Heaven

by Randy Alcorn

  We're told the "first earth" will pass away (Revelation 21:1). The word for "first" is prote, suggesting a vital connection between the two Earths. The first Earth serves as the prototype or pattern for the New Earth. There's continuity between old and new. We should expect new trees, new flowers, new rocks, new rivers, new mountains, and new animals. {New, not non-.)

  As our current bodies are the blueprints for our resurrection bodies, this present Earth is the blueprint for the New Earth.

  DOES EARTHUNESS DEMEAN HEAVEN?

  In Greek mythology, Mount Olympus is an earthly Heaven, where gods in­dulge in scandalous behavior, making Heaven seem cheap and man-made. Islam portrays Heaven as a place where a man is given countless concubines—promiscuity as an eternal reward. We rightly recoil at this. It may partly account for why some people resist the notion of a New Earth, assuming that earthliness somehow demeans God and Heaven.

  Scripture portrays God as holy and transcendent. Because Heaven is his dwelling place, it seems inappropriate to think of Heaven in earthly terms. But even before Christ's incarnation, God came to the Garden to walk with Adam and Eve. And Christ's incarnation and resurrection took it much further—one member of the transcendent triune God became permanently immanent. Jesus is in physical form, in a human resurrection body, for all eternity. (He may choose to exercise his divine omnipresence in a way we can't comprehend, or he may experience it within the Godhead through Father and Spirit, but there is no indication that Jesus the risen Savior will cease to be the eternal God-man.) His marriage to us is not an unequal yoke of a spiritual God to physical peo­ple—not only are we also spiritual, but Jesus, by incarnation and resurrection, is also physical.

  Before the Incarnation, Heaven was transcendent. By virtue of the Incarna­tion, Heaven became immanent. The coming New Earth will be God's dwell­ing place, as pure and holy as Heaven has ever been. Thus, it cannot be inappropriate to think of Heaven in earthly terms, because it is Scripture itself that compels us to do so. In the words of Paul Marshall, "What we need is not to be rescued from the world, not to cease being human, not to stop caring for the world, not to stop shaping human culture. What we need is the power to do these things according to the will of God. We, as well as the rest of creation, need to be redeemed."126

  HOMESICK AT HOME

  Do you recall a time when you were away from your earthly home and desper­ately missed it? Maybe it was when you were off at college or in the military or traveling extensively overseas or needed to move because of a job. Do you re­member how your heart ached for home? That's how we should feel about Heaven. We are a displaced people, longing for our home. C. S. Lewis said, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."127

  Augustine wrote, "I am groaning with inexpressible groaning on my wan­derer's path, and remembering Jerusalem with my heart lifted up towards it—Jerusalem my homeland, Jerusalem my mother."128

  Nothing is more often misdiagnosed than our homesickness for Heaven. We think thatwhatwe want is sex, drugs, alcohol, a newjob, a raise, a doctorate, a spouse, a large-screen television, a new car, a cabin in the woods, a condo in Hawaii. What we really want is the person we were made for, Jesus, and the place we were made for, Heaven. Nothing less can satisfy us. C. S. Lewis said, "The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment He has scat­tered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God."129

  In his discussion of Christian orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton wrote, "The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. . . . When I heard that I was in the wrong place . . . my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. I knew now . .. why I could feel homesick at home."130

  I like Chesterton's picture of feeling homesick at home. We can say, "Heaven will be our eternal home," or "Earth will be our eternal home," but we shouldn't say, "Heaven, not Earth, will be our eternal home," because the Heaven in which we'll live will be centered on the New Earth.

  A Christian I met in passing once told me it troubled him that he really didn't long for Heaven. Instead, he yearned for an Earth that was like God meant it to be. He didn't desire a Heaven out there somewhere, but an Earth under his feet, where God was glorified. He felt guilty and unspiritual for this desire. At the time, my eyes hadn't been opened to Scripture's promise of the New Earth. If I could talk with that man again (I hope he reads this book), I'd tell him what I should have told him the first time—that his longing was bibli­cal and right. In fact, the very place he's always longed for, an Earth where God was fully glorified, is the place where he will live forever.

  To say "This world is not your home" to a person who's fully alive and alert to the wonders of the world is like throwing a bucket of water on kindling's blaze. We should fan the flames of that blaze to help it spread, not seek to put it out. Otherwise, we malign our God-given instinct to love the earthly home God made for us. And we reduce "spirituality" into a denial of art, culture, sci­ence, sports, education, and all else human. When we do this, we set ourselves up for hypocrisy—for we may pretend to disdain the world while sitting in church, but when we get in the car we turn on our favorite music and head home to barbecue with friends, watch a ball game, play golf, ride bikes, work in the garden, or curl up savoring a cup of coffee and a good book. We do these things not because we are sinners but because we are people. We will still be peo­ple when we die and go to Heaven. This isn't a disappointing reality—it's God's plan. He made us as we are—except the sin part, which has nothing to do with friends, eating, sports, gardening, or reading.

