Heaven: A Comprehensive Guide to Everything the Bible Says About Our Eternal Home

by Randy Alcorn

It appears that we are not essentially spirits who inhabit bodies, but we are essentially as much physical as we are spiritual. We cannot be fully human without both a spirit and a body.

Because these martyrs are also called “souls” (Revelation 6:9), some insist that they must be disembodied spirits. But the Greek word psuche, here translated “soul,” does not normally mean disembodied spirit.

To assume this is all figurative language is not a restriction demanded by the text but only by our presupposition that Heaven isn’t a physical place.

If we are given intermediate forms, they are at best temporary vessels (comparable to the human-appearing bodies that angels sometimes take on), distinct from our true bodies, which remain dead until our resurrection.

Memory is a basic element of personality. If we are truly ourselves in Heaven, there must be continuity of memory from Earth to Heaven. We will not be different people, but the same people marvelously relocated and transformed.

That the angel specifically addresses people living in Heaven indicates they’re aware of what’s happening on Earth.

The unfolding drama of redemption, awaiting Christ’s return, is currently happening on Earth. Earth is center court, center stage, awaiting the consummation of Christ’s return and the establishment of his Kingdom.

Happiness in Heaven is not based on ignorance but on perspective. Those who live in the presence of Christ find great joy in worshiping God and living as righteous beings in rich fellowship in a sinless environment.

Biblical Christianity doesn’t give up on humanity or the earth.

We long for what the first man and woman once enjoyed—a perfect and beautiful Earth with free and untainted relationships with God, each other, animals, and our environment. Every attempt at human progress has been an attempt to overcome what was lost in the Fall.

Adam was formed from the dust of the earth, forever establishing our connection to the earth (Genesis 2:7). Just as we are made from the earth, so too we are made for the earth.

If the word Earth in this phrase means anything, it means that we can expect to find earthly things there—including atmosphere, mountains, water, trees, people, houses—even cities, buildings, and streets. (These familiar features are specifically mentioned in Revelation 21–22.)

If you think you can’t imagine Heaven—or if you imagine it as something drab and unappealing—you can’t get excited about it. You can’t come with the childlike eagerness that God so highly values (Mark 10:15).

15).

The biblical doctrine of the New Earth implies something startling: that if we want to know what the ultimate Heaven, our eternal home, will be like, the best place to start is by looking around us. We shouldn’t close our eyes and try to imagine the unimaginable. We should open our eyes, because the present Earth is as much a valid reference point for envisioning the New Earth as our present bodies are a valid reference point for envisioning our new bodies.

The idea of the New Earth as a physical place isn’t an invention of shortsighted human imagination. Rather, it’s the invention of a transcendent God, who made physical human beings to live on a physical Earth, and who chose to become a man himself on that same Earth.

These parallels are too remarkable to be anything but deliberate. These mirror images demonstrate the perfect symmetry of God’s plan.

The earth matters, our bodies matter, animals and trees matter, matter matters, because God created them and intends them to manifest his glory.

God could just destroy his original creation and put it all behind him. But he won’t do that. Upon creating the heavens and the earth, he called them “very good.”

Christ died not merely to make the best of a bad situation. He died so that mankind, Earth, and the universe itself would be renewed to forever proclaim his glory.

Yet somehow we’ve managed to overlook an entire biblical vocabulary that makes this point clear. Reconcile. Redeem. Restore. Recover. Return. Renew. Regenerate. Resurrect. Each of these biblical words begins with the re- prefix, suggesting a return to an original condition that was ruined or lost.

These words emphasize that God always sees us in light of what he intended us to be, and he always seeks to restore us to that design. Likewise, he sees the earth in terms of what he intended it to be, and he seeks to restore it to its original design.

“[God] hangs on to his fallen original creation and salvages it. He refuses to abandon the work of his hands—in fact, he sacrifices his own Son to save his original project. Humankind, which has botched its original mandate and the whole creation along with it, is given another chance in Christ; we are reinstated as God’s managers on earth. The original good creation is to be restored.”

Instead, he chose to redeem what he started with—the heavens, Earth, and mankind—to bring them back to his original purpose.

It’s not only the individuals of Narnia who need Aslan to come, it is the entire world of Narnia. Similarly, Scripture tells us, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8).

Albert Wolters points out that most of Christ’s miracles “are miracles of restoration—restoration to health, restoration to life, restoration to freedom from demonic possession. Jesus’ miracles provide us with a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God.”

