In his series about Heaven, Pastor Daniel Brown asks, in the world to come, will we be who we were?

There are two kinds of death—spiritual and natural. Death is not a state of oblivion or non-existence; it is, rather, a separation from the life that was meant to be. Spiritual death cuts people off from relationship with God in the spirit realm, and our physical death will cut us off from relationship with the people we love here on earth. Death is the state we are in after we have been cut off from the life we would have had, and from the people who love us.

Physical objects can exist in different states on earth. Most of us learned years ago in Science class that physical matter can exist in three states—solid, liquid and gas—without altering its fundamental organic composition. H₂O is a good example. It can be steam, water, or ice. Water freezes to become ice; it boils to become steam. Steam will not quench thirst, water will not reduce swelling and ice cannot help remove wallpaper. Each physical state has its own qualities, but each of them is H₂O. When we die physically, we merely change states. Our metamorphosis takes us from one form to another, from one dimension to another. Though we change states, we remain essentially who we are.

Our reborn spirit already exists in us in the same manner that it will exist after our bodies die. Even now our spirit inhabits the dimension to which we will be fully translated upon death. Though we are not that cognizant of our spirit in the present earthly life, and though our spirit will have a new body in Heaven, it is fundamentally as it will be after death. We will simply be more conscious of it in Heaven. As we learned earlier, our soul is comprised of our thoughts, emotions, will-power and consciousness. Our awareness of the world around us, as well as of our inner selves, comes from our soul. The good news is that our personalities will be “refined” like gold from base ore, but who we are before we die is who we will be after we die. So, our souls/spirits remain intact and essentially the same.

This is why birth is such an excellent analogy for death. As surely as a newborn baby dies from the womb-world into this world, so will our passing from life on earth be a rebirth into another. Jesus said, “You must be born again.” (John 3:3) Babies do not cease to exist when they pass down the birth canal, but they no longer live in the womb. Until we grasp this basic truth—that death is changed existence—we will stumble over what the Bible tells us about life after death. Our conscious existence will be extended, not exterminated. Our state will be transformed, and we will shift dimensions, but we will not lose our identity:

Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.1 Corinthians 15:51-53

In our life after death, we will not become new (different) people. We will be ourselves, with the same fundamental qualities of personhood that we have now—minus any wrongs, distortions, wounding or bondage. God calls Himself “I AM” (Exodus 3:14) If this quality of being and remaining the same is so central to God’s identity, then it makes sense that His children, made in His image, will also always be who they are. When the offspring of “I AM THAT I AM” transition from the earthly plane to the heavenly dimension, their identities are not going to be “I AM DIFFERENT THAN I WAS.”

Image: Tom Barrett

We are like expensive antique bureaus finely detailed and handcrafted by a famous wood worker many years ago. Since our creation, though, we have been gouged by many things; we have been spilled upon, burnt by hot wax, water-stained and repainted in garish colors. Our hinges are loose, the drawers do not slide like they used to, and one of our edges has been stripped of its molding. When such antique pieces get restored and refinished, they are not fundamentally altered; rather, they are renewed to what they have always been despite the wear and tear.

The human soul/spirit is not immortal in the sense that it is not subject to death. Neither does the human soul/spirit exist as an eternal entity on its own. Only God, who has neither beginning nor end, is truly immortal and eternal. (1 Timothy 6:15-16) He is never subject to death, change or dependence on anything outside of Himself. The human soul/spirit does not have an eternal nature of its own. He grants us eternal life, but we always depend on Him for our life in eternity, which is why Paul exclaims:

Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. 1 Timothy 1:17

We will retain our original God-given personality and character when we rise from the dead. Everyone will live after death—either experiencing eternal death (separation from God and His life) in Hell, or eternal life in Heaven. We will all rise again, and though different eternities await us depending on how we respond to Jesus Christ, we will exist forever—either with God or without Him.

PR

Originally from www.coastlands.org. Used with permission of the author.

Further Reading:

Daniel Brown, “Will I Have A Body In Heaven?”

