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Key Bible Verse: Look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth—so wonderful that no one will even think about the old ones anymore (Isaiah 65:17). Bonus Reading:Revelation 21:10-27

An obvious problem in developing a clear picture of the afterlife is that we work within an earth-bound, space-limited framework. It's in this world that we try to describe what a selfishness-free, environmentally-clean, love-driven, immorality-absent life is like. No wonder we resort to metaphors, images, and stories. These aren't a stealthy way to say that what's described isn't actual, substantial, and true. It's using language as a go-between, drawing on what we know and have experienced as a point of reference to speak about the unknown.

Take heaven. To describe the promised city is to try to tell a three-dimensional person what living in a four-dimensional world is like. To convey the eternal to us who are time-bound calls for imaginative language. Scripture says its streets are paved with gold. Whether gold is the literal paving substance isn't the point. The view of heaven draws on what we see as having enormous economic value. We say in effect, "Heaven is so incredible that what we consider to be rare and of great value here will be plentiful there, and what we give little value to here will be of enormous value there." In short, it will be a world upside down.

—Brian Stiller in What Happens When I Die?

My Response: Does the Bible's fantastic description of heaven frustrate or excite me?

Thought to Apply: Heaven would hardly be heaven if we could define it.—WILLIAM BIEDERWOLF (evangelist)

Adapted from What Happens When I Die? (Piñon, 2001) by permission.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Give me a hint, Lord, of the splendor You've prepared for me when I graduate from this life.

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