The most horrific of all Christian doctrines is the doctrine of the eternal judgement, the declaration that vast numbers of humankind will experience eternal punishment at the hands of their Creator. In its most extreme form it imagines a house of horrors in which people experience excruciating torments that never end and for which there is no hope of an end. In its milder forms it imagines those...
I have a confession to make. I sometimes wonder whether heaven will be boring. Not a good thing if it lasts forever! I’ve made a couple of posts previously about “heaven” (here and here). In this post I aim to make a biblical case for why “heaven” will be eternally stupendous. In his wonderful book Surprised by Hope NT Wright points out that few Christians today have...
Along with most Christians, I grew up believing that when I die my soul will leave my body and ascend to an immaterial realm called heaven, where I will spend an eternity with God. The only problem is, neither Jesus nor the Bible teach In recent years biblical scholars have argued that the bible does not see eternal life as us ascending to heaven, but heaven ‘descending’ to earth and...
What happens when we die? In this four part series we explore the biblical vision of heaven, judgement and the afterlife and discover it is both far removed from popular thinking and profoundly relevant for life.