Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 6

Recently two of our EPM staff and Randy had a delightful visit with a man and his two daughters who flew out from the Midwest to Oregon. Randy had previously shared about Jerry, and how he has given away literally thousands of the Heaven booklets, in this blog. (If you missed that one, be sure to go back and read about Jerry’s incredible ministry sharing the hope of Heaven.)

It was a joy to be with Jerry and Verlena and Valyssa. Honestly, we can’t imagine three more delightful people! It was a pleasure to meet and spend time with them. We thank God for all three of them and their families.

Here’s a video that Valyssa put together about their visit. It’s a preview of the delights of the New Earth, where there will be countless gatherings of God’s people, full of laughter and stories:

 
 
 

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A post shared by Valyssa (melissa with a V) (@sunsetssistersandsweettea)

We wish Randy and our staff were able to spend face-to-face time with every reader who contacts our ministry! But like all of you experience, our time on this present earth is limited. Randy writes, “I look forward to long, leisurely, and uninterrupted conversations on the New Earth! I want to hear a few million new stories from God’s people. One at a time, of course, and spread out over thousands of years. I imagine we’ll relish these great conversations, ask questions, laugh together, and shake our heads in amazement at God’s faithfulness and goodness.”

My mom grew up in the Dalles, Oregon, and worked at Charles F. Berg clothing store in Portland, and then became a full-time mom for me and my brother Lance. (This picture is from her days as a model for the store; one of my favorite photographs of her.)

I can’t imagine having had a better mom. I’ve been working on a book about animals and the New Earth, and one of the childhood memories that’s come to me involves the chameleons I would win each year as a boy at the county fair and proudly bring home. I also remember the warm smile on my mom’s face as she somehow avoided eye-rolling. (Part of what made her, in my book, the greatest mother ever.)

My mom was one of the closest friends I've ever had. She came to Christ a year after I did. We grew together, reading and discussing Scripture and great books, praying and laughing together. Mom encouraged me in everything, including in my service as a pastor (she was part of our church) and my article-writing (it was years later I wrote my first book, in 1985). Mom died in 1981, only four months after our daughter Angela was born, and when our daughter Karina was two and a half. Every Monday my mom had Karina stay with her for the day and they were extremely close.

When my mom died, I mourned my loss, my wife’s, and above all my children’s. I felt like part of me had been taken away. That’s not an uncommon experience for those who’ve lost a parent. Afterall, grief is the price of love.

And now, Nanci, my soulmate and the mother of our daughters Karina and Angela, is in the presence of Jesus, so they too are missing the mom they love so dearly.

For those who know Christ, our relationship cannot be terminated, only interrupted. (Angela shared some wonderful reflections about her mom two years ago on my blog, about how this is just a brief interruption in their relationship.) What will eventually follow—whether in hours, days, years, or decades—is a great reunion, wonderful beyond imagination. I can't wait to see my mom, and Nanci, again in the presence of Jesus.

I realize there are some who had difficult relationships with their moms, or who are unsure whether their mom trusted in Christ for salvation. Scripture says, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD [Yahweh] will receive me” (Psalm 27:10). Whether though abandonment or death, we may experience separation from our parents; but we can never lose the steadfast love and presence of our Heavenly Father. God’s love—the love of a perfect parent—is our greatest comfort in grief.

Last year, I was interviewed by GriefShare (a ministry we recommend) about my mom’s death and the grief process, for a video called “Remembering Mom.” They interviewed a number of people whose moms have died. One person shared about his difficult grief process, but said, “I learned to be OK with the story God wrote for my mom’s life.” Another said, “Our loved one will always be a part of our life.” So true.

Here’s a preview of “Remembering Mom”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xggXzEDNbP4?si=OGz0Or5OaHq-JVxt

You can watch the entire 30-minute video on GriefShare, and it’s well worth your time.

(My booklet Grieving with Hope was born out of what I’ve learned over the years about grief, and especially during the last three years since Nanci relocated to Heaven.)

We grasp the horror of human evil only when we focus on God’s standards and on the atonement necessary to satisfy them.

Anything that violates God’s nature is evil. Sin is not merely a minor deviation from a negotiable standard. It is, in the eyes of a holy God and the holy angels who serve Him, a despicable aberration from God’s nature.