Daniel Brown, “How Old Will I Be In Heaven?”

Daniel Brown, “Heaven: Will I Recognize My Loved Ones?“

In his series about Heaven, Pastor Daniel Brown asks, in the world to come, will we recognize our loved ones?

God is the God of the living, not of the dead. (Mark 12:27) We do not cease to exist after death on earth; we pass into the realm of spirit—but we retain enough distinctive essence of our true selves to be easily identified by everyone else. At the transfiguration, the disciples recognized Moses and Elijah who had lived hundreds of years prior to Peter, James and John. Though the disciples had never met Moses and Elijah on earth, they were able to recognize them for who they were. This has exciting implications for us. Not only will we recognize our friends and loved ones in Heaven, it seems likely that we will also “know” all the other inhabitants, and everyone else will know us, too.

The Bible speaks of several distinct groups of redeemed people in Heaven, such as the twenty-four elders, (Revelation 4:10) the hundred and forty-four thousand who go through the “Great Ordeal” with the Anti-Christ, (Revelation 14:1-3) and the great multitude that “no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues.” (Revelation 7:4-9). Without recognizable bodies, these groups of heavenly residents would be impossible to identify, so it is safe to conclude that we will have features in Heaven to distinguish us from one another. We will recognize others in Heaven.

Here on earth we know one another more than just by our looks. For instance, we converse “over the phone” with a voice—knowing it is our friend or spouse. Just by the sound of their voice, we know who they are, and it does not seem the least bit odd to relate to them without seeing their physical form. Likewise, when we read a letter from a dear friend, we actually read it with their voice echoing in our mind. We mimic the sound of it as we read the letter silently.

We get a feel for people we know, a sense of their personality and humor and presence. When we happen to think of them, we can do so as easily in terms of their personality (what they are like) as we can in terms of their physical features (what they look like). If you were to tell me that one of my golfing buddies went into a rage and broke the Clubhouse window because of a missed putt, I would tell you that there must be some mistake; my friends are not like that.

Our clay bodies are like an old set of clothes. My wife used to wear a blue and white, ankle-length gingham skirt. I loved how it looked on her—just as I love particular outfits she has now. None of her clothes have lasted as long as our marriage. Different ensembles; same wife. When the clothes are bundled up in the bag she takes to the dry cleaners, I can recognize her dresses and blouses, and say they are hers. But just because she is not wearing a particular outfit does not mean I have trouble recognizing her! So it will be when you and I put off our earthly outfit and put on our heavenly one.

Sam Storms has served the Lord in a number of different capacities. He is a pastor and has served as an associate professor of theology at a major Christian college. These experiences show that he has served the church in both the practical “grass roots” expression of Christianity in the local church and in the academic setting, where he has helped train people for Christian service. In addition, he has authored a number of books. Some of his previous works have dealt with the subject of spiritual gifts. For example, he wrote The Beginner’s Guide to Spiritual Gifts (Bethany House, 2013), Convergence: Spiritual Journeys of a Charismatic Calvinist (Enjoying God Ministries, 2005), and Practicing the Power: Welcoming the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in Your Life (Zondervan, 2017) [Editor’s note: See Review of Practicing the Power]. But this current volume is focused on the New Testament gift of speaking in tongues. As the author deals with this controversial subject, he brings pastoral sensitivity and theological precision to the task. He dedicated this book to Jackie Pullinger, an English missionary, who has spent over fifty years in Hong Kong ministering to gang members, drug addicts, and prostitutes. The dedication of this volume to her is appropriate because Pullinger saw a dramatic change in her ministry when she began to pray in tongues on a daily basis. Before we look at the contents of the book I would like to mention that Sam Storms does speak in tongues.

