Authors: Randy Alcorn
DO WE REMAIN CONSCIOUS AFTER
DEATH?
"The dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7). At death, the
human spirit goes either to Heaven or Hell. Christ depicted Lazarus and the rich man as conscious in Heaven and Hell immediately
after they died (Luke 16:22-31). Jesus told the dying thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43).
The apostle Paul said that to die was to be with Christ (Philippians 1:23), and to be absent from the body was to be present
with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). After their deaths, martyrs are pictured in Heaven, crying out to God to bring justice
on Earth (Revelation 6:9-11).
These passages make it clear that there is no such thing as "soul sleep," or a long period of unconsciousness between life
on Earth and life in Heaven. The phrase "fallen asleep" (in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and similar passages) is a euphemism for
death, describing the body's outward appearance. The spirit's departure from the body ends our existence on Earth. The physical
part of us "sleeps" until the resurrection, while the spiritual part of us relocates to a conscious existence in Heaven (Daniel
12:2-3; 2 Corinthians 5:8). Some Old Testament passages (e.g., Ecclesiastes 9:5) address outward appearances and do not reflect
the fullness of New Testament revelation concerning immediate relocation and consciousness after death.
Every reference in Revelation to human beings talking and worshiping in Heaven prior to the resurrection of the dead demonstrates
that our spiritual beings are conscious, not sleeping, after death. (Nearly everyone who believes in soul sleep believes
that souls are disembodied at death; it's not clear how disembodied beings
could sleep,
because sleeping involves a physical body.)
WILL WE BE JUDGED WHEN WE DIE?
When we die, we face judgment, what is called the judgment of faith. The outcome of this judgment determines whether we go
to the present Heaven or the present Hell. This initial judgment depends not on our works but on our faith. It is not about
what we've done during our lives but about what Christ has done for us. If we have accepted Christ's atoning death for us,
then when God judges us after we die, he sees his Son's sacrifice for us, not our sin. Salvation is a free gift, to which
we can contribute absolutely nothing (Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5).
This first judgment is not to be confused with the final judgment, or what is called the judgment of works. Both believers
and unbelievers face a final judgment. The Bible indicates that all believers will stand before the judgment seat of Christ
to give an account of their lives (Romans 14:10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:10). It's critical to understand that this judgment is
a judgment of works, not of faith (1 Corinthians 3:13-14). Our works do not affect our salvation, but they do affect our reward.
Rewards are about our work for God, empowered by his Spirit. Rewards are conditional, dependent on our faithfulness (2 Timothy
2:12; Revelation 2:26-28; 3:21).
†
Unbelievers face a final judgment of works as well. The Bible tells us it will come at the great white throne, at the end
of the old Earth and just before the beginning of the New Earth (Revelation 20:11-13).
Opinions vary about when the judgment of works for believers will occur. Some people picture it occurring immediately after
the judgment of faith, a "one at a time" judgment happening as each believer dies. Others think it happens in the present
Heaven, between our death and the return of Christ. Those who believe in a pretribulational Rapture often envision the judgment
of works happening between the Rapture and the physical return of Christ, while the Tribulation is taking place on Earth.
Still others believe it happens at the same time as the Great White Throne Judgment of unbelievers, after the Millennium.
IS THE PRESENT HEAVEN PART OF OUR UNIVERSE OR ANOTHER?
The present Heaven is normally invisible to those living on Earth. For those who have trouble accepting the reality of an
unseen realm, consider the perspective of cutting-edge researchers who embrace string theory. Scientists at Yale, Princeton,
and Stanford, among others, postulate that there are ten unobservable dimensions and likely an infinite number of imperceptible
universes.
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If this is what leading scientists believe, why should anyone feel self-conscious about believing in
one
unobservable dimension, a realm containing angels and Heaven and Hell?
The Bible teaches that sometimes humans are allowed to see into Heaven. When Stephen was being stoned because of his faith
in Christ, he gazed into Heaven: "Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus
standing at the right hand of God. 'Look,' he said, 'I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God'"
(Acts 7:55-56). Scripture tells us not that Stephen dreamed this, but that he actually
saw
it.
Wayne Grudem points out that Stephen "did not see mere symbols of a state of existence. It was rather that his eyes were opened
to see a spiritual dimension of reality which God has hidden from us in this present age, a dimension which none the less
really does exist in our space/time universe, and within which Jesus now lives in his physical resurrected body, waiting even
now for a time when he will return to earth."
