What on Earth is Heaven? Quotes

“One of my favourite passages in The Great Divorce is when Lewis sees a procession moving through the foothills of heaven. There are bright spirits dancing and scattering flowers, and musicians playing instruments amid boys and girls singing. All this is being done in honour of a woman, behind whom follow cats and dogs, birds and horses. Lewis deduces that this woman must be the Virgin Mary to be so honoured, but his guide informs him that ‘Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golder’s Green’. 3 When Lewis comments that she must have been a person of particular importance, his guide replies, ‘Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.’ 4 On earth, Sarah Smith may have appeared to be a nobody from nowhere special, but in the perspective of heaven she is ‘one of the great ones’. This, we learn, is not because she did extraordinary things on earth, but because she was a woman who loved all things well.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“The story of the Bible is the story of God’s grace to graceless humanity. It is the story of God bringing heaven to earth so that it might be saved from hell. Each of us, like the thief on the cross, has a choice to make: to receive God’s gift or to refuse it. The feasting hall is lit and decorated; the table is set and a delicious meal prepared; the wine goblets are filled to overflowing; the invitation has been sent. But the choice is ours. Will you come to the party?”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“The new Christians in Corinth also had such questions, asking the apostle Paul, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of a body will they come?’ (1 Corinthians 15: 35). To answer their question, Paul uses the analogy of a seed. When you sow you do not place the mature plant in the ground but a tiny ‘simple’ seed. Yet God has created the seed so that it grows into a plant that is far more complex and glorious than the seed. I have a small vegetable patch where I plant a few seeds every spring. To me all the seeds look roughly the same, so I always find it amazing, even miraculous, that these tiny identical dry, black specks grow into delicious lettuce, rocket, spinach or carrots. Paul says that our earthly bodies and resurrected bodies are like the relationship of seeds to plants. There is a continuity between seed and plant, just as there is a continuity between our body here on earth and our bodies in the new creation. Yet there is also a difference: ‘The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body’ (1 Corinthians 15: 42–44). Our resurrected bodies will not be less than our earthly bodies, just as a plant is not less than the seed it comes from. Our risen bodies will not be physicality-minus, but physicality-plus, just as Jesus’ resurrected body was physicality-plus. When Jesus unites heaven and earth, we will not just have earthly bodies but bodies that are also part of the eternal, imperishable, glorious dimension of heaven. They will not just be natural bodies, but ‘spiritual’ bodies; not because they are made of some non-material ‘spirit’ matter, but because they are filled with the empowering Spirit of God, the same Spirit that was given at Pentecost as the firstfruits of the new creation. So we don’t need to worry about what happens to the specific atoms of our bodies after we have died. The God who not only transforms seeds into plants, but who in the beginning created from nothing every atom of the entire material universe, is more than capable of recreating our bodies at the resurrection of the dead. It is his power that holds every molecule of the universe together so that it does not disintegrate into chaos (Colossians 1: 17) and on the last day will bring every molecule together to ‘transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body’ (Philippians 3: 21). But what happens if I am alive on earth on the day that Jesus returns? What kind of a body will I have then?”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“The earth is not our temporary residence while we wait to escape to heaven, but the place where God created us to live and the place we will share for eternity with all of God’s creatures.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“The Christian solution therefore is not the destruction of the material world, but its redemption, so that it is restored to its created goodness. We see the firstfruits of this restoration in the healing miracles that Jesus performed, in Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead, and in the giving of his Spirit to dwell within the bodies of those who trust in him. We will see its fulfilment when Jesus comes again and the dead are raised to live in a renewed heaven and earth.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“In the Christian world view, having bodies is not a barrier to spirituality but how we live out our spirituality in a physical world.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“We are here in a physical world, with physical bodies, because that is exactly where God purposed us to be and where we shall be in the future.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“So the new creation will be a place of never-ending, ever-increasing joyful relationship with God and with one another, but what will we actually do there? The answer is that we will reign over creation!”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“Their message wasn’t, ‘One day you will go up to join Jesus in heaven,’ but, ‘One day Jesus will come back to earth.’ Their message wasn’t about humanity escaping to be with Jesus, but about Jesus coming back to earth to be with humanity.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“As I have understood more of the biblical view of heaven and earth, I realized that the real question I should be asking is not ‘How do I get to heaven?’, but, ‘How can I be a part of heaven coming to earth?”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“Matthew records that at the moment Jesus died, when the temple curtain was torn in two, ‘The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.’ When the power of heaven flooded out through the tear in dimensions, it came in such a sudden rush that people were raised from the dead, right there and then. But Matthew clearly states that they were raised with physical bodies, not just as souls, and that they went into Jerusalem and ‘appeared to many people’ (Matthew 27: 51–53). Furthermore, when the disciples encountered the risen Christ for themselves, they met a physical Jesus who had a body that could be touched and that could eat food. Death had begun to work backwards. The power of heaven was coming to earth not to take the disciples away to a ‘spiritual’ bliss but, just as in the healing miracles of Jesus, it had come to undo all the disintegrating effects of evil and sin that were the result of humanity’s rebellion against God, even the ‘chain of death’ itself.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“The word used for ‘spirit’ in both Old and New Testaments has the meaning of ‘exhaled breath’, and is strongly associated with the idea of life. This is why Jesus ‘breathes out’ the Holy Spirit on his disciples (John 20: 22). ‘God is Spirit’ (John 4: 24) not because he is made from some non-material shadow substance but because he is the great Giver of Life, who breathed out his life to his creation, and who desires to share that life with all who will receive him. God’s plan was not that there should be a dualism between heaven and earth, but that heaven and earth should be united in one glorious reality. Human beings were created by God to participate in his plan to bring the good and loving order of heaven to the whole world, so that not just the garden but the whole earth would become a heavenly place, a place where God’s will was done. The process that God had started in the garden, human beings were to bring to completion.”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?

“Many of the things we think we know about heaven are half-baked versions of the truth, influenced more by ancient philosophies, the medieval imagination and pop culture than by what the Bible actually says. How, then, did the Christian story of heaven and earth come to be so misunderstood?”
― James Paul, What on Earth is Heaven?