  We get tired of ourselves, of others, of sin and suffering and crime and death. Yet we love the earth, don't we? I love the spaciousness of the night sky over the desert. I love the coziness of sitting next to Nanci on the couch in front of the fireplace, blanket over us and dog snuggled next to us. These experiences are not Heaven—but they tie foretastes of Heaven. What we love about this life are the things that resonate with the life we were made for. The things we love are not merely the best this life has to offer—they are previews of the greater life to come.

  SECTION SIX

  CELEBRATING OUR

  RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

  CHAPTER 17

  WHAT WILL IT MEAN TO SEE GOD?

  I shall rise from, the dead. . . . I shall see the Son of God, the Sun of Glory, and shine myself as that sun shines. I shall be united to the Ancient of Days, to God Himself, who had no morning, never began. . . . No man ever saw God and lived. And yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him, I shall never die.

  John Donne

  If I were dealing with aspects of Heaven in their order ofimportance, I would have begun with a chapter about God and our eternal relationship with him. However, I thought it was first necessary to establish a clear picture of our phys­ical, resurrected life on the New Earth. Without the foundation laid in earlier chapters, the idea of "seeing God" would inevitably be skewed by christoplatonic assumptions about the nature of the afterlife. If we don't base our perspective of Heaven on a clear understanding of our coming bodily resur­rection and the truth about the physical nature of the New Earth, our concept of being with God will be more like that of Eastern mysticism than of biblical Christianity.

  The magnificent theme of beholding God's face shouldn't be poisoned by dull stereotypes and vague, lifeless caricatures. I hope we can now approach the topic of our eternal relationship with God with the richness and vitality it de­serves. "

  O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). We may imagine we want a thousand diffe
rent things, but God is the one we really long for. His presence brings satisfaction; his absence brings thirst and longing. Our longingfor Heaven is a longingfor God—a longing that involves not only our inner beings, but our bodies as well. Being with God is the heart and soul of Heaven. Every other heavenly pleasure will derive from and be secondary to his presence. God's greatest gift to us is, and always will be, himself.

  THE BEATIFIC VISION

  Ancient theologians often spoke of the "beatific vision." The term comes from three Latin words that together mean "a happy-making sight." The sight they spoke of was God. Revelation 22:4 says of God's servants on the New Earth, "They will see his face." To see God's face is the loftiest of all aspirations—though sadly, for most of us, it's not at the top of our wish list. (If we understand what it means, it will be.)

  To be told we'll see God's face is shocking to anyone who understands God's transcendence and inapproachability. In ancient Israel, only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies, and he but once a year. Even then, according to tradition, a rope was tied around the priest's ankle in case he died while inside the Holy of Holies. Why? Well, God struck down Uzzah for touching the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6:7). Who would volunteer to go into the Holy of Holies to pull out the high priest if God slew him?

  When Moses said to God, "Show me your glory," God responded, "'I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you. . . . But,' he said, 'you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.'... 'When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen'" (Exodus 33:18-23).

  Moses saw God but not God's face. The New Testament says that God "lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see" (1 Timothy 6:16). To see God's face was utterly unthinkable.

  That's why, when we're told in Revelation 22:4 that we'll see God's face, it should astound us. For this to happen, it would require that we undergo some­thing radical between now and then. The obstacles to seeing God are daunting: "Without holiness no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). It's only because we'll be fully righteous in Christ, completely sinless, that we'll be able to see God and live.

  Not only will we see his face and live, but we will likely wonder if we ever lived before we saw his face! To see Godwillbe our greatest joy, thejoybywhich all others will be measured.

  I imagine what this will be like in my novel Edge of Eternity, when Nick Seagrave at last sees Jesus Christ:

  The King stepped from the great city, just outside the gate, and put his hand on my shoulder. I was aware of no one and nothing but him. I saw before me an aged, weathered King, thoughtful guardian of an empire. But I also saw a virile Warrior-Prince primed for battle, eager to mount his steed and march in conquest. His eyes were keen as sharpened swords yet deep as wells, full of the memories of the old and the dreams of the young.131

  This is the wonder of our redemption—to be welcomed into the very pres­ence of our Lord and to see him face-to-face. What will we see in his eyes? Though we cannot experience its fullness yet, we can gain a foretaste now: "We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19); "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace" (He­brews 4:16, ESV). We shouldn't read these verses casually, for they tell us some­thing wonderful beyond comprehension—that the blood ofJesus has bought us full access to God's throne room and his Most Holy Place. Even now, he wel­comes us to come there in prayer. In eternity, when we're resurrected beings, he will not only permit us to enter his presence in prayer, but he will welcome us to live in his presence as resurrected beings.

  FACES OF FATHER AND SON

  David says, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4). David was preoccupied with God's person, and also with God's place. He longed to be where God was and to gaze on his beauty. To see God's face is to behold his beauty, which is the source of all lesser beauties.

