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Heaven -- We were made for Planet Earth (Part 4)

by: bonnie alba | published: 08 21, 2010

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“A modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence.... When I heard that I was in the wrong place...my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. I knew now why I could feel homesick at home.” ~~ G. K. Chesterton

Have you ever felt like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” when you’ve been away from home for a time? She wanted to go home where she belonged. When you do return home, there’s relief and a comforting, contented gladness.

We like the Earth, it’s all we know. We mostly think God and Heaven will be different from Earth so we don’t pay much attention to what God says about our future home.

God made man for the perfect Earth. This planet is our home. God made our physical bodies from the soil and then breathed life and soul into us. He will restore the Earth to its created perfect status, only better because God and Christ and Heaven will dwell on the New Earth with his redeemed people and renewed creation.

In his book, Heaven, Author Randy Alcorn noted: “We can say, ‘Heaven will be our eternal home,’ or ‘Earth will be our eternal home,’ but we shouldn’t say ‘Heaven, not Earth, will be our eternal home,’ because the Heaven in which we’ll live will be centered on the New Earth.”

How will our resurrected bodies be different?

For example, Christ “will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” Philippians 3:21. During Christ’s transfiguration, his clothing “became as bright as a flash of lightning” (Luke 9:29).

Our present corrupted bodies and souls will be transformed to perfection and purity. White has always been the symbol of purity. Cleansed of sin and made holy, each person will be dressed in robes of pure white. Jesus said, “The righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43).

John wrote in 1John 3:2, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” Paul wrote, “Just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven” (1Corinthians 15:40 NIV).

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us ... a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.”

Will we retain our five senses?

God’s design for man included the five senses -- seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. If we are to live on the New Earth with God, do you think He would change what He had first created? Adam and Eve’s original senses were probably more acute and vibrant than ours tainted by sin as they are.

Will we still experience emotions?

Did not God create us with emotions? We had them in the beginning but our emotions are distorted by sin now. Made in God’s image, then we will certainly have emotions. Otherwise how could we be glad, rejoice, laugh, take delight in and enjoy God? For God also has emotions.

In his book Future Grace, John Piper wrote, “What happens to our bodies and what happens to the creation go together. And what happens to our bodies is not annihilation but redemption.... Our bodies will be redeemed, restored, made new, not thrown away. And so it is with the heavens and the earth.”

As for individual uniqueness, our personalities, temperaments, abilities and talents, God’s plans for us involve the wonders of an eternity that we cannot yet imagine.

Christians walk as aliens and strangers in man’s corrupt world system which is hostile to God. Yet we can’t imagine living anywhere else except on God’s Green Earth. Besides loved ones, people say they will miss much on earth when they depart -- flowers, trees, snow-capped mountains and valleys, rivers, water falls, fields bright with wild flowers, blue skies, and much more. Then teach them that they will see them again.

Let us never forget “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). Forever.

[My hope: that this Heaven series has opened your hearts and minds to the incredible eternal life with God that awaits those who belong to Jesus Christ.]