Your Toughest Questions on Heaven Answered: A Conversation with Randy Alcorn

we go are there pets in heaven uh is there marriage in heaven uh who goes to heaven do all roads lead to heaven we're here with someone who is most qualified to talk about this because he's written a mega best selling book called heaven spent a lot of time thinking and researching this question randy alcorn thanks for joining us to answer some our toughest questions on heaven hey sean great to be with you well let's dive right in because there's already a bunch of comments here people asking questions and by the way those listening towards the end we're going to get to your questions and the best question we're going to give you a free signed apologetics book so for starters i just have kind of a practical question you've written on issues of pro-life you've written on issues of say suffering why did you choose to research and write a book on heaven well a lot of it sean goes back to when my mom was dying of cancer in 1981 i would come to her bed day after day knowing she didn't have a lot more time in this world and i would read to her from the last two chapters of the bible revelation 21 and 22 but what struck me was you know i've been to bible college i've been to seminary i had taught in bible college i taught in seminary and i had never once given serious thought to the new earth and what it means that we will live forever in fact if you would have asked me where will we live forever well i say heaven but heaven as the bible depicts it and i realized as i was reading to my mom the ultimate heaven is the new earth where god says i will come down to dwell with my people revelation 21 3 and he's heaven's the dwelling place of god and he's going to relocate heaven and bring it down to the new earth well everything was physical and tangible and you had walls and you had streets and you had river flowing down the streets you had the tree of life from eden growing on both sides of the river now it's like a forest of life and it's producing a new fruit every month and i'm thinking this is so physical and then i think well of course the resurrection is physical so why wouldn't the world we live in be a physical world so it was so different than float around as a disembodied spirit forever concept and that just just changed my thinking and led me to eventually write the book there's a ton of people who commented on social media they've been looking forward to this because myself included i've got a lot of just practical questions and each one of these we could probably spend an hour on them but give us kind of your somewhat quicker response to the questions i know you've thought about because you write them in your book heaven such as are there pets in heaven i i think the answer to that is yes and the way i would say it is pets on the new earth not necessarily pets in the present heaven though that and the presence of heaven of course is pre-resurrection so new earth resurrection and you have a number of old testament passages that indicate animals on the new earth and also you have romans 8 that says the whole creation suffers and waits to be delivered with the resurrection of god's children and i think the rest of creation that's suffering is the animals now it was reading your book that really made me realize that pets are at the beginning they're in the middle god uses animals frequently throughout scripture just a study of animals and scripture really opened my eyes up to think they're part of good's create god's good creation and in the new heavens and new earth it would make sense that there would be animals there as well i like that case that you make what about somebody's particular dog fido or their cat whatever they name it is god going to resurrect individual animals i think it's very likely because based on romans 8 it says that the whole creation groans in suffering awaiting the deliverance that will come with the resurrection of god's children so an animal who's groaning and suffering now what would be the point of awaiting a resurrection of like some other animal i mean in other words it's it's a resurrection it's not a god is just going to create a bunch of brand new animals who never before existed because that wouldn't be suffering creatures now anticipating resurrection and i think the ones who suffer are the ones who are going to be raised you wrote a blog this morning that i saw prepping for this interview about rich people going to heaven now jesus has some pretty serious words to say like to the rich young ruler and to others about how difficult it is for a rich person to be in the kingdom of god so tell us your thoughts on can rich people go to heaven the answer to that is definitely yes in that anyone can go to heaven who places their faith in jesus and it it's possible for rich people to place their faith in in jesus and we see numbers of times in scripture where they do lazarus uh was uh wealthy uh not the lazarus of the rich man and lazarus but the lazarus the jesus raised from the dead mary and martha his sisters um you have uh you have uh nicodemus who is probably fairly a wealthy joseph of arimathea who was definitely wealthy and you see lots of examples of wealthy people who have faith in god you see a lot of old testament examples of course but even in the new testament so i think yes absolutely saved like everyone else but what jesus is saying is there is an extreme difficulty in fact humanly speaking an impossibility like the camel going through the eye of the needle because the rich person has so much he can trust in besides christ and those things have got to be out of the way but that's a work of the holy spirit and he does that miracle in all of us who come to faith that's a really helpful answer to say that it's not impossible like logically impossible but there's great barriers to trusting our wealth and our resources in the rich that jesus wants to make sure that we see i think that's that's that's a very helpful response uh what about marriage in heaven i had a friend who said to me he goes you know if i can't be married to my wife who i love in heaven i'm not sure i want to go what would you say practically to this person if theologically is their marriage in heaven right well first of all i would say uh what jesus says is that in the resurrection we will be like the angels in this one respect not like we'll be like the angels in every respect but in one respect that they're they don't marry and they're not given in marriage but a lot of people then conclude oh what a bummer no marriage in heaven what the bible actually teaches is there will be one marriage in heaven christ married to his church so the way that i put it is nancy who and i and i get it i i know what it is to be very close to somebody i love somebody very much and to want to be with my wife forever i think i will be with her forever we will be part of the same marriage but we will both be part of the bride that is married to jesus christ the groom who will never let anyone down i've let nancy down sometimes jesus has never let her down and never will so i think there's no reason to we don't quite understand it yet but there's no reason to be upset or concerned about that so the reason we would be upset of not being married in heaven is maybe we have an emaciated or deficient understanding of what marital heaven so to speak will be like is that fair exactly and ephesians 5 makes clear that the