Kingdom Harbor

This Friday we host a group of middle school kids in our basement for our occasional Jason’s House youth outreach. (Read more about Jason’s House here.) We draw a bunch of kids from outside our church, and some with no church background, and we let the kids’ questions drive the discussion. Last time many had questions about salvation and heaven, so I’m preparing some thoughts on Heaven. Some of the large ideas I hope to boil down to a middle school level (ahem, no easy task!) are as follows. (If you’re not a reader, watch this 6-minute summary video instead.)

1. HEAVEN IS NOT AN EXCAPE FROM THE MATERIAL WORLD.

Popular ideas about heaven have been influenced more by Greek philosophers such as Plato than the Bible. Ancient Greeks believed the material world was bad, and spirit/soul was what really mattered. Salvation, in this scheme, is more about the soul’s escaping the ‘prison’ of the physical body and ascending to some ethereal, non-material spirit realm above. This denigration of the physical world God created as bad completely contradicts the view the Bible has of creation. In the creation account, God says repeatedly, “It is good.” 

The story the Bible is telling is not about escaping the physical world to go live in some cloudy kingdom in the sky, but rather a story about the Living God taking on flesh and desiring to redeem and restore God’s good creation that has been corrupted by sin and death. The last book of the Bible, Revelation, says “God is making all things new” (restoration); not “God is making all new things” (replacement). It’s a redemption and renewal project; not a story about God condemning the world to the cosmic trash bin, or torching it and starting over somewhere else. It’s living into and yearning for God to realize our prayer, “Your Kingdom come…on Earth as it is in Heaven.” 

2. GOING TO HEAVEN IS NOT THE GOAL OF SALVATION.

Over the centuries, salvation became solely about how individual souls to go to heaven after death. While certainly part of the story, this focus on strictly ‘personal salvation’ also misses the larger cosmic renewal story God is telling in the Bible, which is a story about how God desires to come make His dwelling among his people on a renewed earth when “creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). 

The ultimate goal of salvation is the resurrection of bodies from the dead, the liberation of all creation from the curse, and dwelling forever with God in the “new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Pet 3:13; cf. Rev. 21). The story of the Bible ends not with souls ascending to Heaven, but with the New Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” and the declaration, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people” (Rev. 21:1-3)!

3. JESUS’ RESURRECTION BODY IS THE PROTOTYPE.

Jesus’ resurrection from the empty tomb on Easter is the prototype for all humans. The Christian hope is not about immaterial souls floating off into the sky, but of all creation undergoing a renovation and human souls being reunited with their resurrected bodies in a real, physical and embodied eternal existence in a very real, physical world evidenced by Jesus’ scarred hands and enjoying fried fish in his resurrection body. “For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality” (1 Cor 15:52-53).

These new Resurrection bodies will have continuity with our old body, but also come with some modifications. On the one hand, Jesus’ new body bore the scars from his earthly sufferings, and ate fish in his new physical form. On the other hand, he was not immediately recognized by Mary outside the tomb and he seems able to pass through solid walls to appear to the disciples in a locked room in John 21 , apparently transcending normal laws of physics. Again, we marvel and have further questions where the Bible only gives fascinating hints and teasers.

4. HEAVEN IS FIRST AND FOREMOST GOD’S SPACE ALL AROUND US RIGHT NOW. 

In the beginning, God’s realm (heaven) and earth-realm were united and overlapping in the Garden of Eden as a cosmic temple. Sin and human rebellion drove a wedge between humanity and God, between God’s domain and our domain, but God’s overall goal is to unite heaven and earth again in renewed Creation. 

So, Heaven isn’t so much a place somewhere far, far away in the sky, but rather God’s dimension all around us all the time that occasionally overlaps and interacts with our dimension, creating a “thin place” as the Irish call it where the invisible curtain, as it were, is momentarily pulled back and heaven and earth “kiss”. 

