The problem with earth is not its physicality. Earth’s problem is sin and the curse. We long for a repaired earth, where God’s glorious creation shines without the dark clouds of sin, death, and gloom. God made Adam from the earth and for the earth. He made humanity to rule it for his glory. Like!?” cried Edmund after a moment’s silence. “Why they’re exactly like. Look, there’s Mount Pire with his forked head, and there’s the pass into Archenland and everything!” Redemption is not escape from earthly life. It is reclamation of earthly life. When Jesus died, God wasn’t done with his old body. His resurrection body was his old body made new. God is not done with these bodies or this earth. Our old bodies will be made new, and this old earth will be made new. Turning Bad into Best

God promises us eternal life as totally healthy, embodied people more capable of worship, friendship, love, discovery, work, and play than we have ever been.” Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which thoroughly approves of the body — which believes that matter is good, that God Himself once took on a human body, and that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential part of our happiness, our beauty, and our energy (Ibid., 99). In The Four Loves Lewis refers to redeemed relationships and culture: “We may hope that the resurrection of the body means also the resurrection of what may be called our ‘greater body’; the general fabric of our earthly life with its affections and relationships” ( The Four Loves [Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960], 187). Philippians 3:20–21 says, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Christ declared his resurrection body to be flesh and bones. Ours will be too.Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17, “This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” Read 2 Corinthians 11:24–28 for a record of Paul’s “light” and “momentary” affliction: Similarly, the present Heaven is a temporary dwelling place, a stop along the way to our final destination: the New Earth. (Granted, the Dallas analogy isn’t perfect—being with Jesus and reunited with loved ones will be immeasurably better than a layover in Dallas!) Jesus said, “At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes” (Matt. 19:28 NIV). Renewal is one of many re-words in the Bible: redemption, regeneration, restoration, reconciliation, resurrection — words that speak of reclaiming what was lost.

The answer depends on our definition of Heaven. Will we be with the Lord forever? Absolutely. Will we always be with God in the same place Heaven is now? No. In the present Heaven, God’s people are in Christ’s presence, free of sin and suffering and enjoying great happiness: “in your presence there is fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11). But they’re still looking forward to their bodily resurrection and permanent relocation to the New Earth. So, yes, after death we’ll always be in Heaven, but not in the same place or the same condition. I loved that Lewis clearly articulated the problem of evil and suffering better than most atheists, including Richard Dawkins. Yet he embraced a biblical worldview that had a far greater explanatory power than his atheism. And he passed it on to me and countless others. Plato believed that material things, including bodies, are evil, while immaterial things, such as souls, are good. What I call “Christoplatonism” infects many churches, teaching that human spirits are better off without bodies, and heaven is a disembodied realm.My ministry focus is communicating the strategic importance of using our earthly time, money, possessions and opportunities to invest in need-meeting ministries that count for eternity," Alcorn says. "I do that by trying to analyze, teach and apply the implications of Christian truth." The Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “The Narnia you’re thinking of . . . was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia, which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy. All of the old Narnia that mattered, all the dear creatures, have been drawn into the real Narnia through the Door. And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream.” . . . I went to a fine Bible college and seminary, but in my classes we never talked about the new earth. In eschatology class, we devoted weeks to different views of the rapture. We talked about the return of Christ and the millennium, but our discussions of Revelation involved so much talk about the Antichrist that we never reached Revelation 21 and 22, which are all about the new heavens and new earth, where we will live forever with God and our spiritual family, worshiping and serving him in eternal happiness, for his everlasting glory. (That’s a pretty conspicuous omission, if you think about it.) By the time I became a pastor, I had thought through nearly every major doctrine of Scripture but had given no thought whatsoever to where I will spend eternity, in the new heavens and new earth. Will there be a second fall in the eternal state? Absolutely not. We will have the righteousness of Christ. Sin? Been there. Done that. The illusion of its appeal will be gone.

Kings and Queens,” he cried, “we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all — Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.” ( The Last Battle [Collier, 1956], 168–71, emphases added) Though most of us are in no hurry to get to our final destination, we all have questions about it. After in-depth study of the Scriptures, here are some of the most frequently asked questions. 1. We won't miss our old lives. At first, I thought Jesus was fiction — a superhero like in the comics. But everything about Jesus had the ring of truth. Then I realized something incredible. While reading the Bible, I had come to believe Jesus is real. By a miracle of grace, he transformed my life. Discovering Lewis Colossians 3 commands us to think about the present heaven, where Christ is seated at God’s right hand. But Scripture is also clear that the heaven that should most dominate our thinking is the eternal kingdom of God, the climactic culmination of God’s unfolding drama of redemption. A television network once called my office and asked, “Has Randy been to heaven?” Our receptionist answered, “If he has, he’s never mentioned it. But he did do years of research in the Bible and church history.” The conversation ended abruptly: “We want to interview people who have actually been there.”EPM exists to meet the needs of the unreached, unfed, unborn, uneducated, unreconciled and unsupported people around the world. Retrospect enables us to see everything differently. It’s why we can call the worst day in all of history “Good Friday.” Believing in this assumption means you've fallen for the devil's lie. In reality, sin robs us of fulfillment. Sin doesn't make life interesting; it makes life empty. When there's fulfillment, when there's beauty, when we see God as He truly is—an endless reservoir of fascination—boredom becomes impossible. In heaven we'll be filled—as Psalm 16:11 describes it—with joy and eternal pleasures. 9. If our loved ones are in hell, won't that spoil heaven? Our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. . . . When the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. . . . If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world ( Mere Christianity [Macmillan, 1960], 119). Heaven’s Physical Side

Though the present heaven is wonderful, “far better” than earth under the curse (Philippians 1:23), it is not the place we’re made for. Our destiny is a resurrected life on a resurrected earth: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them’” (Revelation 21:1–3). Heaven is wherever God dwells and his throne is, and God’s dwelling place and throne will be on the new earth (Revelation 22:3).

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God hangs on to his fallen original creation and salvages it. He refuses to abandon the work of his hands — in fact, he sacrifices his own Son to save his original project. Humankind, which has botched its original mandate . . . is given another chance in Christ; we are reinstated as God’s managers on earth. (Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained [Eerdmans, 1985], 58)