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I agree with Grudem that the present Heaven is a space/time universe. He may be right that it's part of our own universe,
or it may be in a different universe. It could be a universe next door that's normally hidden but sometimes opened. In either
case, it seems likely that God didn't merely create a vision for Stephen in order to make Heaven
appear
physical. Rather, he allowed Stephen to see an intermediate Heaven that
was
(and is) physical.
The prophet Elisha asked God to give his servant, Gehazi, a glimpse of the invisible realm. He prayed, " 'O Lord, open his
eyes so he may see.' Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots
of fire all around Elisha" (2 Kings 6:17). It could be argued that these horses and chariots (with angelic warriors) exist
beside us in our universe, but we are normally blind to them. Or they maybe in a universe beside ours that opens up into ours
so that angelic beings—and horses, apparently—can move between universes.
A third possibility—to me, the least convincing one in these instances—is that such descriptions are merely metaphorical,
not to be taken literally. But Acts 7 and 2 Kings 6 are narrative accounts, historical in nature, not apocalyptic or parabolic
literature. The text is clear that Stephen and Gehazi saw things actual and physical. This supports the view that Heaven
is a physical realm. Physical and spiritual are neither opposite nor contradictory. In fact, the apostle Paul refers to the
resurrection body as a "spiritual body" (1 Corinthians 15:44). God is a spirit, and angels are spirit beings, but both can—and
on the New Earth will—live in a physical environment.
If a blind man momentarily gained his sight and described an actual tree that he saw, other blind people—especially if they
lived in a world where everyone was blind—might automatically assume the tree was nonliteral, a mere symbol of some spiritual
reality. But they would be wrong. Likewise, we should not assume that the Bible describes Heaven in physical ways merely to
accommodate us. It is fully possible that the present Heaven is a physical realm.
Because the question of the physical nature of the present Heaven is important and controversial, we'll take a closer look
at it in the next chapter.
†1 deal at length with the topic of eternal rewards in my books
In Light of Eternity
(Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 1999),
Money, Possessions, and Eternity
(Wheaton, 111.: Tyndale, 2003), and
The Law of Rewards
(Wheaton, 111.: Tyndale, 2003).
IS THE PRESENT HEAVEN A
PHYSICAL PLACE?
For the entrance of the greater world is wide and sure, and they who see the straitness and thepainfulness from which they
have been delivered must wonder exceedingly as they are received into those large rooms with joy and immortality.
Amy Carmichael
A
fter reading one of my books, a missionary wrote to me, deeply troubled that I thought Heaven might be a physical place. In
our correspondence, no matter how many Scripture passages I pointed to, it didn't matter. He'd always been taught that Heaven
was "spiritual" and therefore not physical. To suggest otherwise was, in his mind, to commit heresy.
My concern was not so much that he believed the present Heaven isn't physical. (Maybe he's right.) Rather, it was that he
seemed convinced that if Heaven
were
physical, it would be less sacred and special. He viewed physical and spiritual as opposites. When I asked him to demonstrate
from Scripture why Heaven cannot be a physical place, he told me the answer was very simple: because "God is spirit" (John
4:24). He believed that verse settled the question once and for all.
But saying that God is spirit is very different from saying that Heaven is spirit. Heaven, after all, is not the same as God.
God created Heaven; therefore, he did not always dwell there. Though God chooses to dwell in Heaven, he does not need a dwelling
place. However, as finite humans, we do. It's no problem for the all-powerful God, a spirit, to dwell in a spiritual realm
or a physical realm or a realm that includes both. The real question is whether people, being by nature both spiritual and
physical, can dwell in a realm without physical properties.
The physical New Earth will be our ultimate dwelling place, but until then we shouldn't find it surprising if God chooses
to provide a waiting place that's also physical. For us to exist as human beings, we occupy space. It seems reasonable to
infer that the space we occupy would be physical. If the present, intermediate Heaven is a place where God, angels, and humans
dwell, it makes sense that Heaven would be accommodated to mankind, because God needs no accommodation. We know that angels
can exist in a physical world because they exist in this one, not just in Heaven. In fact, angels sometimes, perhaps often,
take on human form (Hebrews 13:2).
If we are to draw inferences about the nature of Heaven, we shouldn't derive them from the nature of God. After all, he is
a one-of-a-kind being who is infinite, existing outside of space and time. Rather, we should base our deductions on the nature
of humanity. It's no problem for the infinite God to dwell wherever mankind dwells. The question is whether finite humans
can exist as God does—outside of space and time. I'm not certain we can. But I am certain that
if
we can, it is only as a temporary aberration that will be permanently corrected by our bodily resurrection in preparation
for life on the New Earth.