The Language of Heaven consists of an introduction and fourteen chapters. In these chapters Storms answers thirty questions that people often have about speaking in tongues. Some of the questions that he addresses are: “Does the gift of tongues always and invariably follow Spirit baptism as its initial physical evidence?”, “Are tongues always human languages previously unlearned by the speaker? If not, what kind of language is speaking in tongues?”, “Is tongues-speech primarily directed to men or to God?”, “Can a person pray for another person in uninterpreted tongues?”, and “If I don’t have the gift of tongues but want it, what should I do?”

Foursquare Pastor Daniel Brown continues his study about the final reality.

That brings up the question, How old will we be in Heaven—will everyone be the same age, regardless of their age of death on earth? This is most often asked by mothers who have lost a child in the womb or very early in childhood. Understandably, parents want to know the nature of their future relationship with a child lost in infancy or early adulthood. Many mothers and fathers have been disallowed from carrying a child through infancy, or enjoying a child for all the teenage years, or developing the unique friendship that can form with adult-children. Death has deprived us of so much on earth! Even when we have enjoyed our children fully, we still taste a degree of death (impending separation) in the tears we cry at their graduation or wedding. Our hearts long to recapture the moments and the memories stolen from us by the thief, the prince of this world, (John 12:31 and Ephesians 2:2) whose whole agenda is to steal, kill and destroy. (John 10:10)

In the tender book I’ll Hold You in Heaven, Jack Hayford writes that parents who lost an unborn child “will meet him or her some day, and will simply ‘know’ who they are.” After death we are not “airy ghosts floating somewhere in space.” We can only speculate about the age and the features of such children as they will appear in Heaven. As Dr. Hayford continues, their appearance “is as unpredictable to you now as it was before [their] birth, but it is very possibly like the body his or her genetic code would have dictated had the child lived” on earth.

Though the Bible does not give an exact age for the inhabitants of Heaven, we will be changeless like the Lord, and probably look like adults—before they begin to age [on earth]. The earliest inhabitants of the earth, like Adam and Eve, and their nearest descendants lived hundreds of years. (Genesis 5) Seth, Cain and Abel’s younger brother, lived a total of nine hundred and twelve years. Did he look appreciably different at age ninety-four than he did at six hundred and twelve? A very long life tends to make one age look very much like another. Eternity makes age a moot point! Our heavenly bodies will be ageless.

Image: Sam Schooler

PR

Originally from www.coastlands.org. Used with permission of the author.

Further Reading:

Daniel Brown, “Will I Have A Body In Heaven?“

The volume under review presents a compelling case for a Protestant reception of a literal heaven and hell (not metaphorical torment), and an afterlife, and it reads as a breath of fresh air, especially in a contemporary religious cum cultural climate that tends to sideline or dismiss the aforementioned topic. In eight chapters besides an introduction and a conclusion, the book distills for a popular readership the Houston Baptist University philosopher Jerry Walls’ academic trilogy – Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame University Press, 1992) [Editor’s note: read a physicist’s in-depth review], Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford University Press, 2002), Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation (Oxford University Press, 2012). The book under review also examines corollary conversations, such as the intricate relationship between the trinity, the meaning of life, the nature of personal identity, the intricacies of sin and salvation, the problem of evil, the wideness of divine mercy, and the contemporary foundations of moral philosophy behind human decision-making.

Scot McKnight shows in this book that the vision of Heaven the Bible gives is precisely what we need for a vision of what life should be on earth through Jesus by the gospel through the church.

If you want a book recounting traditional teaching from scripture on Heaven, you need to look elsewhere. But if you want a book that moves toward breaking new ground and is potentially a paradigm changer in one’s faith, you’ve found a great book here.

McKnight begins by considering how the subject has been approached, and how it ought to be approached. McKnight’s writings seek to be true to what the Bible says. In McKnight’s understanding, the reason Heaven matters is because God promised it to us. Thus, it’s as good as the God who promised it. And the promise of Heaven relies on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Heaven is a resurrection world.

The most important part of the book is the groundwork McKnight lays from scripture, listening and challenging tradition. Orthodoxy is often much wider than many seem to acknowledge. The important thing is to remain faithful to the spirit and truth of the gospel.

