What is heaven like? Here’s what the Bible says
Jesus said to his disciples: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.
– The Gospel of Saint Mark, 16:15-20
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EFORE the headline topic, let us please echo to family, friends and social media, especially in rich nations, this controversial, painful, but righteous and urgent life-and-death appeal from World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
He pleaded last Friday on behalf of low-income nations, which have received a catastrophically immoral 0.3 percent of the nearly 1.4 billion doses of coronavirus disease 2019 or Covid-19 vaccines delivered worldwide:
“In January, I spoke about the potential unfolding of a moral catastrophe. Unfortunately, we are now witnessing this play out.
“In a handful of rich countries, which bought up the majority of the vaccine supply, lower risk groups are now being vaccinated.
“I understand why some countries want to vaccinate their children and adolescents [who face far less risk of Covid illness and death than health workers, elders and adults], but right now I urge them to reconsider and to instead donate vaccines to Covax [the WHO-led program to provide life-saving jabs to poor nations].
“Because in low and lowermiddle income countries, vaccine supply has not been enough to even immunize health and care workers, and hospitals are being inundated with people that need life-saving care urgently.”
To repeat, those of us with family, friends and colleagues in rich nations should urge them to press their national leaders to heed the WHO chief’s appeal. And let’s fill social media with shares and endorsements of Dr. Ghebreyesus’s rightful and lifesaving plea (https://www.who. int/director-general/speeches/detail/director-general-s-openingremarks-at-the-media-briefingon-covid-19-14-may-2021). Immunizing first those at much greater risk of grave illness and death, especially nurses and doctors risking their lives to fight the deadly Covid threat facing us all — that is the global act of godliness demanded today.
Heaven on earth
Now, in truth, would hundreds of millions of parents in the rich world agree to delay immunizing their children, so that those facing immensely greater threat of grave illness death in poor nations, including medical personnel, seniors and people compromised by existing ailments, could get jabbed first?
And would we even take the chance of getting into arguments with kith, kin and social media hordes in the West and other wealthy regions by echoing the call of Director-General Ghebreyesus?
If the answer to both questions were yes, then that’s what heaven would be like.
Not that the afterlife with the Almighty would have pandemics to get vaccinated for. No, heaven is free from earthly frailties and suffering. Rather, every being there would be one with the love that is God Himself. No selfishness, just self-giving.
So, if one wants to feel what heaven is like, the best way is to follow Jesus’s commandment to love one another as he loved us. And one sure way to partake of that love is spelled out in today’s Ascension Sunday Mass reading from the Gospel of St. Mark, quoted above.
Follow Jesus’s command before he left this world: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” Then one would partake of heavenly powers, from casting out demons and communicating with people of different cultures, to being protected by God from earthly peril.
For sure, there would be suffering, danger, and even death for those who believe and obey Christ. After all, he did call on his disciples to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow him. He also warned that the world would reject them just as he was rejected.
But in their preaching and suffering, “the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word with accompanying signs.”
And there’s more heavenly than knowing God Himself is with us, making sure that what we do bears fruit and what we preach is truth.
Earth in heaven
avoids heavily symbolic or allegorical interpretations of the texts.
Alcorn argues that there is an interim heaven where the souls of the faithful departed go. Then, at the Second Coming of Christ, as prophesied in the Book of Revelation (Rev 21:1), there shall be “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”
Interpreting Revelation 6:9-11, Alcorn describes how the souls in the present or interim heaven are: they carry their earthly consciousness and memories into the next life, they have thoughts and feelings, and they are Okay, so that’s heaven on earth. But still in time and space, see and care what about heaven itself? What is about what’s going on here on earth.
the afterlife like, going by the Bible? “We are one family with those Preacher and Scripture scholar Randy who’ve gone to Heaven ahead of Alcorn has written books precisely us,” Alcorn sums up. “After we go on what heaven is like, based on the to Heaven, we’ll still be one family inspired Word of God that is the Bible. with those yet on Earth.”
“Heaven: A Comprehensive Guide And what unites us all and constitutes to Everything the Bible Says About heaven, as we said earlier, Our Eternal Home” is Alcorn’s seminal is the love that is God. tome. His overarching thesis, May we all find Him in this based on a reading of Scripture that and the next. Amen. life