Why are we so resistant to the idea that Heaven could be physical? The answer, I believe, is centered in an unbiblical belief
that the spirit realm is good and the material world is bad, a view I am calling
Christoplatonism.
(For a discussion of Christoplatonism's false assumptions, see appendix A.) For our purposes in this chapter, I will summarize
this belief that looms like a dark cloud over the common view of Heaven.
Plato, the Greek philosopher, believed that material things, including the human body and the earth, are evil, while immaterial
things such as the soul and Heaven are good. This view is called Platonism. The Christian church, highly influenced by Platonism
through the teachings of Philo (ca. 20 BC-AD 50) and Origen (AD 185-254), among others, came to embrace the "spiritual" view
that human spirits are better off without bodies and that Heaven is a disembodied state. They rejected the notion of Heaven
as a physical realm and spiritualized or entirely neglected the biblical teaching of resurrected people inhabiting a resurrected
Earth.
Christoplatonism has had a devastating effect on our ability to understand what Scripture says about Heaven, particularly
about the eternal Heaven, the New Earth. A fine Christian man said to me, "This idea of having bodies and eating food and
being in an earthly place . . . it just sounds so
unspiritual?
Without knowing it, he was under the influence of Christoplatonism. If we believe, even subconsciously, that bodies and
the earth and material things are unspiritual, even evil, then we will inevitably reject or spiritualize any biblical revelation
about our bodily resurrection or the physical characteristics of the New Earth. That's exactly what has happened in most Christian
churches, and it's a large reason for our failure to come to terms with a biblical doctrine of Heaven. Christoplatonism has
also closed our minds to the possibility that the present Heaven may actually be a physical realm. If we look at Scripture,
however, we'll see considerable evidence that the present Heaven has physical properties.
HEAVEN AS SUBSTANCE, EARTH AS SHADOW
In his seventeenth-century classic
Paradise Lost,
John Milton describes Eden as a garden full of aromatic flowers, delicious fruit, and soft grass, lushly watered. He also
connects Eden with Heaven, the source of earthly existence, portraying Heaven as a place of great pleasures and the source
of Earth's pleasures. In Milton's story, the angel Raphael asks Adam,
What
if Earth
Be but the shadow ofHeav'n, and things therein
Each to other like, more then on Earth is thought?
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Though the idea of Earth as Heaven's shadow is seldom discussed, even in books on Heaven, it's a concept that has biblical
support. For example, the temple in Heaven is filled with smoke from the glory of God (Revelation 15:8). Is this a figurative
temple with figurative smoke? Or is there an actual fire creating literal smoke in a real building? We're told there are scrolls
in Heaven, elders who have faces, martyrs who wear clothes, and even people with "palm branches in their hands" (Revelation
7:9). There are musical instruments in the present Heaven (Revelation 8:6), horses coming into and out of Heaven (2 Kings
2:11; Revelation 19:14), and an eagle flying overhead in Heaven (Revelation 8:13). Perhaps some of these objects are merely
symbolic, with no corresponding physical reality. But is that true of
allot
them?
Many commentators dismiss the possibility that any of these passages in Revelation should be taken literally, on the grounds
that it is apocalyptic literature, which is known for its figures of speech. But the book of Hebrews isn't apocalyptic, it's
epistolary. It says that earthly priests "serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven" (Hebrews 8:5).
Moses was told, in building the earthly tabernacle, "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you
on the mountain" (Hebrews 8:5). If that which was built after the pattern was physical, might it suggest the original was
also physical?
The book of Hebrews seems to say that we should see Earth as a
derivative
realm and Heaven as the
source
realm. If we do, we'll abandon the assumption that something existing in one realm cannot exist in the other. In fact, we'll
consider it likely that what exists in one realm exists in at least some form in the other. We should stop thinking of Heaven
and Earth as opposites and instead view them as overlapping circles that share certain commonalities.
Christ "went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation"
(Hebrews 9:11). "Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself"
(Hebrews 9:24). The earthly sanctuary was a copy of the true one in Heaven. In fact, the New Jerusalem that will be brought
down to the New Earth is currently in the intermediate or present Heaven (Hebrews 12:22). If we know that the New Jerusalem
will be physically on the New Earth, and we also know that it is in the present Heaven,
does that not suggest the New Jerusalem is currently physical?
