(Extracted from our television series, “What’s So Exciting About Heaven?” Edited for publication.)
People often think heaven is going to be one long extremely boring church service. Not that all church services are boring, but, you know, after a couple million years it starts to wear on you a little bit. And that’s what people are thinking. There was a Far Side cartoon where a guy is sitting on a cloud and he’s got his stereotypical halo and supposed angel’s wings, and he’s gone to heaven now, and he’s just sitting on a cloud doing nothing. And the caption says, “I wish I’d brought a magazine.” And that’s the way a lot of people think of it—nothing to do, no conversations to have, no place to go.
God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. But heaven is a specific location. God is omnipresent; that means He dwells everywhere. But He has a special dwelling place that He chooses, and that’s heaven. That’s where His throne is. And we’re told that God is going to move His special dwelling place from where heaven is now, outside of our observation, into the new heavens and the new earth, and literally bring it down to earth. Ephesians 1 talks about how heaven and earth will be joined under one head, Christ. And remember Christ’s name, Immanuel, that means “God with us.” This is going to be God with us for all eternity. So when we see the throne of God in the new Jerusalem, we see Jesus sitting on the throne; and it talks about the Father sitting on the throne as well. Then that means that God has relocated His central dwelling place so that it’s like the new Jerusalem is the capital city of the new earth, which is the capital planet of the new universe, a recreated, renewed universe.
If we have a faith in Jesus Christ, we go immediately into the presence of God. We see with the rich man and Lazarus that where the rich man who did not know God went immediately when he died, was to another place, which we can call the present hell. But what we call the present hell will be thrown into the lake of fire. Similarly, what we call the present heaven, which is where Lazarus went when he died, will ultimately be relocated to that new earth.
But right after we die we enter the presence of God. Paul says it’s better by far, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” There is immediate ongoing consciousness. I know a family whose daughter was dying of a rare disease. And to help her understand this, they said, “Okay, Emily, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to wheel you in, in the wheelchair, into this room where you’re going to be, and then we’re going to be here on the other side of the door.” And then one by one they walked into the room. They said, “You’re going to be the first one in our family that’s going to enter the presence of God. But then, one by one, we’re going to follow you in here.” And, of course, to make the illustration perfect, you would have had to have Jesus be there with her in that room, you know. And so, she’s never alone in that room. She’s going to be with Him, but then the rest of the family that loves Jesus comes in. I thought it was a beautiful illustration, because it’s a reminder that death constitutes a temporary separation, but then there is reunion that follows it, with those that love God.
We can look at Jesus’ body because He’s called the first fruits from the dead. We’re told that we will be like Him when we see Him as He is. And what that means is that we can look at Jesus’ resurrection body and determine from it some things about our resurrection body. He made a point of saying to His disciples, “Touch Me. I’ve got this physical body. I am not a ghost. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as I have.” What do we learn from that? Well, the resurrection body has flesh and bones.
Now, it will not be a body subject to sin and death and suffering and all the things that came from the curse. In Revelation 22 we’re told there will be no more curse. So Jesus defeats death. He defeats the curse. He reverses the curse. And in our resurrection bodies we will experience life as we’ve never known it; because we can imagine what the resurrected life will be like: on our very best day when you felt your best and you looked your best and you had lots of energy and you thought this was the peak of my life. And we tend to look back and think I’ve passed my peak. Well, guess what? In the resurrection, our peak still awaits all of us, and we will never pass that peak.
We don’t know if we will have any supernatural qualities such as Jesus displayed. Was that unique to Jesus as the God-man, that He did that? But we do know that certainly these bodies will be at maximum capacity, and they’ll be in a better form than they ever have been. So, there won’t be sickness.
We do know, for instance, that there are streets in the new Jerusalem. And there are gates that enter the city. Well, normally that would indicate streets you walk on, and gates you enter through. So probably not everybody flying around all the time; and roads—that could be vehicles, there could be horse-and-carriage. It could be all kinds of things. There’s certainly no reason to believe there will not be technology. But certainly our bodies will experience what our bodies experience now, but without the curse, without sin in the world.
A lot of people have the misconception that when you die you become an angel, and my friend or my mother or my child who died is now kind of watching over me as my guardian angel. No, human beings are human beings, created in the image of God. Angels are angels; the two are completely different.
If we look back at Adam and Eve, we see that there was apparent age. Of course, they had just been created, but they appeared to be a certain age. What age was that? We don’t know for sure, but we just assume that it would be at the peak of their development, so probably post-adolescent. But in the resurrection where will we be? Well, actually a lot of ink was spilt over this in the Middle Ages. Peter Lombard, St. Thomas Aquinas, prominent theologians in the Middle Ages, thought a lot and wrote a lot about this. And Thomas Aquinas said we will all be 33 years old, the age of our Lord Jesus Christ when He died.
