisely to God's plans. It's not that we want something, so we engage in wishful thinking that what we want exists. It's the opposite—the reason we want it is precisely because God has planned for it to exist. As we'll see, resurrected people living in a resurrected universe isn't our idea—it's God's.

  Nineteenth-century British theologian J. C. Ryle said, "I pity the man who never thinks about heaven."19 We could also say, "I pity the man who never thinks accurately about Heaven." It's our inaccurate thinking, I believe, that causes us to choose to think so little about Heaven.

  THEOLOGICAL NEGLECT OF HEAVEN

  John Calvin, the great expositor, never wrote a commentary on Revelation and never dealt with the eternal state at any length. Though he encourages medita­tion on Heaven in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, his theology of Heaven seems strikingly weak compared to his theology of God, Christ, salva­tion, Scripture, and the church. This is understandable in light of the pressing theological issues of his day, but surprisingly few theologians in the centuries since Calvin have attempted to fill in the gaps. A great deal has been written about eschatology—the study of the end times—but comparatively little about Heaven. (Only a small number of the books on Heaven I've collected are still in print.)