Heaven (53 page)

A LIFE THAT GETS US READY

"Everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure" (1 John 3:3, NASB). If my wedding date is on
the calendar, and I'm thinking of the person I'm going to marry, I shouldn't be an easy target for seduction. Like­wise, when
I've meditated on Heaven, sin is terribly unappealing. It's when my mind drifts from Heaven that sin seems attractive. Thinking
of Heaven leads inevitably to pursuing holiness. Our high tolerance for sin testifies of our failure to prepare for Heaven.

Heaven should affect our activities and ambitions, our recreation and friend­ships, and the way we spend our money and time.
If I believe I'll spend eternity in a world of unending beauty and adventure, will I be content to spend all my eve­nings
staring at game shows, sitcoms, and ball games? Even if I keep my eyes off of impurities, how much time will I want to invest
in what doesn't matter?

What will last forever? God's Word. People. Spending time in God's Word and investing in people will pay off in eternity and
bring me joy and perspective now.

Following Christ is not a call to abstain from gratification but to delay gratifi­cation. It's finding our joy in Christ rather
than seeking joy in the things of this world. Heaven—our assurance of eternal gratification and fulfillment—should be our
North Star, reminding us where we are and which direction to go.

When we realize the pleasures that await us in God's presence, we can forgo lesser pleasures now. When we realize the possessions
that await us in Heaven, we will gladly give away possessions on Earth to store up treasures in Heaven. When we realize the
power offered to us as rulers in God's Kingdom, a power we could not handle now but will handle with humility and benevolence
then, we can forgo the pursuit of power here.

To be Heaven-oriented is to be goal-oriented in the best sense. Paul says, "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind
and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in
Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14).

Thinking of Heaven will motivate us to live each day in profound thankful­ness to God: "Therefore, since we are receiving
a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe" (Hebrews 12:28).

In
Perelandra,
C. S. Lewis's protagonist says of his friend Ransom, who has recently returned from another planet, "A man who has been in
another world does not come back unchanged."
³⁴⁶
A man who gives sustained thought to an­other world—the Heaven where Christ is and the resurrected Earth where we will live
forever with him—also does not remain unchanged. He becomes a new person. He'll no longer fill his stomach with stale leftovers
and scraps fallen to a dirty kitchen floor. He smells the banquet being prepared for him. He won't spoil his appetite. He
knows what his mouth is watering for.

ALL THINGS MADE NEW

Nanci and I have spent some wonderful moments with our family and friends—at Christmas or on vacation or at simple times in
the family room after dinner—and we've said those enchanting words: "It doesn't get any better than this."

No matter how difficult your life has been, you've said the same thing about some magnificent moment, haven't you? Maybe it
was recently. Maybe it was long ago. Maybe you can barely remember. "It doesn't get any better than this." Can you think of
even one time in your life when, even for a fleeting moment, that seemed to be true?

Well, it
isn't
true.

The most ordinary moment on the New Earth will be greater than the most perfect moments in this life—those experiences you
wanted to bottle or hang on to but couldn't. It
can
get better, far better, than this—
and it will.
Life on the New Earth will be like sitting in front of the fire with family and friends, bask­ing in the warmth, laughing
uproariously, dreaming of the adventures to come—and then going out and
living
those adventures together. With no fear that life will ever end or that tragedy will descend like a dark cloud. With no fear
that dreams will be shattered or relationships broken.

If the ideas presented in this book were merely the product of my imagina­tion, they would be meaningless. But here's what
the apostle John recorded near the end of the Bible:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is
with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will
wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has
passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these
words are trustworthy and true." (Revelation 21:1, 3-5)

These are the words of King Jesus. Count on them. Take them to the bank. Live every day in light of them. Make every choice
in light of Christ's certain promise.

We were all made for a person and a place. Jesus is the person. Heaven is the place.

If you know Jesus, I'll be with you in that resurrected world. With the Lord we love and with the friends we cherish, we'll
embark together on the ultimate adventure, in a spectacular new universe awaiting our exploration and domin­ion. Jesus will
be the center of all things, and joy will be the air we breathe.

