Heading for Home: The End Game

In This Chapter

Discovering the secrets of heaven

Confronting hell

Debating the idea of purgatory

Predicting the End Times events

 

When I co-founded a company several years ago, the legal and marketing experts whom my partner and I talked to asked us, “What’s your end game?” Being the savvy entrepreneur that I am, I supposed they were chit-chatting about board games, so I quickly chimed in that I loved Yahtzee, though Parcheesi and Trivial Pursuit were good choices, too. After getting some strange looks, I figured out that the end game they were referring to was the long-term objective for the company. A bop in the head from my partner helped me determine that, in the business world, you have three possible outcomes for your company: Grow your business, sell your business, or go out of business. Given my renowned business expertise, let me help you with these options in case you’re uninitiated – the first two scenarios are good; the last one is bad.

 

Biblical Christianity also has multiple end game scenarios – two desirable (die and go to heaven, or go straight there when Jesus returns to earth) and one quite undesirable (go to hell). Catholics complicate my nice little metaphor by adding purgatory as a fourth and final option.

 

In this chapter, you explore the Christian teachings of heaven, hell, purgatory, and the whole business of the Second Coming of Jesus. You also find out why Christians believe that the “exit strategy” that each human being makes is the most important decision he or she will ever make in life.

 

Enjoying Heaven for Eternity

Christians believe that people are designed by God, not just for seventy or so years on planet earth, but for eternity. The Bible calls the future home of all Christians heaven.

 

If one heaven’s not enough...

Paul speaks of the “third heaven” in 2 Corinthians 12:2. The Bible refers to heaven in different ways. The first heaven is the earth’s atmosphere (Acts 1:9-10, Genesis 7:11-12), the second heaven is the entire universe (Genesis 1:14-17), and the third heaven – sometimes called the heaven of heavens – is where God lives (1 Peter 3:22). Generally, when people speak of heaven today, they’re talking about that “third heaven” that Paul mentions, God’s dwelling place (Genesis 28:17, Revelation 12:7-8).

 

Field of Dreams is among my all-time favourite movies, but I blame it for the bad rap that heaven gets these days about being a boring place to live. You see, in the film, the word “heaven” is often used interchangeably with Iowa. Now, don’t get me wrong; I’ve visited Iowa and think it’s pretty good, as far as states go. What’s more, all my wife’s relatives come from Iowa, so you could practically call me a Hawkeye. Still, I’ve been to Iowa during the summer when the humidity is thicker than syrup, and it sure did feel far more like another place that’s located due south of heaven.

 

Heaven may not be altogether like Iowa, but exactly what it’s like is largely shrouded in mystery. Great Christian thinkers through the ages have long speculated on heaven and have provided some vivid and imaginative perspectives. Yet, in the end, most of these ideas are simply educated guesses. The Bible fills in some details, but not nearly enough to satisfy curious minds who want to know more.

 

At the same time, as the next section describes, consider what you can glean from the pages of the Bible about what this incredible place called heaven is really like.

 

Exploring seven ideas about a place called heaven

As I consider what heaven is like, I find myself wishing that God would’ve simply provided humans with a Picture Bible filled with photos of heaven. It could even be something like those annoying timeshare vacation resort brochures that come in the mail; I wouldn’t care. I’d just like to know what it’s going to look like! However, when you open the Bible and start to read about heaven, you see that the Bible tends to say much more about the spiritual conditions of heaven than concrete details of its physical qualities. All in all, seven ideas of heaven that you can find in the scriptures are

 

Heaven is a real place. The Christian view of heaven isn’t some cosmic ethereal state of bliss, but a real, tangible place that’s the dwelling place of God, angels, and his followers (see John 14:1-4 and Hebrews 11:16). However, it’s not likely a part of this universe or a place you could simply fire up the space shuttle or the Millennium Falcon and navigate to in the sky.

 

Heaven is anything but boring. With an opinion that must strike God as simply clueless, some non-believers say they don’t want to go to heaven because it sounds all so boring: playing harps on clouds, sitting through endless church services, and being goody-two-shoes for all time. In the grandest of ironies, hell is often seen as being the interesting place, where interesting people will go and have a good time.