Why wouldn't it be? Unless we start with an assumption that Heaven
can't
be physical, it seems that this evidence would persuade us that it is indeed physical.
These verses in Hebrews suggest that God created Earth in the image of Heaven, just as he created mankind in his image. C.
S. Lewis proposed that "the hills and valleys of Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original,
nor as a substitute is to the genuine article, but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal."
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The church is constantly being tempted to accept this world as her home . . . but if she is wise she will consider that she
stands in the valley between the mountain peaks of eternity past and eternity to come. The past is gone forever and the present
is passing as swift as the shadow on the sundial of Ahaz. Even if the earth should continue a million years not one of us
could stay to enjoy it. We do well to think of the long tomorrow.
A.W.TOZER
Often our thinking is backwards. Why do we imagine that God patterns Heaven's holy city after an earthly city, as if Heaven
knows nothing of community and culture and has to get its ideas from us? Isn't it more likely that earthly realities, including
cities, are derived from heavenly counterparts? We tend to start with Earth and reason up toward Heaven, when instead we should
start with Heaven and reason down toward Earth. It isn't merely an accommodation to our earthly familial structure, for instance,
that God calls himself a father and us children. On the contrary, he created father-child relationships to display his relationship
with us, just as he created human marriage to reveal the love relationship between Christ and his bride (Ephesians 5:32).
In my novel
Safely Home,
I envision the relationship between Earth and Heaven:
Compared to what he now beheld, the world he'd come from was a land of shadows, colorless and two-dimensional. This place
was fresh and captivating, resonating with color and beauty. He could not only see and hear it, but feel and smell and taste
it. Every hillside, every mountain, every waterfall, every frolicking animal in the fields seemed to beckon him to come join
them, to come from the outside and plunge into the inside. This whole world had the feel of cool water on a blistering August
afternoon. The light beckoned him to dive in with abandon, to come join the great adventure.
"I know what this is," Quan said.
"Tell me," said the Carpenter.
"It's the substance that casts all those shadows in the other world. The circles there are copies of the spheres here. The
squares there are copies of the cubes here. The triangles there are copies of the pyramids here. Earth was a flatland. This
is . . . well, the inside is bigger than the outside, isn't it? How many dimensions are there?"
"Far more than you have seen yet," the King said, laughing.
"This is the Place that defines and gives meaning to all places," Li Quan said. "I never imagined it would be like this."
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DOES "PARADISE" SUGGEST A PHYSICAL
PLACE?
During the Crucifixion, when Jesus said to the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43), he
was referring to the present Heaven. But why did he call it
paradise,
and what did he mean?
The word
paradise
comes from the Persian word
pairidaeza,
meaning "a walled park" or "enclosed garden." It was used to describe the great walled gardens of the Persian king Cyrus's
royal palaces. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Greek word for paradise is used to describe
the Garden of Eden (e.g., Genesis 2:8; Ezekiel 28:13). Later, because of the Jewish belief that God would restore
F,den,paradisebeca.me
the word to describe the eternal state of the righteous, and to a lesser extent, the present Heaven.
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The word
paradise
does not refer to wild nature but to nature under mankind's dominion. The garden or park was not left to grow entirely on
its own. People brought their creativity to bear on managing, cultivating, and presenting the garden or park. "The idea of
a walled garden," writes Oxford professor Alister McGrath, "enclosing a carefully cultivated area of exquisite plants and
animals, was the most powerful symbol of paradise available to the human imagination, mingling the images of the beauty of
nature with the orderliness of human construction.... The whole of human history is thus enfolded in the subtle interplay
of sorrow over a lost paradise, and the hope of its final restoration."
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In the Judaism of the New Testament era, "The site of reopened Paradise is almost without exception the earth. . . . The belief
in resurrection gave assurance that all the righteous, even those who are dead, would have a share in the reopened paradise."
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Paradise was not generally understood as mere allegory, with a metaphorical or spiritual meaning, but as an actual physical
place where God and his people lived together, surrounded by physical beauty, enjoying great pleasures and happiness.
God says, "To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God" (Revelation
2:7). The same physical tree of life that was in the Garden of Eden will one day be in the New Jerusalem on the New Earth
(Revelation
22:2).
Now it is (present tense) in the intermediate or present Heaven. Shouldn't we assume it has the same physical properties it
had in the Garden of Eden and will have in the New Jerusalem? If it doesn't, could it be called the tree of life?