The clearest indication of our evil’s depth is what it cost to redeem us. Some talk as if God’s bighearted love for us is sufficient to save us. But the problem of how to reconcile evil people with a God who hates evil is the greatest problem of history. It calls for no less than the greatest solution ever devised, one so radical as to be nearly unthinkable, and to offend the sensibilities of countless people throughout history.

Since evil offends God’s nature, the true test of good and evil is how God sees it. Simply serving our desired ends does not make something good; neither does causing our unhappiness make something evil.

So many human cultures agree on basic issues of right and wrong because, as His image-bearers, our consciences can give us insight (see Romans 2:15). But as finite and fallen creatures, our consciences can be misguided and weak (see 1 Corinthians 4:4; 8:7), and even seared and corrupted (see 1 Timothy 4:2; Titus 1:15). We must rely on God’s self-revelation in His Word to know His character and His commandments, and to recognize both good and evil.

God’s holiness carries exceedingly high demands. As a single, unified God, He cannot exercise one attribute in disregard of (let alone in opposition to) another. Therefore the omnipotent God could not save us while leaving his holiness unsatisfied.

If redemption could be purchased at a lower cost, surely God would have chosen it. I think Jesus explored this possibility when He fell to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done” (Matthew 26:42). Luke adds, “And being in anguish, he [Jesus] prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (22:44).

We may feel tempted to underestimate the horrors of the Cross, because to recognize them is to admit that our monstrous evil demanded a price so horrific. To make light of our sin is to make light of Christ’s cross.

A reader asked me this question:

I read your article about the dimensions of the New Jerusalem being literal, and appreciated your reasoning. I would also appreciate hearing your understanding of Revelation 21:9-10: “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”

The angel promised John to show him the bride, the wife of the Lamb, but instead, he showed him the Holy City, the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven. Do you think “the bride” already occupied the “New Jerusalem”? Reflect on my illustration: “Come outside, and I will show you the bride of my son.” Once you are in the driveway, I point to a red Ferrari with ribbons on the windows and flowers under the wipers.

A volunteer for our ministry and I addressed a similar question in Why Do You Say the Bride of Christ Is the Church?

As I say in that article, a people and a place are often identified virtually interchangeably, both in the Bible and in modern culture. e.g. Jerusalem or Babylon or Portland are used in the sense of a place, and also a people (“Jerusalem suffered at the hands of Babylon,” or “Portland is a liberal city”).

So is the bride of Christ the church, which is made up of people, or is it the New Jerusalem, a place where people will live? The answer is both. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. People, and the place where those people dwell, are inseparably linked. That’s even true of God and Heaven. The prodigal son said, “I have sinned against Heaven.” Of course, that was the same as saying, “I have sinned against God.”

It is a false assumption that the bride of Christ must be either the church (God’s people) or the New Jerusalem. In fact, according to Scripture, it is both.

The person who asked me this question quoted Revelation 21:9-10. Consider these earlier verses from that same chapter:

I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying:

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man,

and He will dwell with them.

They will be His people,

and God Himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21:2-3)

We are told of the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven, and then immediately it says that God will dwell with His people. So again, the place and the people are inseparably linked.

Not only Jerusalem but also Israel is a people and a place. If you say it's only one of those, you miss a great deal. Similarly, we talk of churches located in Chicago or San Diego, and we can't help but envision the place they meet because they are embodied.

Is my home church, Good Shepherd Community Church, a people or a place? A people, but if you ignore the reality of the place we meet and say we are only people, you get a vague concept of our church. Sure, they are primarily a people, and if we met at another location, we would still be Good Shepherd. Yet memories are inextricably linked to places, and if you've met at one particular place for many years, that place becomes important. My memories of Good Shepherd are of people, but I see those people in my mind's eye first in the Norquist basement, second the Orient Grange Hall, third Barlow High School, fourth the original sanctuary, and fifth the current one. The people are the church, and yet where you were sent to classes and heard the Word and were baptized and married are never irrelevant.

The New Jerusalem will be about the bridegroom first, and then the bride—but the place they will live together forever will be the most important place there has ever been or ever will be. 

I’ve heard people emphasize that when it comes to victory over sin, that it’s all about Jesus. Then they say it’s not about our effort; rather, it’s all about what Jesus does for us. But there’s a problem. When we read the Bible, we see that God actually does tell us to do things.