Heaven is essentially the promise from God in and through Jesus and Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. What will be true of Heaven? God will be God, Jesus will be Jesus, Heaven will be the utopia of pleasures, Heaven will be eternal life, Heaven will be an eternal global fellowship, and Heaven will be an eternal beloved community.

What will the first hour of Heaven will be like? McKnight’s view is a stark contrast from the traditional Roman Catholic view of Purgatory. His emphasis is not on human cooperation but on God’s grace. Entrance into Heaven will be a transformation that will leave no stones unturned, including the need for reconciliation in what was left of very broken relationships on earth.

The issues addressed near the end of the book are near-death experiences, rewards in Heaven, who will be there, the fairness of God, whether our children and even spouses still have a special relationship to us, children who die, cremation, purgatory, pets in Heaven, and why one should believe in Heaven in the first place. Be ready for some surprises, and to be challenged as to what scripture actually teaches on some things. McKnight places an appropriate emphasis on the hope and the wideness of God’s mercy without resorting to universalism.

The two great views of Heaven in the church, that it is an ecstatic worship experience largely between gathered individuals and their God, or that it is a time of great communion in love and work and service in the kingdom end up being joined together in God’s vision of Heaven from scripture. Heaven is a dynamic, not static existence.

I would commend this book as a good model to help us think biblically. This book helps us see that the vision of Heaven is related to the entire Story found in scripture. Our view of Heaven directly impacts our view of earth and life in the present, since Heaven is destined to come down to be joined to and become one with earth in Jesus. God’s will is to be perfectly done on earth as it is in heaven.

Reviewed by Ted Gossard

Engage Further:

“Scot McKnight Answers Questions on the Topic of Heaven – The Heaven Promise” [Vimeo]

Scot McKnight, “10 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Heaven: Who will be there? Are near-death experiences reliable? And more on eternal life” On Faith (October 6, 2015).

Scot McKnight, “The Heaven Promise Podcast” Jesus Creed (November 5, 2015).

Preview The Heaven Promise: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Heaven_Promise.html?id=JHYlBgAAQBAJ

Publisher’s page: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/books/236717/the-heaven-promise-by-scot-mcknight/

John Lathrop interviewed Harvey Cox at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1996 about his book, Fire From Heaven.

Harvey Cox was the Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard University until his retirement in 2009. His book, Fire From Heaven: The Rise Of Pentecostal Spirituality And The Reshaping Of Religion In The Twenty-first Century (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995), was one of the winners of Christianity Today’s 1995 Book Awards.

What prompted you to write a book about the Pentecostal Movement?

Two things prompted me. One was my discovery which came through my great interest in urban ministry. This discovery was that although the mainline denominations sometimes issue marvelous statements and do great studies of urban life, on the front lines of urban ministry, many of the churches are Pentecostal. This is true both here and in other parts of the world. And I got to know Eldin Villafane, who I value as a very close friend. He is a Pentecostal minister. We actually gave a course together on urban ministry. There were some Pentecostal pastors in the course, and I began visiting some of these churches. I came to believe that the Spirit was really saying something to the entire Christian world through the Pentecostal movement. I also thought that the Pentecostals got bad press. They have been misunderstood and bad mouthed a lot. I wanted to write something that would be more accurate and fair.

The other reason I got interested in Pentecostals grew out of my work in Latin America and other parts of the Third World. I give courses here on Christianity and in the non-western world, especially Latin America. I began to notice many years ago that the Pentecostal movement in Latin American countries was growing very rapidly. I noticed that it was in many ways not just a reflection of North American Pentecostalism; it had its own qualities and strengths. So I decided when I finally bit off writing this book that I would deal with the whole worldwide picture of Pentecostals. People have written things about this or that part of its history or theology or some special study. I really wanted to write a book that would talk about the global emergence of this new stream of Christian vitality. That is how I got started, and I’m glad I did because I had a wonderful time doing that.

As you have studied the Pentecostal Movement, what do you see as some of its strengths?