And right when we think "it doesn't get any better than this"—
it will.

APPENDIX A

CHRISTOPLATONISM'S FALSE ASSUMPTIONS

I
t's no coincidence that Paul wrote his detailed defense of physical resurrec­tion to the Corinthians, who were immersed in
the Greek philosophy of du­alism. They'd been taught that the spiritual was incompatible with the physical. But Christ, in
his incarnation and resurrection, laid claim not only to the spiri­tual realm but to the physical as well. His redemption
wasn't only of spirits but also of bodies and the earth.

Plato was "the first Western philosopher to claim that reality is fundamentally something ideal or abstract."
³⁴⁷
To think of the spiritual realm in physical terms or to envision God's presence in the physical world was to do it a disservice.
Plato considered the body a liability, not an asset. "For Plato . . . the body is a hindrance, as it opposes and even imprisons
the soul
(Phaedo
65-68; 91-94)."
³⁴⁸

But according to Scripture, our bodies aren't just shells for our spirits to in­habit; they're a good and essential aspect
of our being. Likewise, the earth is not a second-rate location from which we must be delivered. Rather, it was hand­made
by God for us. Earth, not some incorporeal state, is God's choice as man­kind's original and ultimate dwelling place.

To distinguish the version of Platonism seen among Christians from secu­lar forms of Platonism, I've coined the term
Christoplatonism.
This philoso­phy has blended elements of Platonism with Christianity, and in so doing has poisoned Christianity and blunted
its distinct differences from Eastern reli­gions. Because appeals to Christoplatonism appear to take the spiritual high ground,
attempts to refute this false philosophy often appear to be materialis­tic, hedonistic, or worldly.

Because of Christoplatonism's pervasive influence, we resist the biblical pic­ture of bodily resurrection of the dead and
life on the New Earth; of eating and drinking in Heaven; of walking and talking, living in dwelling places, traveling down
streets, and going through gates from one place to another; and of ruling, working, playing, and engaging in earthly culture.

One author writes, "Only our redeemed spirits can live in a spiritual realm like heaven. Therefore, the life we know now as
spiritual reality will continue in heaven, but we shall not need or desire the things associated with our present physical
bodies, simply because we shall not possess physical bodies in heaven."
³⁴⁹

This statement constitutes a denial of the foundational doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the dead, and it is utterly
contradicted by countless Scrip­tures. Nevertheless, it's a common perspective among evangelical Christians.

Another writer suggests, "When the material world perishes, we shall find ourselves in the spiritual world; when the dream
of life ends, we shall awake in the world of reality; when our connection with this world comes to a close, we shall find
ourselves in our eternal spirit home."
³⁵⁰
According to the Bible, how­ever, our eternal home is on the New Earth!

A godly man, a lifelong Bible student, told me that the thought of eating and drinking and engaging in physical activities
in Heaven seemed to him "ter­ribly unspiritual."

In Plato's statement,
"Soma sema
("a body, a tomb"), he asserts that the spirit's highest destiny is to be forever free from the body. The Bible, however,
contradicts this premise from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revela­tion. It says that God is the creator of body
and spirit; both were marred by sin, and both were redeemed by Christ.

Yes, we need to be delivered from our earthly bodies, which are subject to sin and decay (Romans 7:24). But the promise of
Heaven isn't the
absence
of body; rather, it's the attainment of a new and sinless body
and
spirit. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul regards the new
body
—not simply the new spirit—as essential to our redemption.
If the body isn't redeemed, mankind is not redeemed,
because we're by nature body as well as spirit. A spirit without a body, like a body without a spirit, isn't the highest human
destiny. Rather, it's a state of incompleteness, an aberra­tion of the full meaning of being human.

THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO AND ORIGEN

Platonic ideas began making inroads into Christian theology through the writ­ings of Philo (ca. 20 BC-AD 50). An Alexandrian
Jew, Philo admired Greek cul­ture and was enamored with Plato's philosophy. He was also proud of his Jewish heritage. In his
desire to offer the Greeks the best of Judaism and the Jews the best of Greek philosophy, he allegorized Scripture. He did
so in con­trast to the literal interpretation of many rabbis.
³⁵¹

Philo's ideas caught on. Alexandria became the home of a new school of theological thought. Clement of Alexandria (150-215),
an early church father, was a part of this movement, as was Origen (185-254), an Egyptian-born Christian writer and teacher.
Clement embraced Greek philosophy and main­tained that Scripture must be understood allegorically Origen developed an en­tire
system of allegorizing Scripture. His method was to see the Bible as a three-part living organism, corresponding to body,
soul, and spirit. The body was the literal or historical sense, the soul was the psychic or moral sense, and the spirit was—by
far most important—the philosophical sense.

Educated people were considered more qualified to find the Bible's "hidden" meanings in texts that the average person would
take at face value. In other words, Origen's approach meant that ordinary people couldn't understand the Bi­ble without the
help of trained, educated people. These enlightened teachers could find and teach the Bible's "true" spiritual meanings, which
were usually quite different from its apparent, obvious, and "less spiritual" meanings.

Origen typically dismissed or ignored literal meanings in favor of fanciful ideas foreign to the text. At the time, his modern
approach was embraced by Christian intellectuals as a sort of Gnostic and elitist approach that separated the educated clergy
from the ignorant laity. This distinction still continues in some circles, with literal interpretations seen as suspect, and
allegorical and symbolic interpretations deemed more spiritual and intellectually appealing.

Judged by christoplatonic presuppositions, anytime the Bible speaks about Heaven in plain, ordinary, or straightforward ways,
the assumption is that it doesn't actually mean what it says. For example, the plain meaning of living as resurrected beings
in a resurrected society in a resurrected city on a resurrected Earth cannot be real, because it doesn't jibe with the Platonic
assumption that the body is bad and the spirit good. Consequently, Heaven cannot possibly be like what Revelation 21-22 appears
to say. There could not be bodies, nations, kings, buildings, streets, gates, water, trees, and fruit, because these are physical,
and what's physical is not spiritual. The prophetic statements about life on a perfect Earth are considered mere symbols of
the promise of a disembodied spiritual world.

Tragically, the allegorical method of interpretation—rooted in explicitly unchristian assumptions—came to rule the church's
theology. (We'll deal more with this in appendix B.) Even today, commentaries and books on Heaven seem to automatically regard
all Scripture about Heaven as figurative. For instance, in his commentary on Revelation, Leon Morris says, "When John speaks
of streets paved with gold, of a city whose gates are made of single pearls and the like, we must not understand that the
heavenly city will be as material as present earthly cities."
³⁵²
But given what Scripture teaches about the resurrec­tion of mankind and the earth,
why not}

Was the body of the resurrected Jesus as material as our present earthly bod­ies? Yes. If, in our resurrected bodies—which
we're told will be like his—we'll be as material as we are now, why wouldn't the resurrected Earth also be as ma­terial as
it is now? Likewise, why wouldn't New Earth cities be as material as those on the present Earth? Is there something wrong
with material things? To Platonists, the answer was yes—to the apostles and prophets, the answer was no. If our material,
resurrected bodies will walk on the ground, why not on streets? And considering God's unlimited resources, is there any reason
why those streets couldn't be made of gold?

An allegorical interpretive approach undercuts Scripture's magnificent reve­lation that there will be one world, both spiritual
and material. The two aspects will coexist in perfect harmony, made by a God who forever linked the spiritual and material
worlds both by incarnation and resurrection.