There’s a story in 2 Kings 6:15-17 that reveals how this invisible curtain is sometimes pulled back and humans are given a glimpse of the Heavenly realm. The prophet Elisha’s servant, initially fearful of the enemy forces, was granted spiritual sight to witness the hills filled with horses and chariots of fire, symbolizing God’s protection and power. 

5. TEMPLES ARE WHERE HEAVEN & EARTH INTERSECTED.

In the ancient world, temples were real, physical places where Heaven and Earth overlapped. To walk into the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was to walk into Heaven itself. That’s why the temple was decorated with all kinds of garden of Eden imagery. When Jesus came to earth, he became a walking, talking temple where God’s presence and power was invading earth wherever he went. To encounter Jesus and watch him heal and liberate people, was to get a momentary foretaste of Heaven. 

There’s a powerful and revelatory moment in John 1 where Jesus compares himself to Jacob’s ladder in Genesis 28. In Genesis 28, Jacob has a dream of portal dropping down from heaven, with angels going up and down, between heaven and earth. Jacob awakes to declare, “God is in this place, and I was unaware! This ordinary desert is really the very house of God!” Jesus says essentially, “Now I am the place where Heaven and Earth intersect! Wherever I am, Heaven is invading Earth.” Powerful stuff!

So, Heaven is first and foremost, the invisible realm where God and the angels dwell, and it is a dimension all around us right now and occasionally breaks into our dimension. This intersection happens every Sunday in the celebration of the Eucharist, which is the Banquet of the future Heaven being brought forward into our present fellowship and worship. 

6. HEAVEN IS ALSO A TEMPORARY PLACE FOR DEPARTED SOULS. 

Still, most of our discussions and questions about ‘Heaven’ pertain to where our souls go immediately after physical death? This is what theologians refer to as the ‘Intermediate State’. While this idea of Heaven is what we wonder about most, the Bible says very little about this particular question. “To be absent from the body, is to be present with the Lord,” the Apostle Paul says (2 Cor. 5:8). . That’s pretty vague. We want the juicy details, but the Bible is slow to give them. 

What kind of existence is this? Do our souls sleep until the resurrection? Or is this intermediate Heaven a conscious existence? Is Grandpa looking down on us? Do the saints in God’s presence hear our prayers and intercede for us as Roman Catholics believe? So many questions, so little answers. We can dispel myths and address some scenarios. 

First, humans remain humans, and angels remain angels. There’s no getting your wings. While it brings comfort to some whose loved ones who die young, it’s not true that, “God must have needed another angel.”  

Second, the Bible is not clear on whether the temporary heaven is an active, conscious existence, or whether, as Martin Luther and others believe, the souls of the dead “sleep with the Lord” until the Resurrection. If souls simply “sleep in the Lord” until Judgment Day, then they won’t experience the elapse of time, but wake as if no time has passed between earthly death and resurrection life! 

Third, there are some Scriptures that seem to speak of a conscious existence for the departed, enjoying already now the heavenly bliss that we so often talk about when we talk about Heaven. Being reunited with loved ones, eating together with Jesus at the banquet table, running free with no more ailments or earthly limitations, etc. Revelation 6, for example, describes souls in heaven crying out to God on behalf of those suffering on earth. If we take this literally, which is very questionable with apocalyptic literature, we see departed souls aware of what’s happening on earth. Hebrews 12 urges us on earth to live out our faith under the watching eyes of the “Great Cloud of Witnesses”, often said to be the saints looking down and cheering us on in our earthly struggles. 

Fourth, while communication with the departed in the Other Realm is possible, it is strictly forbidden by God. Remember Saul consulting the Medium at Endor, and seems to successfully communicate with Samuel who had died. This act was condemned, and we should never try to communicate with the dead through Ouija boards or mediums, because you never really know if you are connecting with the spirit of the departed, or a demonic spirit posing as the departed. God says this is strictly forbidden; don’t mess around with such occult practices. 

7. HEAVEN IS NOT WHATEVER WE CAN IMAGINE OR DESIRE! IT’S GOD’S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR US FULLY REALIZED. 

