Heaven (41 page)

A doctrine of infant salvation appears to require that children are conceived saved, then remain saved until they reach a
certain age, at which point they be­come lost. But Scripture teaches we're conceived lost and remain lost until we become
saved.

Scripture makes no reference to an "age of accountability," and it certainly doesn't teach the moral innocence of children.
Charles Spurgeon said, "Some ground the idea of the eternal blessedness of the infant upon its
innocence.
We do no such thing. We believe that the infant fell in the first Adam 'for in Adam all died.'. . . If infants be saved it
is not because of any natural innocence. They enter heaven by the very same way that we do: they are received in the name
of Christ."
²⁶⁶

Any person's salvation comes only through Christ's work (1 Timothy 2:5). Unless a person is born again, he or she can't enter
God's Kingdom (John 3:3). How could a child be born again without consciously choosing Christ?

Scripture opens the door to the answer to this question through its teaching that God has a special love for children. Christ
taught that we need to become like children to enter God's Kingdom, and he made a point of embracing children when his disciples
wanted to exclude them (Matthew 19:13-14). He said "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them" (Luke 18:16).
Christ used children as examples of faith (Matthew 18:2-4). In Ezekiel 16:21, God expresses his anger at the killing of children
and refers to them as "my children."

Jesus says that the angels assigned to children "continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 18:10, NASB).
Clearly, this is special treatment, suggesting there may be other acts of special treatment, including salvation apart from
the normal process of confession and repentance. Because of such passages, I believe that God in his mercy and his special
love for chil­dren covers them with Christ's blood.

In Psalm 8:2, David says, "From the lips of children and infants you have or­dained praise" (quoted by Jesus in Matthew 21:16).
The inclusion of infants is significant because they would not be
conscious
of giving praise; it would have to be something instinctive. So, although children are sinners who need to be saved, God may
well have a just way to cover them with Christ's blood so they go to Heaven when they die.

An interesting passage tells us that John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother's womb (Luke 1:15, NASB).
This suggests that God con­ferred a righteous standing—or at least a special, spiritual, sanctifying work—on John even though
he was too young to confess his sinfulness or consciously yield to God. If God did that with John, couldn't he do it with
other children?Similarly, David says God had been his God since his mother bore him (Psalm 22:10). God told Jeremiah he'd
known him since before he was formed in his mother's womb (Jeremiah 1:5).

The most common biblical argument used to support infant salvation is Da­vid's statement about his infant son who died: "I
will go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:23). It's possible that David was saying either that he would die
and go to the grave (joining his son in death but not necessarily in Heaven) or that he would die and, in fact, join his son
in Heaven. I personally think David, in his agony, was consoling himself with the belief he would one day join his son in
Heaven.

Although I believe God makes special provision for children to welcome them into Heaven, I'm concerned that this doctrine—which
is at most implied and certainly not directly taught in Scripture—has been twisted in a way to make many people feel indifferent
about two heartrending situations: abortion and children dying of sickness and malnutrition. I've written more elsewhere on
the dangerous aspects of this subject.
²⁶⁷

Perhaps in Heaven many people will meet their children who were aborted or their children who died in miscarriages (even some
miscarriages their mothers weren't aware of). Many parents will be reunited with children who died at an early age. Perhaps
these children will grab our hands and show us around the present Heaven. Then one day, after the final resurrection, we'll
enjoy each other's company on the New Earth—and experience its wonders together.

If children do go to Heaven when they die, why doesn't God tell us that di­rectly? It may be that he anticipates the twisted
logic and rationalization it might foster in us. It might take from us the sense of urgency to see our children come to faith
in Christ. It might cause us to be less concerned about the sacred God-given task of extending physical and financial help
to the underprivileged and getting the gospel to children around the world. We must do what God has called us to do, which
includes protecting, rescuing, feeding, evangelizing, and discipling children.

In Heaven, both we and they will be grateful for all we did on their behalf.

WHO WILL OUR FRIENDS BE IN HEAVEN?

Augustine and Aquinas—two of history's most influential theologians—imag­ined that in Heaven people would focus exclusively
on God and that relation­ships between human beings would be minimal or insignificant.
²⁶⁸

These great theologians were swayed by Christoplatonism. For the most part, they didn't seem to grasp that the eternal Heaven
will be on Earth, where people will live and work in a relational society, glorifying God not merely as in­dividuals but as
a family in rich relationship with each other.

Near the end of his life, however, Augustine significantly changed his view of Heaven. He said, "We have not lost our dear
ones who have departed from this life, but have merely sent them ahead of us, so we also shall depart and shall come to that
life where they will be more than ever dear as they will be better known to us, and where we shall love them without fear
of parting."
²⁶⁹
He also said, "All of us who enjoy God are also enjoying each other in Him."
²⁷⁰

Do you have a close friend who's had a profound influence on you? Do you think it is a coincidence that she was in your dorm
wing or became your room­mate? Was it accidental that your desk was near his or that his family lived next door or that your
father was transferred when you were in third grade so that you ended up in his neighborhood? God orchestrates our lives.
"From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them
and the exact places where they should live" (Acts 17:26).

