Life in the New Heaven and New Earth--Heaven Series

            Plenty of people over the years have speculated about what Heaven may be like, and songwriters have been no exception. Their songs have run the gamut from simple questions about Heaven to definitive statements and everything in between. The best-known song about Heaven in our culture may be “Tears in Heaven,” by Eric Clapton, which just asks some simple questions about a loved one who had passed away: “Would you know my name/if I saw you in Heaven? Would it be the same/if I saw you in Heaven?”

            Another song that’s been popular lately is a song recorded by Brad Paisley called, “When I Get Where I’m Going.” This song makes some more definite statements about what the songwriter plans to do when he gets to Heaven: “When I get where I’m going/on the far side of the sky/the first thing that I’m gonna do/is spread my wings and fly. I’m gonna land beside a lion/run my fingers through his mane/or I might find out what its like/to ride a drop of rain.” (I’m not so sure about all of those details!)

            With so many different expressions about Heaven in our culture—from hesitant questions to definite statements—we may feel as though its hopeless to learn anything for certain about Heaven. But through careful study of the Scriptures, we can learn more than you might think, and even if we can’t pin down a precise answer to some questions, we can come pretty close.

            Today, we’re going to begin studying what life in the New Heaven and New Earth will be like. We’ll move through a question-and-answer format today, and keep in mind that when we talk about the New Heaven and New Earth, we’re talking about our eternal home with God. It is tricky to know whether some of the details of this study apply to the Heaven where Jesus lives today. We’ll spend some time in just a couple of weeks talking about the Heaven where Jesus lives today, but for today, let’s look forward to life in the New Heaven and New Earth!

What will we do there?

            People have always been eager to answer this question by suggesting that life in Heaven will revolve around their favorite activities. So some people like to imagine life in Heaven as an endless round of golf with unlimited mulligans, while other people would like to think of Heaven as an endless garden party with a never-ending amount of time to talk to each other.

            But does the Bible give us any definitive information about what we will do there? I believe it certainly does. Revelation 22 mentions a couple of activities that could actually be broad categories of activity that will occupy our time. First, it will come as no surprise that we’re told we will worship God [READ Rev. 22:3]. Now if the earlier chapters of Revelation picture what this worship will look like, then it will involve times of gathering together around the throne of God to sing His praises.

            We can see that we will worship God in Heaven, but Revelation 22:5 mentions another activity [READ Rev. 22:5]. That statement may intentionally point us back to the original command that God gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28—“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Humanity was created to rule over this planet and the creatures on it, so it may be that we will have the same task in the New Heaven and New Earth—to cultivate it and care for it and manage it. This thought immediately brings to mind some tasks like farming and gardening, but it could open the door for a wide variety of tasks as well. In the same way that God has allowed us to use the elements of this planet to make things as diverse as paintings and computer chips, it could be that we will have the same diversity of occupations that we see around us today—with a few exceptions of course! There will be no funeral directors in Heaven, no soldiers, no police officers, and no grief counselors. We could name a few others, but with those exceptions, we may see a wide variety of occupations in Heaven.

            So what will we do? We will worship, and—it seems—we will work, at least in some capacity, but without the frustrations that we face from work in this life. We will get the joys of accomplishment without the sorrows.

What will we be like? What will our bodies be like? What age will we be?

            Let me first clear up an idea from pop culture that is very common, but false. We will NOT become angels when we get to Heaven. We are human beings, and we will always remain human beings. In fact, we may have authority over angels in the New Heaven and New Earth. In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul criticizes the Corinthians for taking each other to court. He encourages them instead to settle their differences within the church, and in the middle of this discussion he writes, “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life (1 Cor 6:3)!” Its fascinating that Paul wrote that as a rhetorical question. He treats that idea like it comes from Sunday School 101! I wish he had elaborated on that idea a bit more, but his statement does tell us clearly that at some point in time we will apparently have authority over angels. All of this is to say that if we did become angels in Heaven, it might actually be a demotion rather than a promotion!

            So we will not become angels, but what will we be like? 1 John 3:2 may give us a helpful hint [READ 1 John 3:2]. We should remember to take the first part of that verse as a warning against being too dogmatic about certain things. John clearly says, “what we will be has not yet appeared,” so we should be careful about making our speculations sound like they are the Gospel Truth.

            But, John does also say, “when he appears (which apparently refers to Jesus) we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” This phrase could tell us that the resurrection body of Jesus could give us a glimpse of what we will be like. We know that His body had flesh and bones because He said so. We know His body could eat food because He ate with the disciples. His body was apparently capable of moving instantly from one place to another, because Luke 24:31 says that He “vanished” out of sight as he sat with some of his disciples. So all of those details could be true of us as well.