Yes, nothing we can do can earn our salvation. And certainly, our greatest need is to love Jesus, and to call upon the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to obey Him.

But God’s Word never says, “Since you’re a sinner, there’s no reason to expend effort to gain victory over sin.” On the contrary, Paul says, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29).

Consider what God tells us in 2 Peter 1:3 about God’s part and our part in the Christian life. Our part is secondary, but that doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

If God has given us everything we need, there’s nothing left for us to do, right? Well, to get to know Him better we must study His Word, gather with His people, pray, ask for His enlightenment and empowerment, and develop the habit of obedience. Even though we will fall, we are to confess and repent and call upon Him for help. Verse four says: “Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

God gave us His promises to help us become more like Him and say no to our evil desires. Does this mean we are to do nothing to resist these desires? On the contrary, He says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). Does it take effort to put sin to death?  Of course! Putting on the full armor of God and taking our stand struggling against the powers of darkness (Ephesians 6:10-18) requires effort, doesn’t it?

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-8)

If you believe Christ automatically does everything to make the Christian life happen, how do you understand “make every effort”? There is no such thing as a passive Christian life. The passive soldier is an easy target.

The good news is that God makes His resurrection power available to us to walk in victory over sin. Unfortunately, many people think of this as automatic and do not take aggressive efforts to guard themselves.  

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’” (Matthew 16:24). It takes a lot of work to deny ourselves, take up a cross of self-sacrifice, and move our feet to follow Jesus! We should call upon Jesus and the Holy Spirit to empower us to do that work. “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe” (Proverbs 18:10). So God gives us the strength, but we are to run to Him to find safety!

The Christian life is not a choice between loving and trusting Jesus, and making an effort to avoid temptation and sin. It is not either/or—it is both/and. 

I’ve seen a few things about astronaut Butch Wilmore, who was stuck in space for nine months and recently returned to earth, and it appears he is a sincere and committed follower of Jesus. In this video, filmed while he was still in space, he talked about his faith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7Wv7urHiLA?si=Ps_5oeci0TpQd46w

And this post shares how church remained a priority for Butch even while he was in space:

During his unplanned nine-month stay aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore didn’t just help with spacewalks and science experiments—he also made it a point to attend church every week. From space.⁠
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In his first public comments since returning to Earth, Wilmore shared why worship was still a non-negotiable, even in orbit.⁠
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“The Word of God—I need it,” Wilmore said. “My pastors are the finest pastors on or off, in this case, the planet. And to tie in and to worship with my church family was vital. I mean, it’s part of what makes me go.”⁠
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He didn’t just stream one service at his home church. He tuned in to multiple services each week, including Grace Baptist Church in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, where a friend of his serves as a pastor.⁠
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“I would watch their service as well every single week,” he said. “It was invigorating. It was part of what I need as a believer in Jesus Christ to continue that focus.”⁠
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Being physically cut off from his church community didn’t lessen the need for spiritual connection. If anything, it heightened it.⁠
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“It assisted me day in and day out because I need that fellowship, even though it’s fellowship from afar,” Wilmore said. “It’s not like being in fellowship up close, but still—I needed it.”⁠
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Space may be the final frontier, but apparently, not even that can keep a believer from church on Sunday.

Last year I had the pleasure of getting to know another astronaut, Shane Kimbrough, who also loves Jesus. (You can view Shane’s Instagram, where he shows some incredible photos and videos he’s taken in space, like this one.) We spoke together at a gathering for illumiNations, a collaboration between a dozen or so Bible translation agencies to help provide God’s Word in every language in our lifetime. Shane and I were asked to have a joint conversation with Bobby Gruenewald (founder of the YouVersion Bible app). The brother who set up our session together said to me, “Shane is a guy who’s been to the heavens, and you’re a guy who’s written about Heaven, so let’s put you together.” We had a great time talking about the New Earth, the view from space, and more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFbDBjGOcqU?si=vKlo923HZbTG5pqm

Astronaut photos credit: Wikimedia Commons (NASA/Bill Stafford)

I’ve known Christian parents who wish their teenagers wouldn’t watch R-rated movies, wish their daughters wouldn’t wear suggestive swimsuits and prom dresses, and wish their sons wouldn’t tell dirty jokes, put certain posters on their walls, or listen to music that glorifies immorality. We must stop wishing and start acting! God does not give us responsibility without corresponding authority.