human marriage relationship is a picture of christ and the church and we will then have the full reality of that so that we don't need the symbol or the oh you paused just for a moment hopefully we didn't lose you i was afraid this was going to happen with uh with your connection there for some reason oh we got you back i can still hear you okay good we got your back so this is a fall question on that one in some ways the bible makes it clear that sex is reserved for marriage so if there's no marriage in heaven it would make sense that there's no sex in heaven does that follow logically and what would you say to people who would say gosh i'm disappointed if there's no sex in heaven clearly i'm missing out on something good yeah c.s lewis actually talked about that one they talked about a little boy uh who uh you know somebody's trying to explain what sex is to him and it just sounds kind of repulsive and but the boy likes chocolate and so the idea of chocolate to him is so much more exciting than the idea of sex well so if there's something better than chocolate and that's sex is there something better than sex and and i think intimacy with god and i think it's just we we fall short because we know it's a great thing in this life i should say for some people it's a great thing some people have never experienced it as a great thing but i think we will all experience the intimacy that human sex in this life points toward you know what's interesting i wrote i wrote a book called chasing love and i talk about three purposes of sex one make babies number two for unity and number three to foreshadow heaven in the sense that sex is meant to be one way where you can be intimate with somebody you're naked and not ashamed and close to that person and that's the deepest yearning of the human heart is for that yadah that relational connection with somebody and sex in this life is like a foreshadow of that in the next would you agree with that is that the way you'd stayed or would you add or qualify that i think that was perfectly stated okay uh another question i see some rolling in here i've got a few i'm rolling through here and then we will jump to the questions there's some great ones coming in here we're with randy alcorn talking about your toughest questions on heaven what about sports in heaven and i ask because i'm a gym rat randy i love basketball nobody in my entire life has ever walked up to me and said hey did you play basketball because i'm five nine i'm short but i love it and when i think about heaven i'm like wouldn't there be something like basketball in heaven your thoughts yeah i mean i i think absolutely in the resurrection i think we will experience all that god created these bodies to experience and if you believe a god who created the earth for human beings to live in and that's what's taught to us from genesis 1 and 2 on this world is made for us and we're even told that we're going to rule over and have dominion over this world forever because satan didn't thwart god's ultimate plan then everything that we do in culture and everything we do with our bodies we will do in a totally sanctified way so whose idea was sports well you could say it's a human idea but it's an idea we had because we're created in god's image and so we he's given us this this desire to do things and challenge our bodies and and go for it i coach tennis uh i love sports uh and uh and i get that and i i'm confident that everything that is good in this life will be there and all the better on the new so is it fair to say there is nothing that is rich or good in this life that we won't experience in heaven to this degree or at least likely in a greater more clear degree is that yeah i think that's absolutely true and then when people say yeah but what about that no more marriage that is one point of discontinuity the great number of examples are continuity and even that one i think we don't understand because we don't understand what it would be like to be married to jesus hmm okay which paul says is a mystery in ephesians chapter five okay a few people when i wrote on twitter i said hey having randy alcorn on to talk about heaven what questions you have there are a few questions for you about rewards in heaven so what kind of rewards will we have how should they motivate our behavior in our action right now as well well we don't know the exact nature of the rewards except that they often involve uh crowns which depict ruling um you have numbers of pastor of scripture that have you been faithful a little i'll put you over much i'll put you over five cities i'll put you over ten cities now if you think of uh just heaven as the pla the realm of disembodied spirits you go well what would it mean to have dominion what would it mean to rule the dominion and ruling is on the earth and and so if you have the robust view of heaven which includes and focuses on the new earth for all eternity then it becomes much easier to understand we know there will be cities on the new earth we know that there is the city the new jerusalem and we also know that the kings of the nations of the earth will bring their treasures into the new jerusalem so we know that rewards like jesus promises store for yourselves treasures in heaven those are real as in terms of your question about motivation uh paul makes clear in first corinthians nine and other passages that rewards should motivate us and a lot of people think oh no i shouldn't be motivated by rewards that's like mercenary no god is the one who offers the rewards they're his idea not ours yeah there's a difference i've heard make and i want a few comment in this between rewards for god is not motivating our selfishness but our self-interest is not a bad thing like we're supposed to love other people as we love ourselves well that means you have to love yourself in a certain fashion well similar these words are in our self-interest and not bad but that's different than them being matters of selfishness i get some and you don't is that a distinction you would make or what would you add or tweak to that exactly and it's it's not it's sometimes we think of it as if there's just this one uh pie of rewards and so like if i got a certain amount i'd be taking away from someone else sort of almost like a uh communistic rather than a capitalistic you know type of concept there's only so much and so if this person gets a lot then that means other people are deprived that's not the way it is with rewards i mean in your family do you give more love to one child than another because oh i love this child so much which means i can't love this one half as much no it just doesn't work that way the same thing with rewards uh it's from the heart of god that's a helpful way to put it i'm gonna pause take a question i've got a bunch more for you but here's a very thought one from magda botras sorry if i said that wrong she says blessings my questions seem to disappear here it is again what did jesus mean by you have been faithful with a few things i will put you in charge of many things and don't leave out the thanks for your video sean because she is just really thanking you and i thank you for them as well but um yeah so i think uh to be faithful in a few things is god is entrusted to us opportunities uh responsibilities in this life and when we are faithful in those things a few things uh in this relatively short life that we live on this earth he will entrust to us many things and