Is Heaven a Wonderful Place?

It is a sad truth that millions of sincere Christians are sincerely wrong about something in their doctrine or practice. Many believe that a human priest is necessary to access the grace of God. Quite a few believe that it is necessary to baptize infants for salvation. Countless numbers of people who claim to believe the Bible think that their good behavior puts them in good standing with God. I am quite certain that these people are wrong because these beliefs do not square with the truth taught in the Scriptures. I believe that they hold these erroneous opinions because they have sought truth through natural means rather than spiritual means.

This condition is inevitable since Christians are human. Truthfully, though, Christians are not supposed to be thinking like other humans. People without God have no choice but to seek truth by natural means; Christians have the option, no the command to live under the control of the Spirit of God. According to Jesus, that Spirit is intended to “lead you into all truth.” A.W. Tozer says, “Were this an unfallen world the path of truth would be a smooth and easy one. Here the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God; the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary one to another. In that contest there can be only one outcome. We must surrender and God must have His way. His glory and our eternal welfare require that it be so!” (A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings,Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015, 257.)

In the natural world, we can use the scientific method to ferret out the truth. For the Christian, natural truth can be revealed in a natural way, but spiritual truth must be discovered in a supernatural way: the Holy Spirit makes it known primarily through the Bible. Tozer was quoting Paul when he said that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit. The Greek is more emphatic; it says the natural (soulish) man cannot receive spiritual truth. Tozer points out something else Paul wrote: the things we might think are true in our natural selves (souls) are often at odds with the actual truth as revealed by the Spirit.

Some spiritual truths are pretty straightforward. God loved the world so much that He sent His only Son to die for us. The Son, Jesus, came to earth as a baby born of a virgin, and He grew to be the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. After His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus returned to the presence of His Father and sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in and empower believers. That last bit is where many believers begin to struggle with what is truth. Because our human nature is so strong, we go with what seems “natural” rather than seeking the spiritual truth.

I am about to suggest something that will shock most people who believe the Bible. I am not alone in this belief; many trusted Bible scholars teach this. In fact, it was their teaching that led me to the Scriptures and the radical conclusion I have come to. Here it is: I don’t believe Christians go to heaven when they die. I realize this idea has been taught for centuries, and the majority of Christians believe it. I have joined the minority; I don’t believe heaven is our eternal destiny. I will explain why.

First and foremost, there is no Bible verse that says believers go to heaven when they die. The misunderstanding of the word “heaven” has caused most of the problem. Jesus spoke repeatedly about the “Kingdom of Heaven.” We miss the truth if we think of heaven as a place in contrast to the earth as a place. The simple cosmology of the people in Bible times was of a heaven where birds and clouds fly, a second heaven where the moon and stars are, and a third heaven where God “lives.”

We learn an important truth from what Jesus told the Samaritan woman: God is spirit. As a spirit being, God does not occupy a place – take up space – in the same way we do. Saying that God is in heaven is saying that God dwells in the spirit realm. Heaven is not a place; it is a state of being. Jesus’ constant reference to the kingdom of heaven was meant to convey the idea of God’s rule on earth. The Lord’s Prayer asks for the kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. The repeated commands to be filled with the Spirit are intended to accomplish the same thing: God’s rule in our lives.

We sometimes say that Jesus left heaven to come to earth. We say His earthly ministry culminated on the Cross of Calvary, and we say that when He concluded His earthly ministry, He went back to heaven. The truth is that Jesus existed as an eternal spirit before His incarnation, and then, at His resurrection, He was given a “spiritual body” to resume His position with His Heavenly Father during the church age. Paul was talking about this spiritual body when he explained that just as Christ was raised, we shall also be resurrected with a different kind of body – a body like the one Christ has now according to John. Paul describes the new body as, “A building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens (the spirit realm.)

When we are resurrected, we should not imagine that we will have two choices for our dwelling: on earth or in heaven. When Christ returns, the Kingdom of Heaven He initiated in His earthly ministry will fully come; heaven and earth will be one. The reality of earth and heaven will be fully integrated. In my previous post, I mentioned Philip Yancey’s comment that heaven and earth are not two separate realities but different expressions of the same reality. I believe the present two-part nature of that reality will be one when Jesus returns.

I suspect that the hope of heaven as our eternal home arose alongside the deteriorating hope that the church would bring God’s kingdom to earth after which Christ would return to reign over it. This idea, known as post-millennial eschatology, gradually faded as it became clear that the world was not becoming more and more like the heavenly kingdom, but instead it was sliding further under the control of the “god of this age,” as Paul called Satan.

That sad realization caused many to abandon the idea of a good earth and revert to the dualism of the Greek philosophers which some early church fathers believed. The Greeks taught that the natural world is bad, and the spiritual world is good. Therefore, we must escape this bad place and go to a better one: heaven. That is not biblical truth. God created the earth good. Yes, it was affected by Adam’s fall into sin, but it remains God’s good world. Paul says the earth groans as it waits for the revealing of God’s people. He also says that we groan with longing for our new spiritual bodies which will inhabit the new earth.

When Jesus returns, I believe God will restore the earth to its original Edenic state and end Satan’s usurpation of Adam’s dominion. I believe this is the “new earth” Scripture envisions. You have to ask yourself why God would bother to establish a new earth if it wasn’t for His children to live on. Paul told the Philippians, “For our commonwealth exists in heaven, from which also we eagerly await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our humble body to be conformed to his glorious body, in accordance with the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (There’s that idea again that we will receive bodies like the one Jesus has.)

The word Paul uses, commonwealth, is unique; it appears only here in Scripture. It means the governing authority or sphere of control. In other words, our proper controlling power is “in heaven,” meaning it is spiritual. Our essential existence is spiritual. When Jesus transforms our bodies at our resurrection, they will be perfectly suited to live on the recreated earth. The kingdom of heaven – God’s perfect rulership – will fully and finally come to earth when Christ subjects all things to Himself. That will be heavenly, you might say, but I don’t believe it will be in Heaven. It will still be a supremely wonderful place. And honestly, that sounds better to me than sitting on a cloud playing a harp for eternity.

In my next post, I will treat individually several of the Bible passages that are used to support the idea that Christians go to heaven when they die. Stay tuned.

Related Posts: Why Heaven Matters; Understanding Salvation