“But I don’t want my children to think I don’t trust them.” Trust is important, but it is never unrealistic. Some parents trust their teenagers in situations I wouldn’t trust myself in. You can trust your fourteen-year-old to his level of maturity and life skills. But that doesn’t mean you would trust him to fly the space shuttle or have a smart phone with unrestricted internet access. Some things he’s not yet ready for.

A young man from another state once met one of my daughters at a sports camp. Because we had one family email address, his emails to my daughter came to me. I sat down with her, though she had done nothing wrong, to tell her I felt she needed to stop receiving emails from him.

She started crying. I felt terrible, because I really did trust her, but based on some of what he wrote, I didn’t trust him. Soon I was crying, too. Finally I squeezed her hand and walked away, feeling like a lousy dad.

Just then I felt my daughter’s hand on my shoulder. I turned and she hugged me, still in tears. Then she whispered words I’ve never forgotten: “Thank you for protecting me, Daddy.”

I wonder how many dads have failed to protect their daughters and sons because they craved their approval. When speaking on sexual purity, I once asked a class of 125 Christian college students, “Looking back, how many of you wish your parents had given you less freedom in your high school years to go where you wanted to and hang out with whomever you wanted to?” Over 100 hands shot up.

Children will despise and resent parents who just want to be their friends, even dressing and acting like them. Your children already have friends. They need you to be what only you can be—their parent.

Mark 5:1–20 speaks powerfully of an angry, alienated, and lonely man, driven to despair at the hands of evil spirits. This ancient story captures the emptiness and desperation of countless people today.

“This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him.... He tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.”

The man inflicted punishment on himself, as many in our culture do emo­tionally, and some physically, including cutting themselves.

When Jesus saw him, He said, “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!”

Christ addressed one demon who had a legion of demons under him. This lead demon, realizing Christ’s authority, begged Jesus to cast them into a herd of pigs. “He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.”

A crowd gathered around Jesus and saw the formerly possessed man “sitting there, dressed and in his right mind.” Jesus told him, “Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” Mark writes, “So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.”

This story reveals much about demons, people, and Jesus. Demons oppress, attack, and possess people, sometimes empowering them to do evil, always doing them great harm. They prompt people to hurt themselves and inflict evil and suffering on God’s image-bearers. Perhaps this is the closest demons can come to avenging God for casting them out of Heaven because of their sin. Demons recognize Christ’s absolute authority over them. Jesus commands them at will, and in loving mercy delivers a man from his miserable life.

This extreme case is relevant to all of us. In cultures where everyone realizes there’s a supernatural world, demons make themselves known as false gods to intimidate people, demanding worship and exacting retribution. In modern Western cultures where people routinely deny the supernatural, demons often accomplish their purposes more effectively by flying under the radar and working covertly. If we had eyes to see, we’d realize that all around us, fallen humans become the unwitting tools of evil spirits, harming themselves and others, and living wretched lives, sometimes quietly under the facade of social respectability.

Jesus loves afflicted people and went to the cross to deliver us, freeing us from the evil and suffering inflicted upon us by demons and ourselves. In delivering that desperate man, He gives hope to us all, showing us a picture of the total and final deliverance of His people from the powers of evil.

When Jesus rescued him from evil spirits, the man was at last “in his right mind,” thinking clearly. Jesus transformed him. The delivered man overflowed with gratitude, as should all who know Christ’s grace. To embrace Jesus as our redeemer is to be delivered from considerable evil and suffering now, and eventually from all evil and suffering. Jesus liberates us and calls us to testify to others of His mercy and power to defeat evil and relieve suffering.

I was very touched by this thoughtful and humble letter that a reader named Mark sent us, which we’re sharing with his permission:

Dear Mr. Alcorn,

I’m writing to thank you for writing the book Heaven. 

I was born and raised in a pretty strict Southern Baptist home. My earliest memories were being in church or attending a church function as my parents and grandparents are born again Christians. I learned early in life that being saved by the blood of Jesus and repenting your sins, asking Him to be my savior was the only way to Heaven and the alternative was Hell. I didn’t want to go to Hell. At 15 years of age, I accepted Christ to be my personal savior. All the years attending church, listening to sermons and Sunday school classes, attending large groups or small groups—I learned about the different events that took place that we read in the Bible, but I honestly can say that I’ve never learned anything about Heaven other than it will be magnificent and Hell will be horrible. I must embarrassingly admit that I was one of those people who wondered what we would be doing in Heaven for eternity. I would think, are we going to be floating on a cloud, playing harps, and singing Kumbaya all day?

