by Randy Alcorn
That God would come down to the New Earth to live with us fits perfectly with his original plan. God could have taken Adam and Eve up to Heaven to visit with him in his world. Instead, he came down to walk with them in their world (Genesis 3:8). Jesus says of anyone who would be his disciple, "My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (John 14:23). This is a picture of God's ultimate plan—not to take us up to live in a realm made for him, but to come down and live with us in the realm he madefor us.
Most views of Heaven are anti-incarnational. They fail to grasp that Heaven will be God dwelling with us—resurrected people—on the resurrected Earth. The Incarnation is about God inhabiting space and time as a human being—the new heavens and New Earth are about God making space and time his eternal home. As Jesus is God incarnate, so the New Earth will be Heaven incarnate. Think ofwhat Revelation 21:3 tells us—God will relocate his people and come down from Heaven to the New Earth to live with them: "God himself will be with them." Rather than our going up to live in God's home forever, God will come down to live in our home forever. Simply put, though the present Heaven is "up there," the future, eternal Heaven will be "down here." If we fail to see that distinction, we fail to understand God's plan and are unable to envision what our eternal lives will look like.
Several books on Heaven state that the New Jerusalem will not descend to Earth but will remain "suspended over the earth."47 But Revelation 21:2 doesn't say this. When John watches the city "coming down" from Heaven, there's no reason to believe it stops before reaching the New Earth. The assumption that it remains suspended over the earth arises from the notion that Heaven and Earth must always be separate. But Scripture indicates they will be joined. Their present incompatibility is due to a temporary aberration—Earth is under sin and the Curse. Once that aberration is corrected, Heaven and Earth will be fully compatible again (Ephesians 1:10).
Utopian idealists who dream of mankind creating "Heaven on Earth" are destined for disappointment. But though they are wrong in believing that humans can achieve a Utopian existence apart from God, the reality of Heaven on Earth—God dwelling with mankind in the world he made for us—will in fact be realized. It is God's dream. It is God's plan. He—not we—will accomplish it.
DO WE REMAIN CONSCIOUS AFTER
DEATH?
"The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7). At death, the human spirit goes either to Heaven or Hell. Christ depicted Lazarus and the rich man as conscious in Heaven and Hell immediately after they died (Luke 16:22-31). Jesus told the dying thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). The apostle Paul said that to die was to be with Christ (Philippians 1:23), and to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). After their deaths, martyrs are pictured in Heaven, crying out to God to bring justice on Earth (Revelation 6:9-11).
These passages make it clear that there is no such thing as "soul sleep," or a long period of unconsciousness between life on Earth and life in Heaven. The phrase "fallen asleep" (in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and similar passages) is a euphemism for death, describing the body's outward appearance. The spirit's departure from the body ends our existence on Earth. The physical part of us "sleeps" until the resurrection, while the spiritual part of us relocates to a conscious existence in Heaven (Daniel 12:2-3; 2 Corinthians 5:8). Some Old Testament passages (e.g., Ecclesiastes 9:5) address outward appearances and do not reflect the fullness of New Testament revelation concerning immediate relocation and consciousness after death.
Every reference in Revelation to human beings talking and worshiping in Heaven prior to the resurrection of the dead demonstrates that our spiritual beings are conscious, not sleeping, after death. (Nearly everyone who believes in soul sleep believes that souls are disembodied at death; it's not clear how disembodied beings could sleep, because sleeping involves a physical body.)
WILL WE BE JUDGED WHEN WE DIE?
When we die, we face judgment, what is called the judgment of faith. The outcome of this judgment determines whether we go to the present Heaven or the present Hell. This initial judgment depends not on our works but on our faith. It is not about what we've done during our lives but about what Christ has done for us. If we have accepted Christ's atoning death for us, then when God judges us after we die, he sees his Son's sacrifice for us, not our sin. Salvation is a free gift, to which we can contribute absolutely nothing (Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5).
This first judgment is not to be confused with the final judgment, or what is called the judgment of works. Both believers and unbelievers face a final judgment. The Bible indicates that all believers will stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of their lives (Romans 14:10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:10). It's critical to understand that this judgment is a judgment of works, not of faith (1 Corinthians 3:13-14). Our works do not affect our salvation, but they do affect our reward. Rewards are about our work for God, empowered by his Spirit. Rewards are conditional, dependent on our faithfulness (2 Timothy 2:12; Revelation 2:26-28; 3:21).†
Unbelievers face a final judgment of works as well. The Bible tells us it will come at the great white throne, at the end of the old Earth and just before the beginning of the New Earth (Revelation 20:11-13).
Opinions vary about when the judgment of works for believers will occur. Some people picture it occurring immediately after the judgment of faith, a "one at a time" judgment happening as each believer dies. Others think it happens in the present Heaven, between our death and the return of Christ. Those who believe in a pretribulational Rapture often envision the judgment of works happening between the Rapture and the physical return of Christ, while the Tribulation is taking place on Earth. Still others believe it happens at the same time as the Great White Throne Judgment of unbelievers, after the Millennium.