  God, who is transcendent, became immanent in Jesus Christ, who is Immanuel, "God with us" (Matthew 1:23). God the Son pitched his tent among us, on our Earth, as one of us (John 1:14). So whenever we see Jesus in Heaven, we will see God. Because Jesus Christ is God, and a permanent manifestation of God, he could say to Philip, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). Certainly, then, a primary way we will see the Father on the New Earth is through his Son, Jesus. Jonathan Edwards emphasized Christ as the member of the Godhead we will see: "The seeing of God in the glorified body of Christ is the most perfect way of seeing God with the bodily eyes that can be; for in seeing a real body that one of the persons of the Trinity has assumed to be his body, and that he dwells in for ever as his own in which the divine majesty and excellency appears as much as 'tis possible for it to appear in outward form or shape."132

  Yet Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God" (Mat­thew 5:8). And in Revelation 22:4, when it says "they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads," it appears to be referring to seeing the face of God the Father.

  "God is spirit" (John 4:24). Biblical references to God's body parts (e.g., "the eyes of the Lord" or "God's arms") are figures of speech. Yet in some sense, it seems that Moses saw the bright essence of God himself, even without seeing God's face. Is brightness really part of God the Father's essence, or is it a form in which he chooses to reveal himself to physical eyes? I don't pretend to under­stand how we will see the Father's face, but it seems that in some sense we will.

  SEEING GOD WITH OUR NEW BODIES

  Near the end of The City of God, Augustine addresses whether we will see God with physical eyes—or only with spiritual eyes—in our resurrection bodies: "It is possible, it is indeed most probable, that we shall then see the physical bodies of the new heaven and the new earth in such a fashion as to observe God in utter clarity and distinctness, seeing him everywhere present and gov­erning the whole material scheme of things.... Perhaps God will be known to us and visible to us in the sense that he will be spiritually perceived by each of us in each one of us, perceived in one another, perceived by each in himself; he will be seen in the new heaven and earth, in the whole creation as it then will be; he will be seen in every body by means of bodies, wherever the eyes of the spiritual body are directed with their penetrating gaze."133

  The kingdom must not be understood as merely the salvation of certain individuals or even as the reign of God in the hearts of his people; it means nothing less than the reign of God over his entire created universe.... The kingdom is not man's upward climb to perfection but God's breaking into human history to establish his reign and to advance his purposes.

  ANTHONY HOEKEMA

  A book on Heaven says, "The redeemed will see God—not, to be sure, with physical eyes."134 But why not? The scene depicted in Revela­tion 22:3-4 comes after our bodily resurrection: "The throne of God... will be in the city, and his servants will... see his face." As physical be­ings we will certainly have physical eyes—how else should we expect to see God? Our resurrection bodies will have physical-spiritual eyes, un­tainted by sin, disease, or death. They will see far better than Moses' eyes, which al­lowed him to see an indirect manifestation of God's glory.

  Will the Christ we worship in Heaven as God also be a man? Yes. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday [when he lived on Earth] and today [when he lives in the present Heaven] and forever [when he will live on the New Earth, in the eter­nal Heaven]" (Hebrews 13:8). Christ didn't put on a body as if it were a coat. He didn't contain two separable components, man and God, to be switched on and off at will. Rather, he was and is and will be always a man and God.

  When Christ died, he might have appeared to shed his humanity; but when he rose in an indestructible body, he declared his permanent identity as the God-man. J. I. Packer writes, "By in
carnation the Son became more than he was before, and a human element became integral to the ongoing life of the Tri­une G o d . . . . Christ's glorified humanity, which is the template and link for the glorification that is ours, must go on forever."135 This is a mystery so great it should leave us breathless.

  Job, in his anguish, cried out in a vision of striking clarity: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27). The anticipation of seeing God face-to-face, in our resurrected bod­ies, is heartfelt and ancient. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV). Our glorification will increase as we behold God in his glory.

  We need not wait till the New Earth to catch glimpses of God. We're told his "invisible qualities" can be "clearly seen" in "what has been made" (Romans 1:20). Consider the trees, flowers, sun, rain, and the people around you. Yes, there's devastation all around us and within us. Eden has been trampled, burned, and savaged. Yet the stars in the sky nevertheless declare God's glory (Psalm 19:1), as do animals, art, and music. But our vision is hampered by the same curse that infects all creation. One day both we and the universe will be forever cured of sin. In that day, we will see God.

  SEEING GOD: OUR PRIMARY JOY

  In Heaven, the barriers betweenredeemed human beings and God will forever be gone. To look into God's eyes will be to see what we've always longed to see: the person who made us for his own good pleasure. Seeing God will be like see­ing everything else for the first time. Why? Because not only will we see God, he will be the lens through which we see everything else—people, ourselves, and the events of this life.