that's in his coming kingdom which will center on the new earth and so i think it it goes back to the uh i'll put you over five cities i'll put you over ten cities i will reward you uh for what you have done in this life and you'll see the tangible results of it on the new earth so don't be weary in well-doing in due season you'll reap if you don't faint and the due season is usually not in this life it's in the life to come so we probably really don't know exactly what it means how we will be put in charge of many things we just know that the idea is what we do here will carry into heaven and eternity and that's meant to motivate us right and i think if you look you look at adam and eve and the uh care of the responsibilities or of the animals and responsibilities related to animals was given to them okay so we know what it means to have dominion it means to have responsibility to take care of so on the new earth i think we should think in terms of that the dominion the the ruling will be taking responsibilities god gives us and faithfully executing them so no boredom in heaven because things to do places to go people to see because we're servants and we're sons and daughters let's jump to there's a few questions i have and i see them popping up so let's take them from our our viewers here ricardo says will we age in heaven for example where there be children if so would they be children forever or grow to a certain age um we don't know the answer to this for sure uh saint thomas aquinas said uh that everybody will be 33 years old in heaven because uh he thought that was the age that jesus died at well okay of course we don't know that but we would know that uh everyone one would think would be at their prime and whatever we might conceive that with the olympics going on you know you get a lot of people in the early and mid 20s and you think maybe that's the peak maybe that's the the prime or or whatever as far as children are concerned there are a few passages including isaiah 65 which talks about the new earth that do talk about children and i have wondered with that perhaps god resurrects children at the age they were when they die if that's true then wouldn't it be just like god to entrust the care of those children after the resurrection on the new earth perhaps on the millennium first but for sure on the new earth would god entrust the care of those children to their parents who lost their children and then they would be able to raise them in a world with no sin with no kidnapping and no leukemia and nothing to hurt them and would that not be an incredible reward for parents who have lost children no if i'm not mistaken it sounds like on a lot of these questions you're you're speculating but speculating from the character of god what he's revealed himself beyond what scripture explicitly says is that true when it comes to a lot of that true and the thing i would add is the res the reality of the resurrection and what we see in luke 24 with jesus saying i am not a ghost a ghost does not have flesh and bones as i have well we're told our resurrection bodies will be like christ there's several passages that make that clear well what this means is extrapolate from what it means to be a physical human being living on the earth because we're told then we'll be uh we'll have new bodies and we'll be on a new earth not non-bodies on a non-earth new bodies on a new earth so you can extrapolate from that to any number of things and you could say well it's speculation well but it's speculation based on a fact that we will have bodies flesh and bones that makes sense i like that all right here's a question i was going to ask you but it has come up from priya rachel i know you thought about this one randy can one sin in heaven and as you jump in the reason this matters is because the question really is do we have free will so if we don't have free will we'd seem to lose something essential to what it means to be human but if we do have free will then it would seem that we could sin and get kicked out of heaven your thoughts yeah i think that it's a great question and i think the uh what what throws us is that we think well wait a minute adam and eve were perfect and then they sinned satan was perfect and then he said so our being perfect would not assure that we won't sin but it's radically different because what happened in between was redemption and what it says in second corinthians 5 we have been been made the righteousness of god in christ we have the righteousness of christ we are the righteousness of christ and therefore with that being our new redeemed nature we will never sin we will never want to sin as paul helm says we will never want to want to sin because we'll no more be capable of sinning than jesus is will we have free will sure but it's it's it's the transformed nature where free will no longer wants sin and is no longer deceived by sin plus satan and the demons are thrown in the lake of fire they won't be part of the picture nothing to tempt us so the temp so our nature inside has been transformed because we're redeemed there's no external temptation so you would say we have free will but it's been so transformed by the love of christ i guess an example i would use i technically am free to take my eight-year-old son and go push him off a cliff and see if he could survive a thousand feet now i realize that is a completely morbid example but i used something extreme to make the point right i would never do that now i'm tempted to do little white lies and sins because maybe we think they're not as bad right but when we get to heaven we see with clarity in a way we don't now and if we would know more sin in heaven that i would do that with my son that's how i tend to look at it to the nth degree in heaven we have such clarity of god's character how horrific sin is we still have free will but it's guaranteed we won't right and i think we're going to thank sin been there done that saw how disastrous it was it was i will never even want to do it again why would i i'm with god and his people forever and it's glorious beyond imagination great answer here's here's a good one here that i know you taught at the beginning of your book heaven what is the most prominent way our modern western perspective has obscured the way the bible talks about heaven and i would say either from christians how they've obscured it or missed it or our non-christian culture just obscured the nature of what heaven's really like yeah the non-christian culture just doesn't have the biblical reference points and so it's it's understandable that it's going to get distorted the christian culture does have the biblical reference points but it has been very distorted among us and in the book i talk about what i it's just i i almost never do this uh but i've made up a term christoplatanism and by which i mean a christianized uh version of the philosophy of the greeks plato in particular which is that the body is bad that the physical world is bad and that the spirit is good and the spiritual world is good and they actually believe that and so they would talk about okay well the great thing about dying is that your your soul will no longer be chained to your body and your body will be gone okay now that is so utterly unbiblical but some of the church fathers bought into it and so when they talked about heaven they talked about how glorious it will be to not have bodies and how glorious it is to not live on