Here are two more good quotes from Randy Alcorn’s Heaven, the first from Alcorn and the second from A.A. Hodge:
“The biblical doctrine of the New Earth implies something startling: that if we want to know what the ultimate Heaven, our eternal home, will be like, the best place to start is by looking around us. We shouldn’t close our eyes and try to imagine the unimaginable. We should open our eyes, because the present Earth is as much a valid reference point for envisioning the New Earth as our present bodies are a valid reference point for envisioning our new bodies” (81).
“Heaven, as the eternal home of the divine Man and of all the redeemed members of the human race, must necessarily be thoroughly human in its structure, conditions, and activities. Its joys and activities must all be rational, moral, emotional, voluntary, and active. There must be the exercise of all the faculties, the gratification of all tastes, the development of all talent capacities, the realization of all ideals. The reason, the intellectual curiosity, the imagination, the aesthetic instincts, the holy affections, the social affinities, the inexhaustible resources of strength and power native to the human soul must all find in heaven exercise and satisfaction. Then there must always be a goal of endeavor before us, ever future …. Heaven will prove the consummate flower and fruit of the whole creation and of all the history of the universe” (98-99).
One thing I’m really looking forward to about heaven is learning more, and learning better. I think learning and even scholarship will continue in heaven, perfected and organized around the glory of God – having all of the meat and joy of scholarship, and none of the fluff and politics. Can’t wait to read, think, study, research, discuss, write, listen, and forever progress more and more into the infinite store of Truth within the Being of God.
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