Bulletin 9.1.24

We are talking about eternity!… I honestly do not believe there is any good version of heaven… If it’s a choice, and I get to talk to some creator at the end of all this, I don’t care who the creator is or what his plan or her plan or its plan is for an afterlife, I would honestly prefer at some point ...I want the option to not exist, to not be conscious.

Brandon (aka MindShift, a “deconversionist”) “The Problems  With Paradise: 7 Reasons Why Heaven Fails” (9.10.23)

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of “Heaven” ridiculous by saying they do not want “to spend eternity playing harps”. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity... People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.

 – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (“Hope”; 1943)

In a previous video I’ve done on heaven, I argued that heaven is basically the resurrection of creation; so, what happened to Jesus’ body on Easter morning, that’s going to happen to the universe – that’s heaven. Easter is the first-fruits or the anticipation of that… In this book about heaven (Heaven, 2009) a really interesting and helpful book, very thorough and biblical, Randy Alcorn argues that in heaven we will have friendship, we will have laughter, we will have culture, we will have books, we will have technology, we will have trade, we will have sports, we will have dancing, we will have music and drama. There will be storytelling. ...there’s also… what he calls the “principle of continuity” and it’s basically “why would creation be more interesting and more generous than heaven why would reality contract from Genesis 1 to Revelation 21?...this conception of heaven as “resurrected creation” is consistent with the historic Christian doctrine of heaven. 

– Gavin Ortlund, “Is Heaven BORING and WEIRD? Response to Mindshift” (8.22.24 podcast on Youtube.com)

Psalm 28.6ff 

Blessed be the LORD, 

Because He has heard the voice of my supplication.

The LORD is my strength and my shield; 

My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped; 

Therefore my heart exults, 

And with my song I shall thank Him.

The LORD is their strength,

And He is a saving defense to His anointed.

Save Your people and bless Your inheritance; 

Be their shepherd also, and carry them forever.

(Prayer)