            Some Bible teachers, however, have pushed the word “like” in 1 John 3:2 to an extreme that we just cannot be certain about. Some people have taught that we will all be 33 years old in Heaven because that’s how old Jesus was when He died and rose from the grave, but we really have little reason to teach that with any certainty. We often tend to think that we will be in our 20’s or 30’s in Heaven because we associate those ages with strength and health, but its certainly possible that God could take you with your present body and give it perfect strength and health.

            The bottom line is that we just don’t know how old we will be. Its not a bad question to think about, but it is one for which we just don’t have a definite answer.

            Before we move on, I do want to mention one possibility about our appearance that you may have never heard about—the possibility that our bodies will literally shine. You’ve actually sung about this idea a thousand times, but you probably never thought about it. Have you ever sung the words, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years/bright shining as the sun?” Of course—all of us have! Those lyrics are drawing on a biblical picture that could actually be a literal reality in Heaven.

Consider these words from Daniel 12:2-3—“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.” Now, our first thought may be to think that v. 3 is a metaphor for something else, but consider this—when v. 2 says that those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, we think that will literally happen, don’t we? We call it the Resurrection! But why then should we think v. 3—the very next verse—will not also happen literally?

If this will be true, it will probably be very similar to the way that Moses’ face was said to shine after he spoke to God in the wilderness. Because he had been in the presence of God’s visible glory, his face would shine afterward. In Heaven, since we will be in the presence of God’s glory, our bodies may have the same reaction, causing us to shine.

Will we experience a passing of time? Will life be like one never-ending day?

            For many years, we’ve sung these lyrics: “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound/and time shall be no more.” Those words are from the hymn “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder I’ll Be There.” But is that expression about time entirely accurate? I’m not sure that it is. I think at a minimum we will experience a passing of time in the general sense of before and after, but we may also measure time and keep track of it in some fashion.

            If that is true, we would have to measure time differently than we do today. Today we measure time primarily by the sun and the moon. We measure a day by the rotation of the Earth with respect to the sun; we measure a month by the phases of the moon as we observe it from Earth; and we measure a year by the orbit of the Earth around the sun. When we compare these measurements to the description of the New Heaven and the New Earth, it is very clear that if we measure time there, it will be very different from the way we do it now.

            Rev. 21:25 and 22:5 state clearly that there will be no night on the New Heaven and New Earth. Rev. 21:23 and 22:5 state that we will not need the sun or the moon to provide light for us because light will shine out from God Himself. Thus, it could very well be that there will not be a sun or a moon there.

            And yet, in the description of the tree of life, Rev. 22:2 says that the tree will yield its fruit each month, and a month is obviously a measurement of time. So it could be that we will keep track of time in some fashion in the New Heaven and New Earth.

            If this thought is disappointing to you, let’s consider why we dislike time in the here-and-now. I think the main reason we dislike time is that we’re running out of it in this life, and as time passes it takes with it opportunities to do certain things, like speak to friends and loved ones. But in Heaven, we would never run out of time. Time would actually be like a never-ending supply of opportunities. You could say, “See you later,” to a friend, and it would always be true!

            I think we also dislike time today because we can’t go back and undo things that have happened in the past. But remember, in Heaven, we will not sin and no one will sin against us! We won’t have any need or desire to go back and correct something because we won’t have anything to correct!

            So it could be that we will measure time in some way. It is very difficult to say, however, whether life will be like one never-ending day, or whether we will have some kind of “daily routine” like we have today. It is possible that we may sleep, since Adam and Eve apparently slept even when they still had their perfect bodies, but we must remember that Scripture does say there will be no night in the New Heaven and New Earth, so we apparently will not have a day and night cycle like we do now. We know that we will at least have periods of work and periods of worship, and it seems safe to assume that we will have periods of rest and probably celebration and play as well.

It is hard to say much more about the passing of time in Heaven, but the final stanza of “Amazing Grace” may capture the reality quite well: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years/bright shining as the sun/we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/than when we first begun.”

            I believe we are starting to bring a biblical picture of Heaven into greater focus. If some of these questions seem too “theoretical” to you and not really worthy of our time, let me see if I can explain their value. When we think long and hard about Heaven and what it will be like, it becomes more real to us even if we can’t nail down an exact answer to all of our questions, and as Heaven starts to feel more real to us, we will become increasingly consumed by the thought that we will live there one day! We are reminded that this life is not all there is—there is life after death, and we can get a good understanding of what it will be like.

            If we fail to think about Heaven and what it will be like, there is a danger that it will feel very unreal to us. With the pressures and the stresses of daily life in the here-and-now, we can easily allow ourselves to become absorbed with nothing more than today, which robs us of a healthy, long-term perspective about our lives. As the title of a recent book proclaims, Heaven is for real, and its reality should change our lives today.