Well, I think the main strengths of the movement are two. The major strength is that Pentecostalism is solidly based on the direct, personal experience of the Spirit. It’s based on an experience in a time when many churches have an audience format in which the experiential dimension has been lost in either the creedal or the institutional aspects of the church. There is an old Pentecostal saying from way back in the early years of Pentecostalism: “A man with an argument has no chance against a man with an experience.” There is something to be said for that.

According to Jesus, it is intolerable for any spirit to be without a body-home. (Luke 11:24) Part of what makes us frightened about dying is that we do not want to be left unclothed, without a body. (2 Corinthians 5:4) Our uneasiness about whether or not we really will have a body to be in, coupled with understandable curiosity, gives rise to the questions, “What kind of body will it be? What will it be like”. The exact kind of answer we would like to have to those questions is not given in the Bible. When we think of the sort of body we would like to have, we tend to think in terms of physical features. Our heavenly bodies are not described in the Bible, at least not their appearance or outward features.

But we can surmise several facts about the bodies we will have after death.

Since we were made in God’s image to begin with, most likely our heavenly bodies will resemble our earthly bodies—only in a more glorified manner. This view is supported by Jesus’ appearance after his resurrection. Before He ascended out of physical sight and into the [invisible] third heaven, His glorified body was similar to His earthly body. The main difference between His earthly and heavenly bodies was not in appearance but in capabilities. In His spirit body He could function in the earthly realm—speaking, walking, eating, etc.—but He also moved in the realm of the spirit—vanishing from sight, (Luke 24:31) walking through walls, (John 20:26) and being received up into the third heaven.

Several of the people who saw Jesus on earth after He had risen from the dead thought He was a ghost, not a real person:

But they were startled and frightened and thought that they were seeing a spirit. And He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they still could not believe it for joy and were marveling, He said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them. Luke 24:37-43 One of His disciples, Thomas, who had not seen the resurrected Jesus with his own eyes, conjected that the other disciples had only seen a spirit. After Jesus appeared to all the disciples again and allowed Thomas to touch the places on Jesus’ body that had been wounded by the spikes and the spear during the Crucifixion, Jesus says to Thomas, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (John 20:27).

Scot McKnight responds to the review essays by Kevin Williams and Tony Richie that appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of The Pneuma Review regarding his article, “Jesus vs. Paul” that appeared in the December 2010 issue of Christianity Today.

Scot McKnight, “Jesus vs. Paul” Christianity Today (December, 2010), pages 24-29.
The text appearing on the December 2010 cover encapsulates the discussion: “Jesus preached almost exclusively about the kingdom of heaven. Paul highlighted justification by faith. Some say they preached different gospels. Others say Jesus and Paul both preached justification. Still others claim both focused on the kingdom. What gives?”

I want to thank The Pneuma Review for its response to the piece I wrote in Christianity Today. I believe the gospel issue is the biggest issue we are facing in the church today. Serious discussions need to take place. I believe that what we think the “gospel” is would not have been understood as the gospel in the 1st Century—by Jesus, by Peter or by Paul. Or by anyone else near them. That may sound surprising, but I’m dead serious. We tend to think the gospel is the good news of how we can be saved, and we have constructed a way of presenting this gospel by cobbling together pieces scattered throughout the New Testament. What we mean by “gospel” is the plan of salvation, and it goes something like this: God made each one of us but we chose the path of sin. This same God loves us but God is supremely and fearsomely holy. But because God loves us he has found a way to get us back together: he sent his Son, Jesus, to die for our sins so we can be restored in our relation to God and spend eternity with God in heaven up in the sky somewhere. If we respond to this offer of redemption, our lives will almost certainly be better, and if they don’t God will give us the grace to sustain our faith. By and large I also believe these things, but I’m convinced no one in the 1st Century would hear this and assert, “Yes, that’s the gospel.” They may have agreed with the statement, but they would not have called it the gospel. And because we think this is the gospel, we are missing out on what it is and what it is all about.