I’m embarrassed to say, I just don’t read that well. And when I try to read, I get distracted easily and read a paragraph and not know what I just read. Because of this, I haven’t read a book in several decades. I honestly can’t remember the last time I read a book from cover to cover. I struggle with reading the Bible and understanding what God is trying to teach, or understand parables. My desire to learn of late led me to purchase an NIrV Edition Bible. Even though it’s a third-grade level Bible, it has helped me tremendously in understanding what I’ve just read. My wife is a great reader and loves the Lord, and has followed Jack Hibbs for several years now. During one of his Sunday morning sermons, he promoted your book. My wife, Dana, ordered the book and talked about it. 

I had so many questions about Heaven and was too embarrassed to admit that when the book arrived, I really wanted to start reading it. Once I started, I didn’t want to put it down. It took me a few weeks to read the entire book and at times I must admit, I’d check your Bible references to make sure you knew what you were talking about. There were times I would laugh at some of the things you wrote that were funny and several times I found myself in tears as I was seriously convicted (and I’m not an emotional person). I read your book from cover to cover and enjoyed and understood every page. It has made me excited about Heaven and what awaits us, what’s been promised to us. I have told several people about your book, including my sisters, sisters-in-law, my mother, my mother-in-law, my brother, and friends. It has changed my perspective, and I want to share even more.

Thank you again, sir, for this book. I doubt I will ever meet you on this earth, but someday I look forward to meeting you on the New Earth and shaking your hand and thanking you in person.

I replied to Mark: No need to apologize at all for anything. Good for you that you persevered to read a book that you knew would be challenging, but you read it anyway and profited from it. You’re very welcome for the Heaven book—it was a lot of work, but it was my pleasure to serve the body of Christ and people like you. God bless you. I couldn’t be happier for you, brother, and I thank you for your kind letter. I look forward to meeting you in a far better world. Let’s have a good talk then! 

“A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have,” Jesus told His fearful disciples after His resurrection (Luke 24:39). Yet countless Christians imagine themselves as ghosts, disembodied spirits, in the eternal Heaven. The magnificent, cosmos-shaking victory of Christ’s resurrection—by definition a physical triumph over physical death in a physical world—somehow escapes them.

If Jesus had become a ghost and did not physically rise from the dead, He would not have accomplished our redemption. When Jesus lived in His resurrection body, He demonstrated, in mostly normal ways—walking and eating and drinking and talking—how we would live as resurrected human beings. He also demonstrated where we would live—on Earth, where He lived for forty days after He rose.

“The Lord Jesus Christ... will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20–2 1). As Jesus rose again and lived in a physical body on Earth, so we too, in bodies like His, will rise again to live on a renewed Earth (see 1 Thessalonians 4:14; 1 John 3:2; Revelation 21:1–3).

On the cross Christ paid the qualitatively eternal punishment for our sins. Because He, due to His redemptive work, is forever scarred in His resurrection body (John 20:25–29), we will forever be without scars in ours.

Our bodily resurrection will return us to an earthly life, this time freed from sin and the Curse. Our resurrected bodies will have some essential connection to the bodies God created for us here, but will be flawless (see 1 Corinthians 15:49). We know the resurrected Christ looked like a man because Mary, in the morning dimness, through her tears mistook Him for the gardener at the tomb and called Him sir (see John 20:15). Jesus, in His raised body, didn’t hover or float. He started a fire, cooked fish for His disciples, and said, “Come and have breakfast” (John 21:12).

One day Christ appeared in a locked room where the disciples had gathered (see John 20:19). They could touch Him and cling to His body, and He could consume food; yet that same body could vanish and “materialize” as well. Might the molecules of our own resurrection bodies pass through what we think of as solid materials? We don’t know yet, but won’t it be fun to find out?

The wonders of our resurrected bodies and our future lives on the New Earth await us. But as we enjoy them, day after day, surely we’ll look back to this life with profound gratitude for how God used everything, even evil and suffering, to prepare us for our eternal home.