the earth but see what we forget is who created our bodies who created the earth who created us to live on the earth and love the earth and rule the earth to god's glory it's god satan didn't come up with that idea and so we act sometimes like okay so now it's all about when you die and you leave this world and you go to heaven and you float around that's probably one of the reasons why you can't sin because sins we do sins with our bodies right and so we won't have bodies that is completely contrary to scripture scripture teaches resurrection so i think that that notion causes people to say oh well this new earth must not really be a new earth and on our resurrection bodies i believe in the resurrection but we won't actually have bodies and i mean people will say that no that's what resurrection means we will have bodies if you're joining us give us a thumbs up that helps spread the word on uh the interview that we're having right now and hopefully find a blessing to you it's amazing that you answered it that way randy because one of the first heresies the church faced was gnosticism that the body's bad escape it and you're really saying gnosticism is alive and well not just in our wider culture which is a separate issue but within the church that's one of the most common misconceptions about heaven that's that's very telling and interesting uh here's here's a question i thought of but i want marisa to ask it because she says it well marissa says uh what about babies who pass away either in miscarriage or as infants and toddlers is there an age range where responsibility for accepting christ begins this is what's often called the age of accountability do you believe in the age of accountability what is it what's this biblical basis or if not why not i don't believe uh in an age of accountability per se as if it were the same age for everyone i think god takes into consideration the mental and even perhaps emotional metaphysical properties of the individual person uh so a down syndrome child or let's say a child with more severe restrictions than a down syndrome child because many down syndrome child children love jesus with all their heart there's probably a higher percentage of them that love jesus than quote normal kids but but god knows that people have certain mental restrictions and inabilities to even intelligently make a choice to acknowledge what sin is in themselves to fully understand who jesus is other than that maybe they understand he's wonderful and that's probably enough when when or even if you can't do that i think god takes all that into consideration so i think for sure uh i believe uh that there will be uh children who who die at a young age who haven't really had an opportunity to respond uh with faith in christ will be in heaven forever once again can i prove that from the bible i can't i can cite certain things that we don't have time to go into but uh can't prove okay that's fair one response i've heard people say is just you know what it's a mystery we don't understand god hasn't told us but god is god and he will judge fairly you know some might not find that satisfying fully but there is a sense where god is god and we're not i get that to degree now since you do believe you admit you can't prove it but you believe there's probably a kind of age of accountability based upon god's understanding wisdom then if babies and toddlers probably go to heaven why not be pro-choice because you've written a lot in favor of pro-life isn't this a way of guaranteeing somebody doesn't go to hell well i think uh take an exact analogy to that would be uh you have a two-year-old okay why don't you throw the two-year-old off the cliff why don't you drown them wouldn't that be an act of grace i mean that same logic would apply to already born children right and it's a it's a horrific logic and i've had christians share it with me i actually had a pastor one time tell me i said i think it's it's very it's not merciful that you're trying to save the lives of these children because most of them are going to grow up and go to hell wow you go wow if you take that attitude uh and i told him that i said so you have and he had young children i see you think some of those children if they died today would go to heaven oh yeah i do i mean they're very young they haven't had the opportunity yet and i said well wouldn't it be an act of mercy then for you to kill them now and he he thought that was horrific which it is horrific and that's the whole point that's not how we are to think we are not to to say oh well i'm going gonna look the other way that that's uh i mean it's a holocaust of the unborn children and uh god calls us to intervene to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves defend the rights of the poor indeed it seems to be the ultimate example of the ends justifying the means which scripture speaks against very clearly that is a wrong even if a good results hence not moral it's just a purely philosophical way to think about as well um all right here's here's one for you again i know you thought about this i love this question you're doing a great job by the way josh says do you think we'll ever get bored in heaven if we're going to live in heaven for infinite years then will we have infinite things to do i think absolutely we will never get bored in heaven and again we're using the term heaven but realize there's the present heaven pre-resurrection people go when they die then there is the eternal heaven post-resurrection which will be centered on the new earth and uh well a new earth where we will never die where god's creation cries out to us for exploration if the heavens under the curse i mean the physical heavens right now declare the glory of god if if the animals and the the rivers and the lakes and uh and all of the creatures in the world and everything about it declares god's glory now how much more will that be true forever and god's uh resources are infinite and so he will he can create a thousand new things every day and maybe he will i mean we boredom is just i mean for the idea that finite creatures could run out of things to do in a world that is generated by god and is filled with his creativity we as his image bearers it's just unthinkable that we'll be poor i love how the answer to that is tied back to god's character if god is infinite he's all creative and we are not infinite we're finite and not creative in a sense like god is we will always be learning always be growing always be exploring that's why heaven will never get boring that's that's a pretty captivating vision when you really think about it yeah and i think if we thought heaven would be boring it would reveal that we think god is born and he is anything but that's mike drop moment but we're going to keep going you're rocking it with these questions by the way here's another great one for you i know you've thought about kimberly says uh hello dr mcdowell since god in genesis 2 15 employed adam to work in the garden before the fall will they'll also be work in the new jerusalem that's a great question well and this one requires no speculation at all because of all the promises about rewards that are ruling reigning having dominion all of which involves having responsibility see i think if we go back and look at the first two chapters of the bible and then it's they're like a mirror image of the last two chapters of the bible you've got eden and then you've got the new earth