Tag Archives: Bible

The Meaning of “Heaven” in the Bible

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Today Baker Academic uploaded my second weekly blog post in their series “Beyond the Book.” Each week during March I will be discussing something I learned about eschatology while working on A New Heaven and a New Earth; in each case, it will be a topic I haven’t explicitly blogged about before.

My first post, Preparation in Heaven for Revelation on Earth – The “Apocalyptic” Pattern, focused on the underlying pattern I came to discern in many “heaven” passages in the New Testament that seem to be associated with the Christian hope.

My second post, The Meaning of “Heaven” in the Bible, explains that “heaven” is not thought of in the Bible as an immaterial, uncreated realm; this is a later theological construct. I didn’t address this explicitly anywhere in my eschatology book, but it is implicit throughout, and requires some comment.

Due to the need to keep these “Beyond the Book” posts short, I’ve omitted much that needs to be said on this topic. Hopefully, the post will generate some questions, even challenges, to my claims, which will allow me to get into some of the important related questions that I had to omit.

Baker is giving away three copies of A New Heaven and a New Earth. The winners will be announced at the end of March and you can sign up for a copy here.

Preparation in Heaven for Revelation on Earth – The “Apocalyptic” Pattern

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Today Baker Academic began their weekly series of blog posts “Beyond the Book.” Each week during March I will be discussing interesting things I learned about eschatology while working on A New Heaven and a New Earth. My first post, Preparation in Heaven for Revelation on Earth – The “Apocalyptic” Pattern, focuses on how I have come to interpret the many “heaven” passages in the New Testament, which seem to be associated with the Christian hope.

This is a very short post, which just scratches the surface of the topic. The full discussion can be found in chapter 10 of my eschatology book.

Also, as part of this series Baker is giving away three copies of A New Heaven and a New Earth. The winners will be announced at the end of the month, and you can enter here.

Baker Academic Blog “Beyond the Book”

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Baker Academic Press, the publisher of my eschatology book, A New Heaven and a New Earth, is starting a new blog series called “Beyond the Book,” where authors are asked to reflect (in short blog posts) on aspects of the topic of their book. I’ve been asked to contribute the first set of blogs, one per week during the month of March, starting Monday.

My four posts will address interesting things I learned about biblical eschatology during the writing of the book, things that I had not previously known (these will be topics I have not previously blogged about). Each of the four topics I will write about illumine an important aspect of the biblical worldview, which turns out to be quite different from what many modern Christians assume.

The publisher is giving away free copies of A New Heaven and a New Earth in connection with this blog series; you can sign up to win a free copy here.

I’ll make sure to link my posts from that website to this one once they appear.