“Redemption is not a matter of an addition of a spiritual or supernatural dimension to creaturely life that was lacking before; rather, it is a matter of bringing new life and vitality to what was there all along. . . . The only thing redemption adds that is not included in the creation is the remedy for sin, and that remedy is brought in solely for the purpose of recovering a sinless creation. . . . Grace restores nature, making it whole once more.”

The prophets are never concerned about some far-off realm of disembodied spirits. They are concerned about the land, the inheritance, the city of Jerusalem, and the earth they walked on.

As the entire world was promised blessing through Abraham, the redemption of Jerusalem and Israel speaks of the redemption of the earth itself.

(1 Corinthians 15:22-25).

Most scholars agree that the point of this passage is not that Christ will someday cease to reign, but that his reign will continue until and after his enemies are conquered and judged. (When a prince handed over to his father a kingdom he had conquered, it was common for the king to entrust rulership of that kingdom back to his son.)

Christ’s mission is both to redeem what was lost in the Fall and to destroy all competitors to God’s d...

God’s Kingdom and dominion are not about what happens in some remote, unearthly place; instead, they are about what happens on the earth, which God created for his glory.

Both Isaiah and Revelation indicate that the products of human culture will play an important role on the New Earth.

This is the paradox of Scripture’s simultaneous teachings of destruction and renewal. That which is now used for prideful and even idolatrous purposes will be used to the glory of God when the hearts of mankind are transformed and creation itself is renewed.85

Christ’s mission was to reclaim and set free not only the earth’s inhabitants, but the earth itself.

“Since one of the results of sin had been death,” writes Anthony Hoekema, “the promised victory must somehow involve the removal of death. Further, since another result of sin had been the banishment of our first parents from the Garden of Eden, from which they were supposed to rule the world for God, it would seem that the victory should also mean man’s restoration to some kind of regained paradise, from which he could once again properly and sinlessly rule the earth. . . . In a sense, therefore, the expectation of a New Earth was already implicit in the promise of Genesis 3:15.”87

God did not sit idly by or shrug his shoulders at sin, death, and the Curse. He did not relinquish his claim on mankind and the earth. No sooner did ruin descend on humanity and Earth than God revealed his plan to defeat Satan and retake them for his glory.

God doesn’t throw away his handiwork and start from scratch—instead, he uses the same canvas to repair and make more beautiful the painting marred by the vandal. The vandal doesn’t get the satisfaction of destroying his rival’s masterpiece. On the contrary, God makes an even greater masterpiece out of what his enemy sought to destroy.

As Ephesians 1:10 demonstrates, this idea of Earth and Heaven becoming one is explicitly biblical. Christ will make Earth into Heaven and Heaven into Earth. Just as the wall that separates God and mankind is torn down in Jesus, so too the wall that separates Heaven and Earth will be forever demolished.

This is the “already and not yet” paradox that characterizes life on the present Earth.

Note that it says Christ came not to destroy the world he created, but to destroy the works of the devil, which were to twist and pervert and ruin what God had made.

Jesus came not only to save spirits from damnation. That would have been, at most, a partial victory. No, he came to save his whole creation from death. That means our bodies too, not just our spirits. It means the earth, not just humanity. And it means the universe, not just the earth.

The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of redemption—both for mankind and for the earth. Indeed, without Christ’s resurrection and what it means—an eternal future for fully restored human beings dwelling on a fully restored Earth—there is no Christianity.

The biblical view of human nature, however, is radically different. Scripture indicates that God designed our bodies to be an integral part of our total being. Our physical bodies are an essential aspect of who we are, not just shells for our spirits to inhabit.

(spirit) but also “the dust of the ground” (body). When we die, it isn’t that our real self goes to the present Heaven and our fake self goes to the grave; it’s that part of us goes to the present Heaven and part goes to the grave to await our bodily resurrection.

“Resurrected bodies are not intended just to float in space, or to flit from cloud to cloud. They call for a new earth on which to live and to work, glorifying God. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, in fact, makes no sense whatever apart from the doctrine of the new earth.”95

It is God who created us to desire what we are made for. It is God who “set eternity in the hearts of men”

Christianity is not a platonic religion that regards material things as mere shadows of reality, which will be sloughed off as soon as possible. Not the mere immortality of the soul, but rather the resurrection of the body and the renewal of all creation is the hope of the Christian faith. John Piper

There will be continuity from this life to the next.