they both have the the tree of life in them and and i think it's the same tree of life except now that forest of life that grows on both sides of that great river going through the the new jerusalem so it's paradise the first one was paradise eden was paradise the new earth will be paradise but it will be a global uh paradise you could even say a universal paradise because again the heavens the physical heavens that god created in the beginning that we have never yet explored except through telescopes and in a very limited way with spacecraft we'll be there for our exploration forever in terms of work again we're called servants and servants have things to do places to go people to see so will there be work uh in the new jerusalem absolutely we know there will be because of what it says about responsibilities that we will have in the eternal kingdom of god i'm glad that kimberly pointed back to genesis because genesis shows that god created us to work genesis 1 really in genesis 2 before the fall in genesis 3 so there's something good about working but it's sin that makes us workaholics and exhausting and painful so in heaven and the curse was with the the thorns and and everything that what did it do it made work more difficult more frustrating less fulfilling so what it what does revelation 22 mean when it says no more curse and some of the old testament prophets speak in this very language it will be a garden of eden again and the curse will be lifted so all frustrations related to work under the curse will be gone forever love that here's one for you daniel i i'm really curious randy from daniel he says what did paul mean when he talked about being carried up to the third heaven and of course that's in the book of first corinthians written to the church in corinth what did paul mean when he talked about being carried to the third heaven yes the first heaven in in biblical thinking and and among a lot of the ancients uh the first heaven which is immediately above us is the atmospheric heaven the second heaven is the uh galactic planetary universal outer space its outer space is the second heaven the third heaven was thought of as the dwelling place of god so that was a synonym for when jesus says to the thief on the cross today you will be with me in paradise and the rich man and lazarus and luke 16 when lazarus dies and goes to abraham's side that's paris that then was the third heaven okay so that third heaven will be relocated down to that's the heaven the dwelling place of god and the dwelling place of his people who have died the dwelling place of many of the angels that third heaven we're told in revelation 21 will be brought down to the new earth god brings the new jerusalem the heavenly city down to the new earth so he relocates the present heaven from somewhere out there to down here so the great concept is this and this is what i think sean is just paradigm shifting is that when we die now when we know jesus we relocate god takes us from our place up to live with him in his place but the new earth the great promise of revelation 21 to 22 is that god will come down to live will leave his place or bring his place down to live with us and dwell with us forever in our place and think about it jesus emmanuel what does that mean god with us revelation 21 3 says three times god will come down and dwell with his people on the new earth that's where it's so transformed that's awesome i i love that and that's really helpful about the third heaven uh understand what their cosmology was at the time uh here's a fascinating one uh bobby says ask him referring to you uh what does they think of movies and tv shows that's big heaven like robin williams and what dreams may come so let me frame it this way are there any movies you can think of that you think capture heaven well or better than others than any movies where you think they just butcher heaven whatever movies they may be well that's a good example of one that butchers having for sure and i remember i don't remember all the details of it but i remember watching it and just shaking my head at the the lack of understanding or agreement with any biblical notion of heaven and i remember something related to his wife that was i mean just some very very strange things in that another example of a bad one is the uh mitch uh albums movie the five people we meet in heaven and that was a very popular book well here's the real really remarkable thing and this should give it all the way none of the five people that we meet in heaven are god god is not even in that heaven well if you're thinking of see heaven is the dwelling place of god so it's like if you leave god out you've just missed the whole point i mean and so uh yeah i just think that movie in answer to this question it really misses the mark and i think almost all tv shows movies that i've seen do even some of the christian ones um that have people's experience of going up to heaven and you know coming back to earth because they didn't really die um you know that's all up to the lord if he wants to bring somebody up to heaven and bring him back he can certainly do that but don't base your theology on those but just one example is the is a very popular book and movie uh where um the uh people have uh halos around their head there are circles around their head the little boy said and he saw him there and that people there had wings okay nowhere in the bible is there any such thing as halos or people in heaven with wings some angels not all angels have wings in the bible people never have wings not not in this life and not in the life to come so when somebody comes back and tells you that's what they saw in heaven it does make you wonder was that fully accurately seen or remembered that's fair that's very fair i gotta tell you in every show i've done i've gone at least one thumbs down when you critiqued robin williams movie you finally got a thumbs down in this interview there must be a robin williams fan who didn't appreciate your thoughts on that movie but uh there we go i'll tell you what i've gotten down for a lot worse things than that that's awesome you're doing great by the way just give us quick thoughtful responses and again those watching we're here with randy alcorn asking as many questions we can in the hour we have about heaven if you want to go deeper check out his mega bestseller book heaven which i've read by the way randy my wife read it and took a bible study through a group of women through heaven and they devoured it together too so i've recommended your book uh for years tell me your thoughts on purgatory purgatory is obviously not explicitly mentioned in the scriptures what are your thoughts on that as you think about a place or a process or a time before the new heavens and the new earth for many individuals well i think purgatory historically in the roman catholic church purgatory had some very suspicious beginnings because it was used so widely as a tool to get people to give money to the church and that was luther's one of luther's huge criticisms of it and i think uh that association was bad biblically i don't think it has any solid ground i think the the closest you could get to it in scripture is a misinterpretation of first corinthians 3 where he talks about wood and hay and straw and gold as opposed to gold and silver and precious stones the works that believers do in this life and that some of those works will be consumed with fire uh because