Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10062. What will we do in heaven? I suspect the reason so many Christians secretly dread the question is that the picture they inherited involves an endless church service with no coffee afterwards. Somewhere between medieval art and Victorian hymnody we acquired the notion of clouds, harps and a permanent expression of mild vacancy….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10061. Will we recognise each other in heaven? I am asked this at gravesides more than anywhere else, usually by someone who has just watched a coffin lowered and needs to know whether the person they loved is gone from them for good. It is not an idle question about the furniture of eternity….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10060. The new earth is where the Bible actually ends, and I think that surprises a great many Christians. We have been handed a picture of eternity that involves clouds, harps and disembodied souls drifting about in a permanent hush, and then we open Revelation 21 and find a city, a river, trees, nations,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10059. Universalism is the belief that in the end every human being will be saved, so that hell is either empty, temporary, or non-existent, and all people are finally reconciled to God. It is an appealing idea, and I understand its pull, for who would not wish it were true? But wishing does not…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10058. Annihilationism is the view that the lost are not punished for ever but are finally destroyed and cease to exist altogether, so that hell ends in extinction rather than in unending conscious suffering. It is also called conditional immortality, since it holds that immortality is a gift given only to the saved. I…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10057. Is hell eternal? I believe the Bible teaches that eternal punishment is real and truly unending, and I hold that conviction with sorrow rather than satisfaction, because it is one of the hardest truths in all of Scripture. Many sincere Christians wrestle with it, and I understand why, for the thought of unending…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10056. Hell is the final place of conscious, righteous punishment for those who die apart from Christ, the lake of fire into which the unsaved are cast after the last judgment. I do not enjoy teaching on hell, and any preacher who does has something wrong with him, but I dare not soften what…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10055. Heaven is the dwelling place of God, the present home of believers who have died, and the sure hope of every soul who trusts in Jesus. When people ask me about it, I find they often carry a thin, cloudy picture in their heads, all harps and idleness and drifting spirits, which owes…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10054. The Great White Throne is the final judgment of the unsaved dead, described in Revelation 20, when they stand before God at the end of the millennium to be judged by their works and consigned to the lake of fire. It is the most solemn scene in all of Scripture, and I never…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10053. The Holy Spirit is deeply and actively at work all through the end times, restraining evil, drawing sinners to Christ, and empowering bold witness right up to the return of the King. People often imagine that Bible prophecy is really all about the Antichrist and the beast and the various judgements, and so…