I've been thinking about heaven today. Alot. No doubt in response to my dying neighbors remarks that heaven just, well, doesn't sound all that exciting. I had to admit, by current standards it doesn't.
She's a workaholic really, a go getter who never sat still. The idea of harps and flying on clouds didn't appeal to her nor does it to me. We've all endured quite a few Sundays of long praise and worship songs. One after the other. The idea of enduring that for eternity doesn't exactly instill enthusiasm.
Ok, I'm a bit silly but really, who hasn't wondered what it is we all shall be doing? Once you get past meeting Jesus, Moses and David, Grandma and your crazy uncle....then what?
It's a common belief really. So many current ideas of heaven just don't excite the faithful. Like a party we just have to make but upon arriving think, hmmm, I could of done without but...at least I'm in with the 'in crowd'.
I can't really add anything since scripture says relatively little about heaven (really it does) and what we'll be doing in it.
But I can attempt to come at the subject from another angle and in doing so, hopefully get people riled up once again.
Eschatology. Fancy word just means the study of end times.
Scripture seems to call lots of events the end times or last days which doesn't help our understanding. Especially when 21st century Christians are enamored with a rather new and unique understanding of "end times". I'd argue further it's a lie.
Currently end times means, rapture, war, plague, chinese armies, secret chips, alliances, modern Israel and anti-christ (picture me yawning).
One of the things thats helped me along the way has been attempting (with the help of scholarly minds and writers) what a 1st century audience would have understood by the words, images and sayings in scripture. It was of course written to them by like minds. When I come across something cryptic, I do not assume it's answer lies in modern imagery, language or events, but rather in the 1st century.
Sure, this is alot of work. Piercing what people in the 1st century believed ain't easy. But its doable.
When Jesus and later Paul spoke of resurrection of the body, they were in a very small minority. The vast writings we have speak nothing of it and when it does it is not favorable. No one had ever seen it and the more common belief was that when you die, you cross the river Phoenix and become souls, spirits or ghosts. We don't come back. The Greeks found the idea offensive. Death was a release from the evil body. Why on earth would you want to come back to its limitations?
But Genesis tells us that the creation, all of it, was good. Many 1st century Jews awaited the remaking of the creation NOT its destruction. The idea of the cosmos coming to an end is no where found in their writings or practices. They did however expect Messiah to fix what was broken. This they awaited eagerly.
Sheol and hades were just a place of sleep. When we say that Jesus descended into hell, it's saying grave, death, sleep, sheol, hades. Hell is a place reserved for the unrepentant wicked. Jesus didn't go there.
How does any of this address getting excited about going to heaven?
Everything!
Jesus was resurrected into a body. He is the first of many. Yet this body is different than what we have now. Hence the many recordings in the New Testament of eye witnesses not immedietly recognizing Jesus.
Our hope is not in the sleep of death even if its in the presence of God Himself. It is in the life AFTER life after death. We shall be given new bodies in a new heaven and earth.
Revelation 20 describes heaven coming down to Earth, This is the 2nd coming. Jesus bringing all the saints of old, the heavens themselves down to earth. The earth is remade and so are we.
Do we not all pray the Lord's prayer..."On earth as it is in heaven"? This is the goal. Not flying spirits, or harps on clouds but remade bodies to inhabit, here on earth. We, the church are the advance party, to use a military phrase. The lead element of what is coming and we are expected to act like it. That's why it matters who you sleep with, how you treat the each other and the earth, why you strive. It isn't all for nothing so we can become bodiless spirits in the sweet bye and bye. How we live now impacts eternity because it is here we shall reside.
Still, what is it that we shall be doing?
Here I think the vast cosmos comes into play. It isn't out there for us to just gaze at and collect facts about. I think it's to inhabit.
How else will the new earth hold not only the billions resurrected in our own day and the future but the billions who've gone before us? Just a speculation there but a rather good one I think.
We gonna busy people, in new bodies, in a remade garden of Eden. Harps? How about instruments you ain't even seen yet! It will be challenging, amazing and busy. And it will be earthly and heavenly at the same time. Indescribale really. Maybe thats why whenever we are told of heaven, we are told it's like this or that. But better. Nothing here presently really describes it.
We shall see in total what our sin has done to others. How each mistake impacted anothers life. And when we can no longer stand it, we shall be announced forgiven.
Jesus is the apocalypse, the revelation, the fulfillment of all promises. The hope of all who've bled and cried into the earth.
When he comes, and all of heaven is behind him, the cosmos won't melt but be what it was always intended to be. Our home.
If that don't light your fire than your wood is wet.
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