We should be cautious about imposing our own imaginary version of heaven onto what God may have in store. While Heaven (and the New Creation) will be a renewed human existence with some modifications and without sin’s negative impact, it will not be an entirely new kind of human existence. We will not be able to fly, for example. We won’t float down chocolate rivers on giant donuts like my son used to dream. We will not suddenly be omniscient like God, knowing all things. We’ll have sharper minds, yes, but still be creatures that year to learn and discover new things. We will be the fully optimized humans God originally intended us to be. 

8. HEAVEN IS GOD’S FUTURE ALREADY BREAKING INTO THE PRESENT! 

This is important to wrap our minds around. The Bible speaks of two ages—the Present Evil Age and the Messianic Age to Come. The Present Evil Age is characterized by sin, death, injustice, suffering, sickness, corruption, and even the physical world “groaning” under the curse (see Romans 8). The prophets foretold the day—the Day of the LORD—when God would act decisively to overcome all evil and usher in the blessed Age to Come characterized by shalom, justice, righteousness, healing and God’s presence dwelling with His people. The most dramatic part of the Day of the LORD is that God would raise all the righteous from the dead. This is what we call a Two-State eschatology. Eschatology is a fancy Greek word for “How God will bring about his final salvation.” It was assumed that it would all happen at once—the Day of the LORD. A clean break between the Present Evil Age and the Age to Come. 

Instead, God surprised us all by launching the Age to Come in the middle of the Present Evil Age. Instead of raising all people from the dead, God raised one person—Jesus as the Second Adam—as the foretaste and downpayment for what will eventually happen to all who sleep in the grave. Instead of vanquishing all evil and death, Jesus fought and won the ultimate battle against sin, death and the Devil on the cross and launched the New Creation on that first Easter.

9. THE CHURCH IS A COLONY OF HEAVEN ON EARTH.

We live in the overlapping of the two ages. God pours out the Spirit of the Coming Future Heaven upon his people, so we can even now be God’s New Creation people even while we live in a world still suffering under the curse of the Old Creation. The church is Christ’s Body on earth, his hands and feet, his power and love, his army of grace and reconciliation, sent into the world to put on display the values and power of the Coming Age, the New Creation. 

This means that the power of the future Heaven is already at work here in the present age, as we call upon Heaven’s resources and create little pockets of Heaven on earth through our work as a church. I consider each local church as a little colony of the Kingdom set up here in enemy territory. Our highest calling is to live life in a way that gives the watching world a little taste of the Heavenly Life to Come. Just as people saw Heaven kiss earth in Jesus ministry every time someone was healed, or set free from demonic spirit, or fed miraculously, or welcomed into a new family, so also the church is called to be the place where heaven kisses earth today whenever people come among us.

We are walking talking billboards of Heaven when we faithfully live out the character of Christ in the power of the Spirit. the Bible calls these character traits the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self control. 

So, heaven is not just a future reality to long for; it’s a present reality we can participate in and share with others by the power of the Spirit of the Coming Age. 

CONCLUSION

To sum up…

• Heaven is not about escaping our earthly existence, but about God invading it with his love and power to renew and restore things. It’s an answer to our most basic prayer, “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.” 
• The goal of Christian salvation is not about going to heaven, but about praying that Heaven and Earth will be reunited.
• Heaven is not some other galaxy far far away, but God’s present domain all around us everyday, and every once in a while we see the two overlap and intersect.
• Heaven is also the temporary, intermediate abode of departed souls awaiting the final resurrection, and the Bible gives us very little details about it. We can rest knowing souls who die “in Christ” are with the Lord.
• Finally, Heaven is God’s ultimate future already breaking into the present through the Spirit at work in God’s people, the church. We can experience and give others a taste of Heaven now. 

In short, Heaven can be thought of as 1) God’s PRESENCE around us and available to us, 2) a temporary PLACE where souls rest in God’s presence awaiting resurrection, and 3) a FUTURE TIME that is already breaking into the present moment through the Spirit at work in God’s people, the Church.