Heaven | Randy Alcorn

Randy Alcorn. Heaven. Tyndale, 2004. 516 pp.

Bookstores overflow with accounts of near-death and after-death experiences, complete with angels giving guided tours of Heaven. A few of these books may have authentic components, but many are unbiblical and misleading.

We Christians who believe God’s Word are partly to blame for this. Why? We have failed to explore and explain the Bible’s magnificent teachings about Heaven. No wonder a flood of unbiblical thinking has rushed in to fill the vacuum. Because the human heart cries out for answers about the afterlife, our silence on Heaven is particularly striking.

The truth is, in our seminaries, churches, and families, we have given amazingly little attention to the place where we will live forever with Christ and his people—the New Earth, in the new universe. This eternal Heaven is the central subject of this book. It’s a subject I’ve found to be fascinating, thrilling, and life-changing. . . .

In part 1, “A Theology of Heaven,” I will explain the difference between the present, or intermediate, Heaven (where Christians go when they die) and the ultimate, eternal Heaven (where God will dwell with his people on the New Earth). . . . We’ll discuss whether the current Heaven is a physical place; whether people there remember life on Earth; whether they pray for loved ones on Earth and can actually see what’s going on here; and we’ll answer the question, If people in Heaven are aware of events on Earth, including suffering, how could it be Heaven?

The backbone of part 1 is a discussion of the book’s central subject, the New Earth. I’ll present foundational biblical truths concerning God’s larger plan in redemption, especially in the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and what that means for the New Earth. I will answer questions such as, What will it mean to see God? What will our relationships with people be like? What will it mean to rule the earth with Christ?

Part 2, “Questions and Answer about Heaven,” Addresses specific questions about life on the New Earth that arise out of the foundational teachings in part 1—questions such as, Will the New Earth be like Eden? Will there be animals on the New Earth? What kind of city is the New Jerusalem? What will our bodies be like? Will we eat and drink? Will we work? use machinery? play? study and learn? create art and music and culture?

You may find that the material in the first part of the book is paradigm shifting. If you don’t understand the foundational principles, however, you will come to the second half with a different set of assumptions, and what I’m saying may not make sense. The soundness of my conclusion in the question and answer section depends on the biblical basis I present in part 1. . . .

If I were dealing with the subject of Heaven in order of importance, I would begin with a discussion of God’s presence in Heaven and our relationship with him, because being with God and seeing his face is the central joy of Heaven and the source of all other joys. But there’s a major obstacle: Because of our wrong assumptions about the eternal state, we bring misguided perspectives to what it will mean to see God or be with him. We succumb to the vague, ethereal notions of eastern religions rather than build our understanding on the concrete, physical depictions of biblical and historical Christianity. We fail to envision God as forever incarnate in the risen Christ, and we fail to recognize the New Earth as a physical environment, civilization, and culture in which God will dwell with us. Consequently, I must lay the biblical groundwork before I discuss what it will mean to live with God forever and answer other key questions about Heaven. . . .

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 begins 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).

Taken from Heaven by Randy Alcorn. Copyright © 2004 by Eternal Perspective Ministries. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

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