they're they're not worthy and what i believe that passage is talking about is reward in other words you won't be rewarded for the really selfish things you've done i mean you could selfishly give you could give a million dollars and if it's it's so that you hear the praises of people that's wood hay and straw it'll be consumed and you won't be rewarded for it so that those things will be consumed by fire in that they will not be rewardable for eternity but that is not the same as us actually being in the fire though some people interpret first corinthians three is saying they'll be saved yet so as of by fire but the salvation is the work of christ on our behalf and if there's something we must do to get to heaven or something we must go through to get to heaven which is what purgatory is then what it means is that what christ did for us on the cross and in his resurrection was not sufficient that's why i believe it would be fair to call purgatory a biblical heresy oh wow that's just it doesn't fit it contradicts the sufficiency of the work of christ on our behalf by saying oh and we've got to go through some more corrective punishing or purifying that wasn't done in jesus obviously this is a show we could go into incredible depth on at some point it'd be interesting to have a discussion with people on different sides but as a whole your concern is don't believe it's explicitly biblical and calls them to question certain things about the sufficiency and grace of christ fair enough we will leave it there uh for now here's another great question uh from martha martha says how do you respond when someone believes that everyone goes to heaven including unbelievers once they have served their time in hell for their sins they believe jesus is just a faster way so i guess as all there's kind of two questions here how would you respond to somebody who just says in principle everyone goes to heaven and then second we can come back to this is it possible that people who are in hell for a season could repent and go to heaven yes and these are questions related to the subject of what's often called christian universalism now uh in some ways that maybe is a misnomer because it's contradictory um uh because i think there's no uh universalism in the bible so to call it christian universalism maybe gets off track but it distinguishes it it's useful it distinguishes it from uh universalists who don't believe the bible and don't believe in jesus at all that's a whole nother thing but they do believe in heaven and they do believe that everybody will go there now among among us in recent years and universalism was there in the early history of the church origen was a universalist various people along the way have been uh universalist but it's recently become very popular again largely through the work of paul young and those closely associated with him paul wrote the shack i know paul personally and in many ways i really like him he lives here in the same area that i do and we've gotten together at starbucks and talked at length about these news but he also wrote a book called uh lie lies about god we believe or lies we believe about god and that book is a non-fiction uh shack of course it's fiction but universalism is there in the shack but anytime anyone would say that they say oh yeah but you're reading into it's just a novel okay well he's very explicit and he says so am i universalist and the answer is yes that's what he says and what i think happens is you can take passages out of context and one of the popular ones is second corinthians 5 where it says god was in christ redeeming the world okay this is the whole world so god was in christ redeeming the world all the people of the world that's what it seems like maybe he's saying so you say well that's universalism except a few verses later he begs them be reconciled to god so very clearly he's not talking about everyone automatically be you must place your faith in christ in order for that reconciliation work of jesus that redemptive work of jesus to take effect and to become real in your life i don't think anywhere in scripture do i see anyone who is in hell who is later described as going to heaven or even given the hope of heaven and again rich man and lazarus in luke 16 where lazarus is saying hey i don't he's making clear he doesn't want to be there he's he's saying hey send somebody uh let me come back from the dead or someone come back from the dead and so my brothers will believe and uh and it's like no because if they don't believe moses and the prophets they're not going to believe even if somebody is risen from the dead which of course jesus knows he himself is going to do that's an interesting response i remember when i first read your book your discussion on luke 16 and lazarus the rich man doesn't say hey i want to go to heaven he just wants to prevent other people from suffering the way that he's suffering but we read it into that story a little bit which is just a very interesting thought um here's just a quick quick fun one for you uh oops let me pull this one off it says uh what languages do you think will speak in heaven and i guess is your thing in a response maybe we're like uh c-3po who all sudden just we get downloaded all these languages we speak i can't remember what movie it is where you like speak and then it's automatically translating the person's language or maybe we get to heaven and we just start learning all these different languages as a way of loving other people and growing i mean what do you think about language in heaven well i i know for sure there's going to be learning in heaven ephesians 2 7 says in the ages to come god will be revealing to us it's a continuous uh tense uh god will be revealing to us uh the riches of his grace and kindness to us in christ we will learn for sure i think we will probably learn a physical thing like learn a new sport your favorite sport may be a sport you've never played in this life your favorite food may be a food you've never eaten in this life and i think the steam thing would apply just in terms of languages i think they're one of the ways we could look at it is there are numbers of trade languages in the world one of the ones in africa very popular swahili so people let's say they're of the kikuyu tribe in kenya but they also know uh swahili the trade language because everybody knows it and that's that's how they talk so in heaven could there be like a trade language so to speak the equivalent a language we all know and we all know from the moment we arrive and i think god could certainly do that then uh people could still because we know there will still be nations in heaven the kings of the nations of the earth will bring their treasures in the new jerusalem that's new earth and i think very likely then we could study and learn other languages and and i think we we would learn at a much quicker rate fully redeemed brains not just bodies it's really fascinating to speculate about how that's going to work i think that idea of like a trade language makes sense but we'll find out that's one of the cool surprises we get to have it now i'll make a quick comment on this but um balge says i apologize if i did not pronounce that he says our near death experience is real now if you want thoughts on this my favorite book on near-death experiences is written by jay the letter j steve miller he's a doctor a professor interviewed him and if you just search the evidence