Heaven (4 page)

To long for Christ is to long for Heaven, for that is where we will be with him. God's people are "longing for a better country"
(Hebrews 11:16). We can­not set our eyes on Christ without setting our eyes on Heaven, and we cannot set our eyes on Heaven
without setting our eyes on Christ. Still, it is not only Christ but "things above" we are to set our minds on.

The Greek word translated "set your hearts on" is
zeteo,
which "denotes man's general philosophical search or quest."
³⁰
The same word is used in the Gospels to describe how "the Son of Man came to
seek . .
. what was lost" (Luke 19:10, em­phasis added). It's also used for how a shepherd looks for his lost sheep (Matthew 18:12),
a woman searches for a lost coin (Luke 15:8), and a merchant searches for a fine pearl (Matthew 13:45). It is a diligent,
active, single-minded investigation. So we can understand Paul's admonition in Colossians 3:1 as follows: "Diligently, actively,
single-mindedly pursue the things above"—in a word,
Heaven.
(Now you have a clear biblical reason for reading this book!)

The verb
zeteo
is in the present tense, suggesting an ongoing process. "Keep seeking heaven." Don't just have a conversation, read a book,
or listen to a ser­mon and feel as if you've fulfilled the command. Since you'll spend the next life­time living in Heaven,
why not spend this lifetime seeking Heaven, so you can eagerly anticipate and prepare for it?

The command, and its restatement, implies there is nothing automatic about setting our minds on Heaven. In fact, most commands
assume a resistance to obeying them, which sets up the necessity for the command. We are told to avoid sexual immorality because
it is our tendency. We are not told to avoid jumping off buildings because normally we don't battle such a temptation. The
command to think about Heaven is under attack in a hundred different ways every day. Ev­erything militates against it. Our
minds are so much set on Earth that we are un­accustomed to heavenly thinking. So we must work at it.

What have you been doing daily to set your mind on things above, to
seek
Heaven? What should you do differently?

Perhaps you're afraid of becoming "so heavenly minded you're of no earthly good." Relax—you have nothing to worry about! On
the contrary, many of us are so earthly minded we are of no heavenly
or
earthly good. C. S. Lewis observed, "If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world
were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire,
the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on
Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the
other world that they have become so in­effective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth
and you will get neither."
³¹

Most of us find it very difficult to want "Heaven" at all—except in so far as "Heaven" means meeting again our friends who
have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on
this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it.

C. S. LEWIS

We need a generation of heavenly minded people who see human beings and the earth itself not simply as they are, but as God
intends them to be.

FUELING OUR IMAGINATION

We must begin by reasoning from God's revealed truth. But that reasoning will call upon us to use our Scripture-enhanced imagination.
As a nonfiction writer and Bible teacher, I begin by seeing what Scripture actually says. As a novelist, I take that revelation
and add to it the vital ingredient of imagination. As C. S. Lewis said, "While reason is the natural organ of truth, imagination
is the or­gan of meaning."
³²
In the words of Francis Schaeffer, "The Christian is the really free man—he is free to have imagination. This too is our heritage.
The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars."
³³
Schaeffer always started with God's revealed truth. But he exhorted us to
let that truth fuel our imagination.
Imagination should not fly
away
from the truth but fly
upon
the truth.

If you're a Christian suffering with great pains and losses, Jesus says, "Be of good cheer" (John 16:33, NKJV). The new house
is nearly ready for you. Moving day is coming. The dark winter is about to be magically transformed into spring. One day soon
you will be home—for the first time. Until then, I encour­age you to meditate on the Bible's truths about Heaven. May your
imagination soar and your heart rejoice.

† Another problem with using 1 Corinthians 2:9 is that it isn't talking about Heaven. In its context, it refers to the salvation-related
hidden wisdom of God. Some would argue that God's hidden wisdom broadly includes wisdom about Heaven, but my point is that
even if the verse did refer to Heaven, it says the opposite of what it is typically cited to prove, because verse 10 indicates
that God has
revealed
these hidden truths.

CHAPTER 3

IS HEAVEN OUR DEFAULT

DESTINATION . . . OR IS

HELL?

The safest road to hell is the gradual one
—
the gentle slope, soft underfoot, •without sudden turnings, "without milestones, "without signposts.

C. S. Lewis

What would keep us out of Heaven is universal: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Sin separates
us from a relationship with God (Isaiah 59:2). God is so holy that he cannot allow sin into his pres­ence: "Your eyes are
too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong" (Habakkuk 1:13). Because we are sinners, we are not entitled to enter
God's presence. We cannot enter Heaven as we are.

So Heaven is
not
our default destination. No one goes there automatically. Unless our sin problem is resolved, the only place we will go is
our true default destination . . . Hell.