In the two pieces in Pneuma Review, the big pushback for me is why I choose to begin with Paul, and the oddity of that move (which goes against the grain of my own career of writing and teaching) will be clear when my book, The King Jesus Gospel, comes out the end of next month [August 2011]. First, only Paul really defines gospel (1 Cor 15), and those who define gospel as I did above are really imposing some things from Paul on Jesus and on the pages of the NT and as a result are providing a meta-hermeneutic of how to read everything in the Bible. That meta-hermeneutic is to read the entire Bible through the lens of Paul’s justification by faith as the personal plan of salvation. But I think this is imposing Paul on the whole Bible in a way that the Bible does not want us to do. (Let me back down just briefly: I believe in personal faith and one dimension of justification is that you and I can be made right with God by trusting in what Christ has done for us.)

I began with Paul because my goal is to beat the Paul imposers at their own game. How? By beginning with Paul, showing that Paul is not saying what they think he is (namely that the gospel is simply justification) and, only then, by showing that in the end Paul’s gospel is the same gospel as Jesus’ gospel.

I see two advantages here: first, by not beginning with Jesus, which I could have done quite easily, it does not look like I’m setting up Jesus in order to impose Jesus on Paul. Second, once I’ve cleared the deck by showing what Paul really means I can show what Jesus really means by “gospel.” I don’t think Paul means simply justification, and I don’t think Jesus means simply social justice or even kingdom—but the story of Israel coming to completion in Jesus himself. Had I begun with that, I don’t think my case would have been as compelling—we’ll see if my case is clear when the book comes out.

Scot McKnight
July 18, 2011

Must Re-centralizing Jesus Mean Displacing the Spirit? A Review Essay of Scot McKnight’s “Jesus vs. Paul”

In this review essay, Tony Richie responds to Scot McKnight’s article that introduces a conversation among theologians.

Scot McKnight, “Jesus vs. Paul” Christianity Today (December, 2010), pages 24-29.

The December 2010 cover encapsulates the discussion:

Jesus preached almost exclusively about the kingdom of heaven. Paul highlighted justification by faith. Some say they preached different gospels. Others say Jesus and Paul both preached justification. Still others claim both focused on the kingdom. What gives?

Scot McKnight is an accomplished New Testament scholar and award-winning author whose work often has an innovative tone and, sometimes, a controversial twist. In “Jesus vs. Paul,” McKnight tackles a disturbing disjunction within Evangelicalism.¹ An older generation of evangelicals tended to follow the Reformation tradition quite tightly, making Paul’s doctrine of justification the essential doctrinal rubric for individual salvation; but, a new generation of evangelicals has become entirely enamored with Christ’s kingdom teaching applying its social implications. Devotees of each approach tend be exclusive or dismissive of the other. A troubling dichotomy between gospels and epistles develops. McKnight considers this a serious crisis threatening the theological stability of church and academy. He thinks both approaches risk reductionism. However, he resists facile attempts at superficial harmonization. For McKnight, the solution resides rather in the concept of gospel itself, particularly as delineated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8. The category of gospel, he argues, is broad enough to include both Jesus and kingdom with Paul and justification in a complementary, or perhaps better, in a comprehensive, manner.

Scot McKnight is Professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.

McKnight defines “gospel” summarily as the “saving story of Jesus that completes Israel’s story.” A prime benefit for McKnight is it’s re-centralizing of Jesus. He thinks that an overemphasis, that is to say, for all practical purposes, a sole emphasis, either on kingdom or justification tends to displace the person of Jesus, while the category of gospel places Jesus back at the center of what Scripture says, and of what Christianity is all about—faith in the person of Jesus Christ. McKnight has no problem producing multiple texts indicating that the New Testament calls for faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior rather than in his kingdom teaching or Paul’s views on justification. Accordingly, he argues against beginning either with kingdom or justification. Instead, McKnight says, “The gospel is the core of the Bible, and the gospel is the story of Jesus.” Therefore, he urges us to begin our hermeneutical and theological tasks with gospel.