Well, you know, that’s a good thought, but there’s no specific basis for that. But certainly the idea probably would be something like in our 20’s, or whatever the peak of our development might be. Now, as far as somebody dying when they’re older, you know, they’re not going to be resurrected in an old-looking and feeling body, because that was under the curse that the deterioration of age was taking place, and there will be no more curse. So we know for sure that won’t happen.
As for little children, if the child does die at four years old, a lot of parents wonder, well then, will they just kind of fast-forward and will they be at the peak of their development and everybody will look alike to everybody else? And I think that it’s very possible that on the new earth, in the resurrection, on the new earth, it could be that God may allow the child who was four years old to be resurrected at four, and then grow to their place of maturity. If that’s true, whether that would be in the millennium or on the new earth, if that’s true, then what a basis for hope for parents who feel like they were robbed of those years in their child’s life, where their child would have been growing up. It’s possible that they may actually see their child grow up on the new earth. And if that’s the case, they would feel privileged, because they would be able to watch their child grow up without any worries about what’s going to happen to this child.
I don’t think we realize how much we have deteriorated. I think if we saw Adam and Eve in paradise, in the Garden, we would be stunned at their beauty, their strength, their capacity. Because what happened in Genesis 3, sin comes into the world; immediately the curse falls upon us: “And in the day you eat thereof you shall surely die.” But then we say, but they didn’t die. I mean, they went on to live like 900 years or something, and then the lifespan shortened after that. So the curse and the effects and consequences of the curse got more and more severe.
I think if we could imagine what they were like—humanity at its very best, the way God intended—that would be a great picture of the resurrection. But in the resurrection, even beyond, because what we have to remember is, God is not just going to restore Eden and restore original bodies, He is going to make it all better. And this is where the atoning work of Christ on the cross is so spectacular, because it doesn’t simply apply to us as human beings, but to the whole creation that went down under the fall, that’s going to be entirely resurrected and renewed.
We know that there are physical dwelling places in heaven. That word translated “place,” or “dwelling place” in John 14, is topos, from which we get topography. It is an actual place. And remember, we’ll have resurrection bodies; and bodies need a place. And the most important thing about heaven, of course, will be that we’ll be with Jesus.
But some of the translations of John 14 have the idea of one huge estate and then rooms in there. And then others have the idea more of many separate dwelling places on this larger estate. It could be either. But in Luke 16 we’re actually told to use wealth that belongs to God in such a way in this life that we invest it in other people. And then we’re told that in the kingdom, in heaven, they will welcome us into their dwelling places. So that indicates individualized dwelling places where you could actually be taken in as you’re traveling about the new earth. So, it’s a great idea. So the best and most important thing is that we’re with Jesus, but we’re also with each other, and we also have that individualized place that will be our very own.
What are we going to wear in heaven? All we know is that the martyrs who’ve died that have gone to heaven, and others are described as wearing robes. So a lot of people say, well, so that means we’ll all wear robes in heaven. But robes were just the regular daily garb that they had in those days. So I think in a sense, we could say that, well, we’ll wear normal clothes. So I fully expect that people of different cultures might dress very much as they did on the old earth while we’re walking around the new earth.
We’re made in God’s image. And, as a result of that, we have emotions; we have feelings; we care about other people. We like to be with other people. We love to party. And, you know, for a lot of people, they associate partying in this world with doing bad things, when, in fact, in biblical times, partying is where you got together and just celebrated. Think of all the feasts. Think of all the special occasions in Israel’s history where they would gather and they would eat. And their meals would go on for hours. And when you sit around a table—and we’re told in God’s kingdom we will sit around a table, and we’ll eat together—and think of the storytelling that comes with that. Think of the relating to each other what happened today: Here’s what I discovered today as I looked up at the stars, as I took a walk in the mountains, as I was making something for Jesus today. Here’s what I did and here is what I discovered. We’ll hear each other’s stories. And I think we will reflect back at the time we had on earth with the perspective of being able to see how God was at work in ways that right now we might not even realize.
We are told in 1 John 5, “These things are written that you may know that you have eternal life.” Written to who? To “those who believe in the name of the Son of God.” It is through a relationship with Jesus Christ that comes through placing our faith in Him. And that’s how you become a child of God. Bow your knee to repent, give your life to Jesus, ask His forgiveness. Because our default destination is not heaven; it’s actually hell, because we’re under sin. But Jesus took our sins upon Himself on the cross so that by placing our faith in Him, accepting the blood of His atonement, that we could be made righteous before God and enter heaven and live with Him for all eternity.