I am addressing this issue now because throughout this book I will talk about being with Jesus in Heaven, being reunited with
family and friends, and enjoying great adventures in Heaven. The great danger is that readers will
as­sume
they are headed for Heaven. Judging by what's said at most funerals, you'd think nearly
everyone's
going to Heaven, wouldn't you? But Jesus made it clear that most people are
not
going to Heaven: "Small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

We dare not "wait and see" when it comes to what's on the other side of death. We shouldn't just cross our fingers and hope
that our names are written in the Book of Life (Revelation 21:27). We can know, we
should know,
before we die. And because we may die at any time, we need to know
now
—not next month or next year. "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that
appears for a little while and then van­ishes" (James 4:14).

It's of paramount importance to make sure you are going to Heaven, not Hell. The voice that whispers, "There's no hurry; put
this book down; you can always think about it later," is not God's voice. He says, "Now is the day of salva­tion" (2 Corinthians
6:2) and "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" (Joshua 24:15).

HELL: HEAVEN'S AWFUL ALTERNATIVE

Hell will be inhabited by people who haven't received God's gift of redemp­tion in Christ (Revelation 20:12-15). After Christ
returns, there will be a res­urrection of believers for eternal life in Heaven and a resurrection of unbelievers for eternal
existence in Hell (John 5:28-29). The unsaved—everyone whose name is not written in the Lamb's Book of Life—will be judged
by God according to the works they have done, which have been re­corded in Heaven's books (Revelation 20:12-15). Because those
works in­clude sin, people on their own, without Christ, cannot enter the presence of a holy and just God and will be consigned
to a place of everlasting destruction (Matthew 13:40-42). Christ will say to those who are not covered by his blood, "Depart
from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41).

Hell will not be like it's often portrayed in comic strips, a giant lounge where between drinks people tell stories of their
escapades on Earth. Rather, it will be a place of utter misery (Matthew 13:42; 13:50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28). It
will be a place of conscious punishment for sins, with no hope of re­lief. This is why Dante, in the
Inferno,
envisioned this sign chiseled above Hell's gate: "Abandon every hope, you who enter."
³⁵

The reality of Hell should break our hearts and take us to our knees and to the doors of those without Christ. Today, however,
even among many Bible be­lievers, Hell has become "the //word," seldom named, rarely talked about. It doesn't even appear
in many evangelistic booklets. It's common to deny or ig­nore the clear teaching of Scripture about Hell. Hell seems disproportionate,
a divine overreaction. In the words of one professor and contributor to an evan­gelical publication, "I consider the concept
of hell as endless torment in body and mind an outrageous doctrine.... How can Christians possibly project a de­ity of such
cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have
been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God."
³⁶

Many imagine that it is civilized, humane, and compassionate to deny the ex­istence of an eternal Hell, but in fact it is
arrogant that we, as creatures, would dare to take what we think is the moral high ground in opposition to what God the Creator
has clearly revealed. We don't want to believe that any others deserve eternal punishment, because if they do, so do we. But
if we understood God's nature and ours, we would be shocked not that some people could go to Hell (where else would sinners
go?), but that any would be permitted into Heaven. Unholy as we are, we are disqualified from saying that infinite holiness
doesn't demand everlasting punishment. By denying the endlessness of Hell, we minimize Christ's work on the cross. Why? Because
we lower the stakes of re­demption. If Christ's crucifixion and resurrection didn't deliver us from an eternal Hell, his work
on the cross is less heroic, less potent, less consequential, and thus less deserving of our worship and praise. As theologian
William G. T. Shedd put it, "The doctrine of Christ's vicarious atonement logically stands or falls with that of eternal punishment."
³⁷

Satan has obvious motives for fueling our denial of eternal punishment: He wants unbelievers to reject Christ without fear;
he wants Christians to be un­motivated to share Christ; and he wants God to receive less glory for the radical nature of Christ's
redemptive work.

WHAT DID JESUS SAY ABOUT HELL?

Many books deny Hell. Some embrace universalism, the belief that all people will ultimately be saved. Some consider Hell to
be the invention of wild-eyed prophets obsessed with wrath. They argue that Christians should take the higher road of Christ's
love. But this perspective overlooks a conspicuous real­ity:
In the Bible, Jesus says more than anyone else about Hell
(Matthew 10:28; 13:40-42; Mark 9:43-44). He refers to it as a literal place and describes it in graphic terms—including raging
fires and the worm that doesn't die. Christ says the unsaved "will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8:12). In his story of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus taught that in Hell, the
wicked suffer terribly, are fully conscious, retain their desires and memories and reasoning, long for relief, can­not be
comforted, cannot leave their torment, and are bereft of hope (Luke 16:19-31). The Savior could not have painted a more bleak
or graphic picture.

How long will Hell last? "They will go away to eternal punishment," Jesus said of the unrighteous, "but the righteous to eternal
life" (Matthew25:46). Here, in the same sentence, Christ uses the same word translated "eternal"
(aionos)
to describe the duration of
both
Heaven and Hell. Thus, if Heaven will be con­sciously experienced forever, Hell
must be
consciously experienced forever.

