The Bulletin
of the
Church of Christ at
New Georgia
Tim Johnson, editor
June 18, 2006
In
This Issue:
Heaven
Ain't What It Used to Be
by
Steve Klein
Good
News, Bad News
by
Bill Robinson, Jr.
Heaven Ain't What it Used to Be
(and Hell is Changing Too!)
Jeffrey Burton Russell is the author of a new book entitled, Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven and How We Can Regain It. According to Russell, who is a professor of history at the University of California, those who identify themselves as Christians in the United States have only a vague and superstitious concept of heaven. "It's not that heaven is deteriorating," says Russell, "but we are."
The problem isn't that people don't believe in heaven. They do. According to a 2004 Gallup Poll, over 80 % of Americans believe in heaven and 70% believe in hell. Those statistics have remained nearly constant over the past 50 years. But what people mean when they speak about heaven and hell has changed a lot. Fifty years ago, most people also had baseless superstitious ideas about heaven; those ideas included saved people becoming angels, floating on clouds and playing harps. Today, many people choose to think of heaven as a vague condition of happiness, which may be temporary and lead to another plane of existence (e.g. reincarnation). The Bible teaching that heaven and hell are realms in which souls will dwell for all eternity is lost on modern America. And many, even Russell, deny that heaven and hell should be viewed as places of reward and punishment, respectively.
God wants us to be motivated to go to heaven and to avoid hell (2 Peter 3:13-14; Mark 9:43-48). To be properly motivated, it is crucial that we maintain a clear and correct understanding of heaven and hell. We must not trade Biblical concepts for the empty superstitions of popular culture. Here are some truths that need to be firmly believed.
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Heaven and hell are both rewards. Heaven is a reward for the righteous and hell is a reward for the unrighteous. Jesus promised His disciples that if they would suffer persecution for His name they would receive a great "reward in heaven" (Matthew 5:12). Comparing Christianity to an athletic contest Paul wrote, "And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown" (1 Corinthians 9:25). In Matthew 16:27, Jesus said, "the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works."
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Heaven and hell are both permanent. In heaven, the saved will enjoy "an enduring possession" (Hebrews 10:34) described as "an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away" (1 Peter 1:4). Heaven is an eternal home. "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1). Hell, on the other hand, is described as everlasting punishment. At the Judgment, Jesus will send the unrighteous "into everlasting punishment" (Matthew 25:46). It is "the fire that shall never be quenched" (Mark 9:45). Those who go there will "be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power" (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
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Heaven is a place of rest, but hell is a place where there is no rest. Heaven is described as "a rest for the people of God" (Hebrews 4:9). But for those in hell, "the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night" (Revelation 14:11).
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The saved will reign with Christ in heaven. In heaven, it's not just that the saved are treated like royalty, they are royalty. God's word promises that "If we endure, we shall also reign with Him" (2 Timothy 2:12), and that the saved "shall reign forever and ever" (Revelation 22:9).
Heaven and hell will be as the Bible describes them, no matter how the concepts of men change. May each of us as God's children live so as to gain "an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven" (1 Peter 1:4)
--Steve Klein
The apostle Paul emphasized the universal need of the gospel when he wrote, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rom. 1:16). The word gospel means "good news." If there is a universal need for this good news, which "is the power of God unto salvation," then we are forced to conclude there is universal bad news from which men must be saved.
The larger context of Paul's statement (the Roman letter) makes it clear that sin is the bad news. It was bad news to the Gentile world (Rom. 1:18-ff) as well as to the Jewish community (Rom. 2:1-ff). Thus he concludes, "all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" (3:23). If we are lacking something in our relationship with God it is the foreboding sense of the bad news, sin.
The tragedy is, unless we learn to recognize and accept the reality of sin's existence, we will never acceptably worship or serve God as Savior. We (religious people in general) are willing to admit our failures of ignorance or weakness, or social ills (drugs, crime, sexual promiscuity, etc.) and even admit, on occasion, it is evil. Yet, mention the word sin in this context and folks refuse to acknowledge its relevance.
When we talk about God to other people, even those who are supposedly religious and/or Christians, we run the risk of talking about nothing because God really means nothing to them. The reason is clear. It is because they do not possess a sense of sin. God meant nothing to the Gentile nations as Paul wrote in Romans 1; the reason is because they did not possess a sense of sin. In like manner, the God behind the law, in reality, meant nothing to the Jews because they ignored their sin (Rom. 2:11-23).
The point we are making is neither new nor unknown in society. We seldom appreciate the necessities of life until we are forced to be without them. Living through a three day dust storm without water to drink or to take a bath with helps one to appreciate and value water. Until we come to see and accept sin for what it is, our capacity to love and worship God is severely diminished (Luke 1:36-50).
Furthermore, we do not want to admit sin because it implies accountability. Even with all of the various changes in meanings and usages of words, the word sin as it has been used through the ages has seldom, if ever, been used without identifying some wrong doing and responsibility before God. It is for this reason, we bring the words of the apostle Paul to bear on our accountability for sin, "...that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God" (Rom. 3:1).
Just as sin is universal ("all have sinned") so also is the liability ("the whole world"). The word translated "judgment" occurs only in this passage (Rom. 3:19) in the N.T., "it applies to accused persons who cannot refute the charges leveled against them" (Theo. Dict. of NT [abridged in one volume], pg. 1235). Thus, with the universality of guilt, which this passage teaches, we are brought back to the bad news, "all have sinned." We cannot accept the "good news" (gospel) - God is our Savior - until we are willing to deal with the facts and admit that the "bad news" is true about us.
Bill Robinson, Jr.
Via The Castleberry Bulletin, Vol. III No. 7, March
1988, Fort Worth, TX