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It was over a year ago that I posted this about whether or not Christians go to heaven when we die, or if we don’t simply enjoy a perfect regenerate creation for the rest of eternity.
But then the other day I was reading this blog and was pointed towards this free book about how to speak to Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The author of the free book (which in general is very good) points out one of the key important differences between Christians and Jehovah’s Witnesses:
Heaven. The home of God. The majority of believers will not spend eternity with God in heaven, but rather with Jesus on a refurbished earth.
Now, like I say, the book itself is good so I’m not picking apart the author’s theology or anything…but I’m not actually sure that the Bible says that we’ll spend eternity with God in heaven, I think it suggests that all believers will live on this ‘refurbished earth’ for eternity.
Here’s my deal. I don’t think the whole ‘heaven vs. new earth’ thing is a massive deal, but I do think that Christians should know what they believe rather than basically guess (i.e. saying ‘I’m going to heaven when I die’ is basically people just repeating something they’ve heard rather than developing a theology from the Bible).
The Jehovah’s Witnesses conclusion around this (that 144,000 stay in heaven with God while the rest stay on a refurbished earth) is absolute rubbish made up by a guy with a significant number of screws loose, but I’m not convinced that the widely believed ‘Christians go to heaven’ doctrine is actually biblical either.
Summary: on this particular doctrine I don’t think it’s that important to get the details right, it’s not like we’ve missed out on Jesus being the Son of God or something. But not understanding something like this really opens the door to heretics like the Jehovah’s Witnesses to show us bits of the Bible which suggest that actually we do stay on earth for eternity. And that brings up that silly little thought: ‘if they’re right about that, perhaps they’re right about something else’.