C. S. Lewis said, "I have met no people who fully disbelieved in Hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heaven."
³⁸
The biblical teaching on both destinations stands or falls together.

If I had a choice, that is if Scripture were not so clear and conclusive, I would certainly not believe in Hell. Trust me
when I say I do not
want
to believe in it. But if I make what I want—or what others want—the basis for my beliefs, then I am a follower of myself and
my culture, not a follower of Christ. "There seems to be a kind of conspiracy," writes novelist Dorothy Sayers, "to forget,
or to con­ceal, where the doctrine of hell comes from. The doctrine of hell is not 'mediaeval priestcraft' for frightening
people into giving money to the church: it is Christ's deliberate judgment on s i n . . . . We cannot repudiate Hell without
al­together repudiating Christ."
³⁹
In
The Problem of Pain,
C. S. Lewis writes of Hell, "There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Chris­tianity than this, if it
lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of our Lord's own words; it has always been held
by Christen­dom; and it has the support of reason."
⁴⁰

IS IT UNLOVING TO SPEAK OF HELL?

If you were giving some friends directions to Denver and you knew that one road led there but a second road ended at a sharp
cliff around a blind corner, would you talk only about the safe road? No. You would tell them about both, especially if you
knew that the road to destruction was wider and more traveled. In fact, it would be terribly unloving
not
to warn them about that other road.

For the same reason, we must not believe Satan's lie that it's unloving to speak to people about Hell. The most basic truth
is that there are only two pos­sible destinations after death: Heaven and Hell. Each is just as real and just as eternal as
the other. Unless and until we surrender our lives to Jesus Christ, we're headed for Hell. The most loving thing we can do
for our friends and our family is to warn them about the road that leads to destruction and tell them about the road that
leads to life.

It would upset us, but would we think it unloving if a doctor told us we had a potentially fatal cancer? And would the doctor
not tell us if the cancer could be eradicated? Why then do we not tell unsaved people about the cancer of sin and evil and
how the inevitable penalty of eternal destruction can be avoided by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ?

Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth-century Carmelite nun, had an agonizing vision of Hell. She later wrote of the torment she endured:

I was terrified by all this, and, though it happened nearly six years ago, I still am as I write: even as I sit here, fear
seems to be depriving my body of its natural warmth. I never recall any time when I have been suffering trials or pains and
when everything that we can suffer on earth has seemed to me of the slightest importance by comparison with this. . . . It
has been of the greatest benefit to me, both in taking from me all fear of the tribulations and disappointments of this life
and also in strengthening me to suffer them and to give thanks to the Lord, Who, as I now believe, has delivered me from such
terrible and never-ending torments.
⁴¹

If we understood Hell even the slightest bit, none of us would ever say, "Go to Hell." It's far too easy to go to Hell. It
requires no change of course, no navi­gational adjustments. We were born with our autopilot set toward Hell. It is nothing
to take lightly—Hell is the single greatest tragedy in the universe.

God loves us enough to tell us the truth—there are two eternal destinations, not one, and we must choose the right path if
we are to go to Heaven. All roads do not lead to Heaven. Only one does: Jesus Christ. He said, "No one comes to the Father
except through me" (John 14:6). All other roads lead to Hell. The high stakes involved in the choice between Heaven and Hell
will cause us to appreciate Heaven in deeper ways, never taking it for granted, and always praising God for his grace that
delivers us from what we deserve and grants us forever what we don't.

EARTH: THE IN-BETWEEN WORLD

God and Satan are not equal opposites. Likewise, Hell is not Heaven's equal opposite. Just as God has no equal as a person,
Heaven has no equal as a place.

Hell will be agonizingly dull, small, and insignificant, without company, purpose, or accomplishment. It will not have its
own stories; it will merely be a footnote on history, a crack in the pavement. As the new universe moves gloriously onward,
Hell and its occupants will exist in utter inactivity and insignificance, an eternal non-life of regret and—perhaps—diminishing
personhood.

Scripture says of those who die without Jesus, "They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence
of the Lord and from the majesty of his power" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Because God is the source of all good, and Hell is the
absence of God, Hell must also be the absence of all good. Likewise, community, fellowship, and friendship are good, rooted
in the triune God himself. But in the absence of God, Hell will have no community, no camaraderie, no friendship. I don't
believe Hell is a place where demons take delight in punishing people and where people commiserate over their fate. More likely,
each person is in solitary confinement, just as the rich man is portrayed alone in Hell (Luke 16:22-23). Misery loves company,
but there will be nothing to love in Hell.

Earth is an in-between world touched by both Heaven and Hell. Earth leads directly into Heaven or di­rectly into Hell, affording
a choice between the two. The best of life on Earth is a glimpse of Heaven; the worst of life is a glimpse of Hell. For Christians,
this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it is the clos­est they will come to Heaven.

Resolved, that I will live so as I shall wish had done when I come to die . . . . Resolved, to endeavor to my utmost to act
as I can think should do, if, I had already seen the happiness of heaven, and hell torments.