for near-death experiences in my name it'll pop up and we walk through cases i throw all the objections at them the bottom line what i think is yes near-death experiences are real the ones that matter evidentially speaking are when people come back and report certain things that they could not have known in that state and then they check out as being true those are the ones that are evidentially interesting but near-death experiences as a whole fit within a world view that we are body and soul and that god could allow for different reasons us to have a form of temporary death and then come back randy your thoughts on this question are near death experience is real yes i i agree they are real which uh but qualifying it by saying they are not always real people are fully capable of lying making stuff up but i think probably what's more common is most people who have these near-death experiences are in hospitals under heavy medications traumatic things have been done perhaps surgically to their bodies they there's an altered mental state that goes with those things so they may be sincerely telling what they think is the truth but the dream state and actual experiential reality can get very very confused and so i think factor that in and then the other thing i would throw in is again believing that these experiences are sometimes very real and then i would even say legitimate where they're not legitimate is when someone comes back and lays claim to something and it kind of relates to what you're saying but lays claim to something that uh this is true this is this new thing that we have learned about god and and learned about even what it's like in the presence of god that is nowhere stated in scripture in which case it might be true but in some cases it is utterly contradictory to what we see in scripture and that's when you draw the line and you say i can't say whether this you know you could have a real experience of something that could be demonically related or what seems real that could be uh you know drug um medication related or you could come back and have had a genuine experience and tell people what you you think and one of the big tests of that is i've read a number of uh near-death experiences or after death experiences where somebody comes back and says i was sent back in the world to tell my friends and my family no worries we're all going to go to heaven forever there's nothing you need to do nothing needs to change so here's my reassurance and then i would say now you're being the mouthpiece of the evil wow wow no matter how sincere you are because if you're told you don't need to believe in jesus to be saved and that's your message to people that's a that's a an anti-gospel message you're bringing agreed well said here's one that comes from a young person for you martha says my son asked how quickly do you think we will go to heaven after we die he watched a show when people were brought back with cpr and was curious yeah uh to be absent from the bodies to be present with the lord paul says jesus said to the thief on the cross today you will be with me in paradise there's no such thing biblically as what's called uh soul sleep there are numbers of groups and people who believe in soul sleep that you sleep until the resurrection that you're not conscious but that contradicts these passages and it also contradicts uh revelation 6 where you have martyrs who have been killed they're in the presence of god and they're asking god these questions and the resurrection hasn't happened yet so this is an example of that there's not so sleep some people get confused because when it talks about falling asleep it's a euphemism for death yeah because the body looks like it's asleep and death looks that way um so i think scripture is clear we immediately if we know jesus we immediately go into his presence that's why some of the things where people say i had this uh death experience i came back from the dead i was dead for 48 minutes i think you could probably argue since it's appointed onto in hebrews it says it's appointed unto people once to die and after that the judgment that by definition if you come back you didn't really die in the in the biblical sense of death which is an ultimate you die once now you may have gone to the place of the dead and god brought you back that's possible i don't think that's important so probably when it says die once and you know face judgment enter into eternal life that's a permanent death so if somebody has a near-death experience they might be medically dead but not in the permanent sense and i can't help but think of that line from um princess bride just mostly dead not fully dead just mostly dead yes any time you can quote that movie it's a win um okay exactly great question let me see here we are rocking through these and we have just a few more minutes here want to respect your time if you have questions for randy alcorn on heaven load them in the bottom if i minute if i missed them we'll come back we have time maybe two three at most and then we're gonna have to run and then we're gonna let you ask what you think is the best uh question here let me see give me your thoughts on on cremation for christians i've heard some christians speak out and say because there's a physical resurrection we should preserve and protect the body and cremation would violate a view that we are body and soul i've heard other christians that say even some bodies get destroyed so god's gonna resurrect us regardless what are your thoughts on cremation yeah i think i take uh somewhat of an in-between position i i think biblically from what i see the people of god always took the bodies and put them into a tomb that would be more the equivalent of burial under the ground but but they didn't do anything to uh quote do harm to the body harm is not the right word but to destroy the body the healing cultures on the other hand often burned bodies you see that in a few places in scripture but that was just common in those cultures for whatever reason god's people did it a certain way where they did not destroy the body that makes me feel more comfortable doing what god's people throughout the ages have dylan so burial or body in a tomb and not destroyed however i don't believe any of this presents any problems for god in the resurrection people do die in fires people are incinerated and god can easily uh raise them i mean he's god he can do anything that's good i like that moderating position that respects the pattern of god's people and the body without maybe taking it too far i like that you're aiming for balance here all right let's do let's do one more and uh this is from nate saint he joins my conversations a lot he says heaven has been my main inspiration since god used the departing of my closest loved ones to stir up my faith how would you recommend use this as a gospel presentation to non-believers and let me throw in there would you recommend more using heaven or hell both or does it depend upon the person yeah and by the way nate saint i love your name that is a great great name one of the uh missionary martyrs in ecuador um probably you were named for him you want your last name naturally but anyway question um yeah so i would say um i think heaven uh in the full gospel picture of the kingdom of god that is at the center of god's agenda is a very natural evangelistic tool when we have a right view of heaven honestly the heaven that many christians believe