Since God determined the time and exact places you would live, it's no acci­dent which neighborhood you grew up in, who lived
next door, who went to school with you, who was part of your church youth group, who was there to help you and pray for you.
Our relationships were appointed by God, and there's every reason to believe they'll continue in Heaven.

God's plan doesn't stop on the New Earth; it continues. God doesn't aban­don his purposes; he extends and fulfills them. Friendships
begun on Earth will continue in Heaven, getting richer than ever.

Will some friendships be closer than others? Augustine claimed, "In the city of God there will be no special friendships.
. . . All special attachments will be absorbed into one comprehensive and undifferentiated community of love. . . . The universalized
love of heaven permits no exclusive, restricted circles of friends."
²⁷¹

But how does this position stand up to Scripture?

Just because we'll be sinless doesn't mean we won't be drawn to certain peo­ple more than others. We'll like everyone, but
we'll be closer to some than oth­ers. Jesus was closer to John than to any of the other disciples. Jesus was closer to Peter,
James, and John than to the rest of the Twelve, and closer to the Twelve than to the seventy, and closer to the seventy than
to his other followers. He was close to Lazarus and Martha, and closer still to their sister Mary. He was so close to his
mother that while he was dying on the cross, he instructed John to care for her after his death. Since Christ was closer to
some people than to oth­ers, clearly there can't be anything wrong with it.

In Heaven there won't be cliques, exclusiveness, arrogance, posturing, belit­tling, or jealousy. But when friends particularly
enjoy each other's company, they are reflecting God's design. If, as you walk about the New Jerusalem, you see Adam and Eve
holding hands as they look at the tree of life, would you be­grudge them their special friendship?

Perhaps you're disappointed that you've never had the friendships you long for. In Heaven you'll have much closer relationships
with some people you now know, but it's also true that you may never have met the closest friends you'll ever have. Just as
someone may be fifty years old before meeting her best friend, you may live on the New Earth enjoying many friendships before
meeting someone who will become your dearest friend. Maybe your best friend will be someone sitting next to you at the first
great feast. After all, the sovereign God who orchestrates friendships will be in charge of the seating arrangements.

On the New Earth we'll experience the joy of familiarity in old relationships and the joy of discovery in new ones. As we
get to know each other better, we'll get to know God better. As we find joy in each other, we'll find joy in him. No human
relationships will overshadow our relationship with God. All will serve to enhance it.

CHAPTER 36

WHOM WILL WE MEET, AND WHAT WILL WE EXPERIENCE TOGETHER?

In Heaven, will we spend time with people whose lives are recorded in Scripture and church history? No doubt. Jesus told us
we'll sit at the din­ner table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matthew 8:11). If we sit with them, we should expect to sit
with others. What do people do at dinner ta­bles? In Middle Eastern cultures dinner was—and is—not only about good food and
drink but also a time for building relationships, talking together, and telling stories.

Who will we talk with in Heaven? I'd like to ask Mary to tell stories about Jesus as a child. I'd enjoy talking with Simeon,
Anna, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist. I want to hear Noah's accounts of life on the ark. I'm eager to listen to Moses tell
about his times with God on the mountain. I'd like to ask Elijah about being taken away in the chariot and Enoch (and Enoch's
wife) about his being caught up by God.

I want to talk with Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus. I'll ask people to fill in the blanks of the great stories in
Scripture and church history. I want to hear a few million new stories. One at a time, of course, and spread out over thousands
of years. I imagine we'll relish these great stories, ask questions, laugh together, and shake our heads in amazement.

We'll each have our own stories to tell also—and the memories and skills to tell them well. Right now, today, we are living
the lives from which such stories will be drawn. Are we living them with eternity in mind? We'll have new ad­ventures on the
New Earth from which new stories will emerge, but I suspect the old stories from this life will always interest us too.

I look forward to reconnecting with many old friends as well as my mom and dad. I look forward to thanking C. S. Lewis, Francis
Schaeffer, and A. W. Tozer for how their writings changed me. I anticipate meeting William Carey, Hudson and Maria Taylor,
Amy Carmichael, Jim Elliot, Charles Spurgeon, Dwight L. Moody, Harriet Beecher Stowe, some of the
Amistad
slaves, and a host of others.

Who's on your list?

How are you serving Christ today so that you may be on someone else's list?

WILL WE PURSUE AND DEVELOP RELATIONSHIPS?

One of the things I'm looking forward to in Heaven is meeting people I've known only by phone and e-mail. For those friends
I rarely see, we'll finally have time and access to enjoy each other's company.

