Do you ever think about eternity? I do, a great deal — not because I am morbid, and not only because I am getting older. It is the work. A large part of what I do is sit with people after the doctor's report comes back, and then through whatever that report turns out to mean. Once in a while I am in the room as somebody takes a final breath and slips over into the next life. Being let into that narrowing circle is a high and holy privilege, and I have never taken it lightly.
Sometimes at a memorial service I look out and say: pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but one day every person in this room will be the one everybody has come for. And in that moment, when you breathe your last and step out into eternity, it seems to me one of three things happens.
The first is nothing. The heart stops, the lungs stop, the brain goes quiet, and you begin to decompose — fertilizer for the daisies and food for the worms.
The second is that the Eastern mystics have it right and it all runs on karma — how much good you accumulated, how much bad you burned off — and back you come as a bug, a bulldog or a Baptist, depending which way it is flowing that day. I love my Baptist brothers. I use them for a punchline because they can take it.
The third is what the Bible teaches. The moment you stop breathing the atmosphere of this earth, you stand before the one who made you and give an account of your life. That is my sure and certain hope. Everybody lives forever. The only question is location, location, location.
Why this is not academic today
Two weeks ago I got word that Dan Feltham had lost a courageous two-year fight with leukemia. Dan and I grew up together. My family moved to Birmingham when I was ten; our house sat at the bottom of the hill and his three doors up the other side of the cul-de-sac. Same classes, same teams. He was five months older than I am, to the day, and I never once let him forget it. We were president and vice president of our sixth grade class. Hold your applause.
We lost touch for a while after college. Then, when I came home from the hospital in May of 1999, the first of my old friends to walk through the door was Dan Feltham. I have never met a finer human being. When he breathed his last two weeks ago, I knew exactly where he was.
So this is not an abstract theological topic for me this morning. It is so real I can taste it.
Death is a reality, but not a finality
The Onion ran a headline years ago: World Death Rate Holding Steady at 100 Percent. Funny, and true — nobody gets out of here alive.
I hate death. With every fiber of my being I hate it, and I hate what it has cost so many of you. So did Jesus. But it is a defeated enemy. The last enemy to be destroyed is death — when Jesus rose he took its power into himself and broke it for good. It does not get the last word.
So we all become angels, then, issued wings and a harp and a fluffy white cloud, and we sit around playing soft jazz forever? No. Can you think of anything more boring, or less biblical? Our bodies stay behind and our souls return to the one who made us, and those justified by grace through faith in Christ are received straight into his presence. We are not disembodied spirits in the world to come, as one old theologian put it, but redeemed spirits in redeemed bodies in a redeemed universe.
Heaven is a way station, not a final destination
That one surprises people. But read Revelation 21 again. I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. The first heaven — where those who have gone before us in Christ are now — was never built to last. Jesus said it plainly: heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not.
Randy Alcorn puts it this way. You are flying from Miami to Los Angeles with a layover in Dallas. You do not tell people you are going to Dallas. You say you are going to L.A., and mention there is a stop on the way. That first heaven is the layover — a great deal nicer than the Dallas airport, I promise you, but not the destination.
Earth shall be perfected, not rejected
This earth is not headed for the trash. It is going to be made new, and we will recognize it. I have lived in South Florida forty-seven years, and I have often wished I could have seen this place five hundred years ago, before Ponce de León ever set foot on the peninsula. Now imagine Miami without the traffic and the wall-to-wall concrete. Without the mosquitoes. Without the hurricanes. Without the man in the left-hand lane, texting. And every beautiful place you ever stood and thought I would give anything to come back here — you will. I want to see the Serengeti again, and Cotopaxi, and Machu Picchu, and the Galápagos. I will not make it in this life. I am going to see them.
People ask me whether there will be animals, and I think there will — because Eden was earth as God intended it, and God put animals in it and told his image bearers to look after them. Isaiah says the wolf and the lamb will graze together. And my wife, a serious equestrian in her day, points out that when Jesus returns in Revelation 19 he is riding a white horse. He has to get that horse somewhere.
Where it lands
The new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven adorned like a bride on her wedding day, and God is not only the architect and builder of that city — he moves into it himself. So if you are grieving this morning, or if you have begun to sense that your own day may not be far off, hold on to what he says. He will wipe away every tear from your eyes. No more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain. The old things are gone. Everything is made new.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