ACCOMMODATION

Earth is not the opposite of Heaven. But our christoplatonic assumptions prompt us to polarize Heaven and Earth. Theologians
speak of the language of
accommodation.
"The doctrine of accommodation asserts that in the Bible, God, who is spiritual, has accommodated Himself to human understanding
by por­traying Himself and heavenly reality in humanly understandable images."
³⁵³
There is, of course, truth in the doctrine of accommodation. But the Bible ex­plicitly tells us that we'll live forever, in
resurrected bodies, on a resurrected Earth. It tells us that Jesus became a man and will be a man forever. It tells us that
God will bring down the New Jerusalem from Heaven to Earth, and that's where he will live with us.

The Incarnation wasn't God talking
as if he'd
become a man—it was God actually becoming a man. The doctrine of the bodily resurrection of the dead isn't God telling us
we'll have bodies because that's all we're capable of under­standing. We really
will
have bodies. The doctrine of the New Earth isn't God acting as if we'll live in an earthly realm—rather, it's God explicitly
telling us that we
will
live on the New Earth.

The "New Earth" isn't a figure of speech any more than calling Jesus a "man" is a figure of speech. He
is
a man. The Resurrection was not merely a symbol of God overcoming spiritual darkness; it was an actual, physical resur­rection.
The New Earth will be a real Earth where mankind and God will dwell together. Therefore, we should be open to taking literally
its depiction of earthlike realities.

Jesus really
didbecome
a man. He really
did rise
from the grave. We really will rise too. The incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ literally happened. The
biblical texts aren't merely using the language of accommoda­tion. Likewise, when Scripture speaks of our bodily resurrection
and the com­ing of the New Earth, this isn't accommodation—it's
revelation
that we will spend eternity as physical beings in a physical universe.

If the Bible taught that the present Heaven and the eternal Heaven were both unearthly realms of disembodied spirits, then
we should consider as figu­rative the repeated depictions of Heaven in physical terms. However, if people really will live
on the New Earth in resurrected bodies—and if even the current, intermediate Heaven contains physical objects, including the
risen body of Christ—then we shouldn't base our hermeneutic of Heaven on the assump­tions of Philo and Origen. We should base
our understanding on the testimony of Jesus and the apostle John.

Given the weight of biblical revelation, I believe that descriptions of resur­rected humanity and the resurrected Earth should
be understood as literal, and interpreted figuratively only when a plain literal understanding is impossible or highly unlikely.

For those accustomed to always spiritualizing Scripture when it comes to Heaven, I'd encourage you to ask yourself the following
questions: What if the resurrection of the dead is an actual, bodily resurrection? What if the New Earth will be real? What
if Heaven will be a tangible, earthly place inhabited by people with bodies, intellect, creativity, and culture-building relational
skills? What if a physical Heaven is God's plan and has been all along? What termi­nology would God have to use to convince
us of this? How would it be different from what he has actually used in Scripture?

A BIBLICAL VIEW OF PLEASURE

One of Christoplatonism's false assumptions is that spiritual people should shun physical pleasures. But who's the inventor
of pleasure? Who made food and water, eating and drinking, marriage and sex, friendship and games, art and music, celebration
and laughter? God did.

The Bible knows only one Creator: God; and only one race of subcreators: mankind. Satan cannot create. Ultimately, he can't
even destroy. He can only twist and pervert what God has created, as C. S. Lewis depicts in a correspon­dence between two
demons in
The Screwtape Letters:

Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense,
on the Enemy's ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made
the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take
the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try
to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker,
and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminish­ing pleasure is the formula.
³⁵⁴

"Sin does not create things," writes Paul Marshall. "It has no originality, no creativity, no being in itself. Sin lives off
that which is good. It is a parasite, feed­ing greedily on the goodness of what God has made."
³⁵⁵
God will remove the parasite without killing the patient.

"Nothing is evil in the beginning," says the Elf king Elrond in J. R. R. Tolkien's
The Fellowship of the Ring.
Once that idea is clearly in our minds, we can never again regard mankind or the earth, plants, animals, natural wonders,
stars, or planets as lost causes. Created with purpose by an omniscient God, they're not disposable. Because they're part
of God's creation, they're fully within the scope of his redemption.