I want to spend time again with the people who had an influence on me as a young Christian. I don't know how many of my ancestors
were Christians. Perhaps not many. But I can't wait to meet the ones who were and to hear their stories.

I'm eager to meet the young women our family supported in the Dominican Republic. I want to talk to some Cambodian pastors
and Chinese house church members who received Bibles from the ministries we gave to. What will it be like to meet the Sudanese
people our church helped rescue from slavery and op­pression? I want to thank them for their faith and example.

I want to spend time with my handicapped friends and watch them enjoy the freedom of new bodies and minds. I look forward
to sharp intellectual ex­changes with those who finished their course on Earth with Alzheimer's.(Maybe I'll be one of them.)

I want to spend time with the martyrs, some of whose stories I've read. Most of them didn't know each other on Earth, but
Revelation 6:9-11 portrays them as close-knit in Heaven.

We'll surely have many new relationships, some based on common inter­ests, experiences, and histories on Earth. If you have
a special interest in first-century Rome, perhaps you'll enjoy developing relationships with those who lived in that place
and time.

We'll talk with angels who saw the earth created and who watched their comrades rebel. We'll meet angels who guarded and served
us while we were on Earth. Don't you look forward to asking them questions?

If our conversations would be limited only to the earth's past, we might run the reservoir dry after fifty thousand years.
But the beauty is that Heaven will bring as many new developments as Earth ever did, and eventu­ally far more. We won't
begin
to run out of things to think about or talk about. The reservoir won't run dry. It will be replenished daily, forever ex­panding.

IF OUR LOVED ONES ARE IN HELL, WON'T THAT SPOIL HEAVEN?

Many people have lost loved ones who didn't know Christ. Some people argue that people in Heaven won't know Hell exists. But
this would make Heaven's joy dependent on ignorance, which is nowhere taught in Scripture.

So, how could we enjoy Heaven knowing that a loved one is in Hell? J. I. Packer offers an answer that's difficult but biblical:

God the Father (who now pleads with mankind to accept the reconcil­iation that Christ's death secured for all) and God the
Son (our appointed Judge, who wept over Jerusalem) will in a final judgment express wrath and administer justice against rebellious
humans. God's holy righteousness will hereby be revealed; God will be doing the right thing, vindicating himself at last against
all who have defied him. . . . (Read through Matt. 25; John 5:22-29; Rom. 2:5-16,12:19; 2 Thess. 1:7-9; Rev. 18:1-19:3, 20:11-15,
and you will see that clearly.) God will judge justly, and all angels, saints, and martyrs will praise him for it. So it seems
inescapable that we shall, with them, approve the judg­ment of persons—rebels—whom we have known and loved.
²⁷²

In Heaven, we will see with a new and far better perspective. We'll fully con­cur with God's judgment on the wicked. The martyrs
in Heaven call on God to judge evil people on Earth (Revelation 6:9-11). When God brings judgment on the wicked city of Babylon,
the people in Heaven are told, "Rejoice over her, O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets! God has judged her
for the way she treated you" (Revelation 18:20).

Hell itself may provide a dark backdrop to God's shining glory and unfath­omable grace. Jonathan Edwards made this case, saying,
"When the saints in glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will this heighten their sense of the
blessedness of their own state, so exceedingly different from it." He added, "They shall see the dreadful miseries of the
damned, and consider that they deserved the same misery, and that it was
sovereign grace,
and nothing else, which made them so much to differ from the damned."
²⁷³

We'll never question God's justice, wondering how he could send good peo­ple to Hell. Rather, we'll be overwhelmed with his
grace, marveling at what he did to send bad people to Heaven. (We will no longer have any illusion that fallen people are
good without Christ.)

In Heaven we'll see clearly that God revealed himself to each person and that he gave opportunity for each heart or conscience
to seek and respond to him (Romans 1:18-2:16). Those who've heard the gospel have a greater opportunity to respond to Christ
(Romans 10:13-17), but every unbeliever, through sin, has rejected God and his self-revelation in creation, conscience, or
the gospel.

Everyone deserves Hell. No one deserves Heaven. Jesus went to the cross to offer salvation to all (1 John
2:2).
God is absolutely sovereign and doesn't desire any to die without Christ (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9). Yet many will perish
in their unbelief (Matthew 7:13).

We'll embrace God's holiness and justice. We'll praise him for his goodness and grace. God will be our source of joy. Hell's
small and distant shadow will not interfere with God's greatness or our joy in him. (All of this should motivate us to share
the gospel of Christ with family, friends, neighbors, and the whole world.)

We'll also understand the truth revealed in 2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand
slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." We will marvel at the
patience God showed us and all of our loved ones, and how he long withheld our due judgment to give us opportunity to repent.