IS THE PRESENT HEAVEN PART OF OUR UNIVERSE OR ANOTHER?
The present Heaven is normally invisible to those living on Earth. For those who have trouble accepting the reality of an unseen realm, consider the perspective of cutting-edge researchers who embrace string theory. Scientists at Yale, Princeton, and Stanford, among others, postulate that there are ten unobservable dimensions and likely an infinite number of imperceptible universes. 48 If this is what leading scientists believe, why should anyone feel self-conscious about believing in one unobservable dimension, a realm containing angels and Heaven and Hell?
The Bible teaches that sometimes humans are allowed to see into Heaven. When Stephen was being stoned because of his faith in Christ, he gazed into Heaven: "Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 'Look,' he said, 'I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God'" (Acts 7:55-56). Scripture tells us not that Stephen dreamed this, but that he actually saw it.
Wayne Grudem points out that Stephen "did not see mere symbols of a state of existence. It was rather that his eyes were opened to see a spiritual dimension of reality which God has hidden from us in this present age, a dimension which none the less really does exist in our space/time universe, and within which Jesus now lives in his physical resurrected body, waiting even now for a time when he will return to earth."49
I agree with Grudem that the present Heaven is a space/time universe. He may be right that it's part of our own universe, or it may be in a different universe. It could be a universe next door that's normally hidden but sometimes opened. In either case, it seems likely that God didn't merely create a vision for Stephen in order to make Heaven appear physical. Rather, he allowed Stephen to see an intermediate Heaven that was (and is) physical.
The prophet Elisha asked God to give his servant, Gehazi, a glimpse of the invisible realm. He prayed, " 'O Lord, open his eyes so he may see.' Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha"
(2 Kings 6:17). It could be argued that these horses and chariots (with angelic warriors) exist beside us in our universe, but we are normally blind to them. Or they maybe in a universe beside ours that opens up into ours so that angelic beings—and horses, apparently—can move between universes.
A third possibility—to me, the least convincing one in these instances—is that such descriptions are merely metaphorical, not to be taken literally. But Acts 7 and 2 Kings 6 are narrative accounts, historical in nature, not apocalyptic or parabolic literature. The text is clear that Stephen and Gehazi saw things actual and physical. This supports the view that Heaven is a physical realm. Physical and spiritual are neither opposite nor contradictory. In fact, the apostle Paul refers to the resurrection body as a "spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44). God is a spirit, and angels are spirit beings, but both can—and on the New Earth will—live in a physical environment.
If a blind man momentarily gained his sight and described an actual tree that he saw, other blind people—especially if they lived in a world where everyone was blind—might automatically assume the tree was nonliteral, a mere symbol of some spiritual reality. But they would be wrong. Likewise, we should not assume that the Bible describes Heaven in physical ways merely to accommodate us. It is fully possible that the present Heaven is a physical realm.
Because the question of the physical nature of the present Heaven is important and controversial, we'll take a closer look at it in the next chapter.
†1 deal at length with the topic of eternal rewards in my books In Light of Eternity (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 1999), Money, Possessions, and Eternity (Wheaton, 111.: Tyndale, 2003), and The Law of Rewards (Wheaton, 111.: Tyndale, 2003).
CHAPTER 6
IS THE PRESENT HEAVEN A
PHYSICAL PLACE?
For the entrance of the greater world is wide and sure, and they who see the straitness and thepainfulness from which they have been delivered must wonder exceedingly as they are received into those large rooms with joy and immortality.
Amy Carmichael
After reading one of my books, a missionary wrote to me, deeply troubled that I thought Heaven might be a physical place. In our correspondence, no matter how many Scripture passages I pointed to, it didn't matter. He'd always been taught that Heaven was "spiritual" and therefore not physical. To suggest otherwise was, in his mind, to commit heresy.
My concern was not so much that he believed the present Heaven isn't physical. (Maybe he's right.) Rather, it was that he seemed convinced that if Heaven were physical, it would be less sacred and special. He viewed physical and spiritual as opposites. When I asked him to demonstrate from Scripture why Heaven cannot be a physical place, he told me the answer was very simple: because "God is spirit" (John 4:24). He believed that verse settled the question once and for all.
But saying that God is spirit is very different from saying that Heaven is spirit. Heaven, after all, is not the same as God. God created Heaven; therefore, he did not always dwell there. Though God chooses to dwell in Heaven, he does not need a dwelling place. However, as finite humans, we do. It's no problem for the all-powerful God, a spirit, to dwell in a spiritual realm or a physical realm or a realm that includes both. The real question is whether people, being by nature both spiritual and physical, can dwell in a realm without physical properties.
The physical New Earth will be our ultimate dwelling place, but until then we shouldn't find it surprising if God chooses to provide a waiting place that's also physical. For us to exist as human beings, we occupy space. It seems reasonable to infer that the space we occupy would be physical. If the present, intermediate Heaven is a place where God, angels, and humans dwell, it makes sense that Heaven would be accommodated to mankind, because God needs no accommodation. We know that angels can exist in a physical world because they exist in this one, not just in Heaven. In fact, angels sometimes, perhaps often, take on human form (Hebrews 13:2).