 

Yet, Christians believe that the idea that God’s plans for his faithful are going to be dull simply shows a misguided outlook compared to the picture that the Bible paints. For example, the fantastic language that John uses in the Book of Revelation expresses, in an allegorical fashion, awesome realities that humans can’t fully comprehend. C.S. Lewis, a renowned Christian author, sees this perspective as that of “an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea” (Mere Christianity, Harper San Francisco, 2001).

 

Heaven is a social city, but it doesn’t have slums or city limits. The Bible often describes heaven metaphorically as a walled city (see Revelation 21, Hebrews 11:16, and Hebrews 13:14). I’m a country guy at heart, so I’ve never been all that thrilled about the image of heaven as a vast metropolis in the sky. Yet, the allusions to a city are meant to symbolize community rather than some prophetic reference to an angelic city with urban sprawl, congestion, and skyscrapers. In reality, heaven isn’t limited to a big city in the sky. In fact, as the “Frolicking around the new heaven and new earth” section describes later in the chapter, the future home of Christians will be a vast new world.

 

Life in heaven is a continuation of a person’s earthly life. Christians believe that a person’s life on earth is directly connected with his or her life in heaven. They aren’t two distinct, separate existences. Instead, Christians believe that the heavenly life is like a graduated or transformed version of each person’s life on earth.

 

People will certainly retain their memory, as the Bible shows many examples of prior knowledge of one’s earthly life being dealt with in the next (Luke 16:19-31, Matthew 25:40, Matthew 7:21-23). People will also be able to recognize loved ones (2 Samuel 12:23, 1 Corinthians 13:12, Luke 16:28) and probably even recognize other Christians that they’ve never met in person (as a parallel, see Matthew 17:1-8).

 

After all, this is exactly why Christians believe that making the most of this earthly life is so important. The Bible verses you memorize, the music you play, and the books you read – these aren’t just knowledge that passes away when you die. Instead, these resources will be wisdom and knowledge you’ll find useful and applicable in heaven. Also, I speculate that it’s the Church’s collective knowledge of experiences on earth – the terrible reality of sin and disobedience – that will enable believers to successfully live in heaven in a way that Adam and Eve failed to do in the Garden of Eden.

 

Heaven will meet people’s deepest longings. Christians believe that heaven is a place that fills the holes and heals the scars that people carry through life on earth. The joy of heaven will wipe out the dream-killers of this life – death, sorrow, and pain (Revelation 21:4) – and will meet humans’ need for love, happiness, peace, and security. But that doesn’t mean that heaven is a touchy-feely place where all people do is sit around playing harps and giving group hugs all day long. God also created people with an instinctive desire for adventure, discovery, challenge, and risk. In a way that’s impossible to grasp, Christians believe that God will meet humans’ need for adventure in a way that isn’t life-threatening (because they’ll be invincible!).

 

Heaven is a place where dreams come true. One of the lines in the film Field of Dreams that always makes me want to puke when I hear it is the statement that heaven is the place where dreams come true. But after thinking about it, I realize it’s got a good point. On the one hand, that statement sounds like popular culture mumbo-jumbo – a place where you have a round-the-clock genie at your service. However, when you think of heaven from a Christian standpoint, this phrase actually makes sense, though perhaps not in the way you may think. Because Christians will no longer have a selfish perspective in heaven, their dreams will be completely in line with the perfect will of God (see Chapter 16 for more on God’s will). Therefore, in this respect, one’s dreams will come true.

 

People won’t sin in heaven, but they’re not robots, either. The Bible is clear that sin doesn’t exist in heaven. It’s an impossibility. However, that fact doesn’t mean that people are somehow turned into robots who can’t sin. In fact, people simply don’t sin because they see sin’s potential for what it is. For example, imagine you’re used to eating a five-course meal at a five-star restaurant every day. Suppose you’re walking down the street to dinner and happen to step on doggie doo-doo. Even if you’re hungry, you’re not about to lie down and start licking the sidewalk. The truth is that you would be repelled by the very thought and wouldn’t even be tempted to eat it. Instead, you’d simply wipe your feet and continue on toward your dinner. In the same way, people will see sin like the vomitous mess that it really is, not as something that looks and sounds good.