in and talk about which is vague uh even sometimes it's well we won't remember anything from our lives on earth it is so unappealing that it would be better if we didn't even talk about it because honestly if that's your view of heaven and you're sharing that with an unbeliever um well i want to tell you about jesus and you can put your faith in him so you too can when you die go to this place that will be boring nondescript inhuman unearthly no that is that's that's not great there hell uh same issue i think that uh hell throughout history has had a motivating place you know we all know jonathan edwards centers in the hand of angry god and we can criticize the way he did it or the way we suppose he did it but the fact is that jonathan edwards preached many more sermons about heaven than he did about hell and he rightly depicted hell as something that should scare us for legitimate reasons regardless of what you think of the imagery he used and i would say also with hal remember when people say yeah well do you believe in literal fires well i go it may be literal fire it may not it may be literal darkness it may not but darkness eternal darkness and eternal fire uh if they are symbolizing something else what they're symbolizing must be just as bad or worse so i would say uh both use both as motivations but don't let it enhance and supplement the main gospel message about who jesus is his death his resurrection his love and his offer of eternal life that's fantastic can i ask you one more or am i pushing the limits here because i said oh no absolutely let's wrap up with this one but something i've been asked a lot and i've thought about because i have family members and i have friends who are not believers in jesus how could those in heaven enjoy heaven and god and his presence knowing that possibly family members and other loved ones are in hell yeah that is a great question and and one of the most difficult ones in my heaven book i quote something g.i packer said about it and i won't even get into it but if somebody wants to refer to that and they happen to have the book uh but i i would say this we know that hell will never have the power to trump heaven satan doesn't have the power to trump god to defeat god to ruin heaven because hell exists that that logic is foreign to scripture we know heaven will exist forever we know hell the the lake of fire it's called eternal that it will last forever but i i do believe one way that might be true is this as long as people are alive in this life even if we don't believe in jesus we are created in the image of god and the image of god is very real in us and when we have a loved one what we are loving in them christian or non-christian is really what we see the goodness in them that we see as from the hand of god and i and that's what it means to be made in his image i can't prove it biblically but i think you can make a case given the isolation and the god withdrawing his presence from people who are in hell that perhaps over time they will no longer be anymore in the image of god and therefore everything we loved about this person is gone and so we won't be thinking of this person who we knew and loved as suffering in hell though technically yes but we but everything about them we loved is what every is what heaven is full of hell is the ultimate the pit the dark place no redeeming qualities and if there are no redeeming qualities in people it would be hard to believe that in a meaningful sense they are fully the same people that we once loved but that's an opinion oh i i i appreciate you do a couple things number one you admit when you have an opinion on something and you don't know for sure scripture doesn't speak you also admit that certain questions are tough we don't know everything about heaven we don't know everything about hell i'm an apologist and the older i get the more often i say you know what that's a really good question here's my guess but i don't know and i'm okay with that and i think you try to speculate rightly so in your book but admit when you do so so if anybody's watching this make sure you pick up a copy of heaven by randy alcorn if you care about the afterlife from biblical perspective this is one of the first books got to read think about now randy you nailed it i kind of told you i said hey we're going for shorter quicker responses you were biblical you're on the money we must have worked through at least 30 questions on heaven so some of you have tuned in towards the end make sure you go back and watch because we walked through pets in heaven marriage in heaven uh you name it we got through all my questions and some wonderful ones from the guests by the way those of you watching we've got a couple shows coming up on monday i have a doctor named donna harrison who is the head of a pediatric organization she's the president of it and she's an ob gyn and she has shared from information with me you'd find this interesting randy how dangerous to women over-the-counter abortion is abortion on demand in california alone 20 deaths recorded and nobody talks about it i don't say this a lot on my show but the facts that she gave me were stunning and they were startling and they were disturbing and i can't believe the word has not gotten out more so those of you watching if you care about the pro-life issue even if you don't monday i'll be interviewing her at noon and i hope you'll join us i hope you share this because there's a lot of people getting hurt by this because of misinformation we've got a show also coming up with george yancey he actually has done the most in-depth research on progressive christianity versus conservative christianity and says they're essentially two different faiths they've merged so much socially politically and theologically they're entirely two different faiths and this is a fascinating conversation got a ton more shows coming up but make sure you hit subscribe now randy i was gonna let you pick the best question but we started taking questions so fast there are so many of them i'm just gonna pick since you like nate saints name so much and he's joined us in a few nate if you email in are you ready to apologetics at biola.edu that's apologetics biola.edu we will send you a free signed copy of my book is god just a human invention in which there's a chapter on evidence for the soul and near-death experiences which we talked about today last thing if you've watched this and never thought of getting a master's degree randy we have a full distance apologetics degree and if you're watching this you thought you know what now's the time just there's information below we would love to partner with you to train you to be a resource for your church your family your neighbor your workplace and beyond find information below and think about joining us randy you are a rock star i'm hoping in heaven we get a clearer image of one another the sound was great i don't know why we didn't get a clear image but you did fantastic and i can't thank you enough for joining me hang on 30 seconds afterwards just so i could say goodbye but thanks so much for coming on hey great to be with you sean thanks you

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 22,199

Rating: 4.9442511 out of 5

Keywords: Heaven, animals, children, sex, freedom, pleasure, God, Christians, Bible, Jesus, faith, questions, doubt

Id: SYp2K5jHO4E

Length: 66min 48sec (4008 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021