Although it will inevitably sound harsh, I offer this further thought: in a sense, none of our loved ones will be in Hell—only
some whom we
once
loved. Our love for our companions in Heaven will be directly linked to God, the cen­tral object of our love. We will see
him in them. We will not love those in Hell because when we see Jesus as he is, we will love only—and will only
want
to love—whoever and whatever pleases and glorifies and reflects him. What we loved in those who died without Christ was God's
beauty we once saw in them. When God forever withdraws from them, I think they'll no longer bear his im­age and no longer
reflect his beauty. Although they will be the same people, without God they'll be stripped of all the qualities we loved.
Therefore, para­doxically, in a sense they will
not
be the people we loved.

I cannot prove biblically what I've just stated, but I think it rings true, even if the thought is horrifying.

Not only in Heaven but also while we are still here on Earth, our God is "the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort"
(2 Corinthians 1:3). Any sor­rows that plague us now will disappear on the New Earth as surely as darkness disappears when
the light is turned on. "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,.. . neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor
pain" (Revelation 21:4,ESV).

This is God's promise. Let's rest in it.

Of this we may be absolutely certain: Hell will have no power over Heaven; none of Hell's misery will ever veto any of Heaven's
joy.

WILL WE EVER DISAGREE?

Because we're finite and unique and because we'll never know everything, we may not agree about everything in Heaven. We'll
agree on innumerable matters and wonder how we ever thought otherwise. But we'll still likely have different tastes in food
and clothes and music and thousands of other things. We will have discussions, perhaps even debates, about things we won't
yet understand. Of course, there will be no personal attacks, no ill-informed biases, and no prideful refusal to grant a valid
point.

Some of us will have insights others don't. Some will have a better under­standing in one area, others in a different area.
Our beliefs can be accurate but incomplete, since we'll not be omniscient. Adam was without sin, yet he needed more than himself.
Even before sin, surely he and Eve brought different per­spectives. Not all disagreement is rooted in sin.

The companionship of other finite beings involves discussion and dialogue, which creates progress through synergy. That synergy
involves differences and even disagreements. Could Michael and Gabriel, two sinless beings, have dif­ferent opinions on a
military strategy? Could they think differently enough to disagree? Why not?

C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and other friends in their group called The In­klings often argued ideas with each other. On
the New Earth, could Jonathan Edwards, G. K. Chesterton, Francis Schaeffer, Charles Spurgeon, and John Wesley agree on 90
percent of the issues, yet still challenge one another's ideas in what's still unknown to them, stimulating each other to
a greater under­standing? Could they even say, "Let's think and talk to the King, approach an angel or two, bounce our ideas
off Paul, Luther, and Augustine, and then meet again and share what we've learned"?

Even though Christ's insights would be absolutely accurate, that doesn't mean we'll always fully understand them. God has
made us learners. That's part of being finite.

If we will always and automatically see all things alike, then why will there be rulers and judges on the New Earth? In a
perfect world, why would there be a need for authority? Because that's the way God has made us. He's the ultimate authority,
but he delegates authority to mankind. It's not sin that necessitates au­thority, it's simply God's design, existing first
within his triune being (John 8:28). Since we're told that we'll judge angels, will there be disagreements to pass judg­ment
on? If sinless people see differently, might they still need wise counsel?

Uniqueness and differences existed before sin and will exist after it. Only God has infinite wisdom and knowledge. We should
expect some differences in perspective, but we should also expect an ability to resolve them without ran­cor or bruised egos.
Imagine the ability to question and challenge without any malice and to be questioned and challenged without a hint of defensiveness.
Wouldn't that be Heaven?

WILL WE SHARE DISCOVERIES TOGETHER?

Many friendships emerge from shared experiences. Doing things together bonds us. The same will be true on the New Earth. We'll
be knit together as we discover together the wonders of God and his universe.

Suppose you're taking a two-week extended family vacation, but you arrive at the vacation destination four days after most
of the other family members. They say, "You should have seen the sunset last Thursday. It was incredible." Or "You should
have been here for the barbeque." They talk about the whale that breached two hundred feet from shore. "You should have seen
it."

What's your reaction? You're happy the family's been having a good time, but you feel as if you've missed something. You've
missed the bonding that came with the common experience.

Wouldn't it be great to travel to Heaven together, simultaneously? Wouldn't it be great to be like Lewis and Clark, discovering
together
the wonders of the new world? In fact, that's precisely what Scripture tells us will happen. Though we go to the present Heaven
one at a time as we die,
all of us
will be charter citizens of the New Earth. We'll be resurrected together and set foot on the New Earth together.

Throughout eternity we will live full, truly

human lives, exploring and managing God's

creation to his glory. Fascinating vistas will

unfold before us as we learn to serve God

in a renewed universe.

EDWARD DONNELLY