GodReflection: Conflict Zone.
Several decades ago, other writers and scholars began to make me question what I had been taught about heaven. Was it possible Jesus was not going to take me to heaven after all? I have just entered another Conflict Zone.
I came across the works of Nicholas Thomas Wright from The University of Oxford. Wow! Book after book caught my attention. Spoiler alert: Tom Write is not someone you read when you are tired and not super wide awake. He requires your full attention.
From his first book that I read, Tom Write began to build the case about the main story line from Genesis to The Book of Revelation: God’s eternal mission is to come down from heaven to live with his creation on his restored planet earth. There is Nothing in my Bible that teaches me that I am going to heaven.
With each of Tom Write’s books I found myself neck deep in the Conflict Zone.
I grew up learning from home, Sunday School classes, pulpits, my church hymnals, and even in my college Bible classes that Jesus will return to take us from earth to live with him in heaven.
I began to reread my Bible, and I was startled to find its confirming message that I am not going to heaven after all!
Around the globe Christians gather every Sunday and sing from our rich eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century hymnals about the assent to heaven as they worship. I believe it was the Christian author, A.W. Tozer who said, “Christians don’t tell lies we just go to church and sing them.” Yes, continually on this one I find myself in the Conflict Zone.
At the exact right time Jesus will return to clean up the entire mess we have made on earth. No more trash, no more plastic filling our oceans, no more petroleum fumes, and no more air pollution. He will make it as clean and as perfect as it was in the first chapter of Genesis where we read that God saw all that he had made, and it was very good (Genesis 1:31).
In February of this year Tom Write’s summation of eight decades study on this topic arrived in his latest book, God’s Homecoming: The Forgotten Promise of Future Renewal – Biblical Theology from Genesis to Revelation on the New Creation. As I read Tom Wright and I find myself in the Conflict Zone.
How about you? Have you visited this Conflict Zone? You might need to go there. Perhaps Tom Write can help you. When Jesus Returns Are We Going To Heaven? Or Are We Going To Live Here On Earth?
Stay tuned.
Dr. Gary J. Sorrells
A GodReflection: When Jesus Returns Are We Going To Heaven? Or Are We Going To Live Here On Earth?
God Reflection 