If we are to draw inferences about the nature of Heaven, we shouldn't derive them from the nature of God. After all, he is a one-of-a-kind being who is infinite, existing outside of space and time. Rather, we should base our deductions on the nature of humanity. It's no problem for the infinite God to dwell wherever mankind dwells. The question is whether finite humans can exist as God does—outside of space and time. I'm not certain we can. But I am certain that if we can, it is only as a temporary aberration that will be permanently corrected by our bodily resurrection in preparation for life on the New Earth.
Why are we so resistant to the idea that Heaven could be physical? The answer, I believe, is centered in an unbiblical belief that the spirit realm is good and the material world is bad, a view I am calling Christoplatonism. (For a discussion of Christoplatonism's false assumptions, see appendix A.) For our purposes in this chapter, I will summarize this belief that looms like a dark cloud over the common view of Heaven.
Plato, the Greek philosopher, believed that material things, including the human body and the earth, are evil, while immaterial things such as the soul and Heaven are good. This view is called Platonism. The Christian church, highly influenced by Platonism through the teachings of Philo (ca. 20 BC-AD 50) and Origen (AD 185-254), among others, came to embrace the "spiritual" view that human spirits are better off without bodies and that Heaven is a disembodied state. They rejected the notion of Heaven as a physical realm and spiritualized or entirely neglected the biblical teaching of resurrected people inhabiting a resurrected Earth.
Christoplatonism has had a devastating effect on our ability to understand what Scripture says about Heaven, particularly about the eternal Heaven, the New Earth. A fine Christian man said to me, "This idea of having bodies and eating food and being in an earthly place . . . it just sounds so unspiritual? Without knowing it, he was under the influence of Christoplatonism. If we believe, even subconsciously, that bodies and the earth and material things are unspiritual, even evil, then we will inevitably reject or spiritualize any biblical revelation about our bodily resurrection or the physical characteristics of the New Earth. That's exactly what has happened in most Christian churches, and it's a large reason for our failure to come to terms with a biblical doctrine of Heaven. Christoplatonism has also closed our minds to the possibility that the present Heaven may actually be a physical realm. If we look at Scripture, however, we'll see considerable evidence that the present Heaven has physical properties.
HEAVEN AS SUBSTANCE, EARTH AS SHADOW
In his seventeenth-century classic Paradise Lost, John Milton describes Eden as a garden full of aromatic flowers, delicious fruit, and soft grass, lushly watered. He also connects Eden with Heaven, the source of earthly existence, portraying Heaven as a place of great pleasures and the source of Earth's pleasures. In Milton's story, the angel Raphael asks Adam,
What if Earth
Be but the shadow ofHeav'n, and things therein
Each to other like, more then on Earth is thought?50
Though the idea of Earth as Heaven's shadow is seldom discussed, even in books on Heaven, it's a concept that has biblical support. For example, the temple in Heaven is filled with smoke from the glory of God (Revelation 15:8). Is this a figurative temple with figurative smoke? Or is there an actual fire creating literal smoke in a real building? We're told there are scrolls in Heaven, elders who have faces, martyrs who wear clothes, and even people with "palm branches in their hands" (Revelation 7:9). There are musical instruments in the present Heaven (Revelation 8:6), horses coming into and out of Heaven (2 Kings 2:11; Revelation 19:14), and an eagle flying overhead in Heaven (Revelation 8:13). Perhaps some of these objects are merely symbolic, with no corresponding physical reality. But is that true of allot them?
Many commentators dismiss the possibility that any of these passages in Revelation should be taken literally, on the grounds that it is apocalyptic literature, which is known for its figures of speech. But the book of Hebrews isn't apocalyptic, it's
epistolary. It says that earthly priests "serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven" (Hebrews 8:5). Moses was told, in building the earthly tabernacle, "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain" (Hebrews 8:5). If that which was built after the pattern was physical, might it suggest the original was also physical?
The book of Hebrews seems to say that we should see Earth as a derivative realm and Heaven as the source realm. If we do, we'll abandon the assumption that something existing in one realm cannot exist in the other. In fact, we'll consider it likely that what exists in one realm exists in at least some form in the other. We should stop thinking of Heaven and Earth as opposites and instead view them as overlapping circles that share certain commonalities.
Christ "went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation" (Hebrews 9:11). "Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself" (Hebrews 9:24). The earthly sanctuary was a copy of the true one in Heaven. In fact, the New Jerusalem that will be brought down to the New Earth is currently in the intermediate or present Heaven (Hebrews 12:22). If we know that the New Jerusalem will be physically on the New Earth, and we also know that it is in the present Heaven, does that not suggest the New Jerusalem is currently physical? Why wouldn't it be? Unless we start with an assumption that Heaven can't be physical, it seems that this evidence would persuade us that it is indeed physical.
These verses in Hebrews suggest that God created Earth in the image of Heaven, just as he created mankind in his image. C. S. Lewis proposed that "the hills and valleys of Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original, nor as a substitute is to the genuine article, but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal."51
