“Heaven in the Bible is nowhere the destination of the dying.” — Cambridge biblical scholar J.A.T. Robinson
“No Bible text authorizes the statement that the soul is separated from the body at death.” — The celebrated Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Vol. 1, p. 803)
Why do we Christians talk such nonsense about our Christian destiny? On every hand we hear talk of “going to heaven when you die,” “gaining kingdoms in the sky,” and “passing away,” “passing on” or “going home” at death. With all this familiar language we comfort ourselves with the belief that the dead have departed to be with God, in conscious bliss, in His supercelestial realm. We hope to survive death and join them there.
Pause a moment and ask yourself reflectively:
Where does all this “departure to heaven at death” language come from? Certainly not from the Bible.
What, for example, did the heroic prophet Daniel expect at death? The angel told him: “Go your way to the end of your life; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age” (Daniel 12:13).
Death for Daniel was to be a rest in the dust of the ground (see Daniel 12:2, where the same divine messenger described the condition of the dead as “sleeping in the earth”) followed by a rising, that is, resurrection “at the end of the age.” There is no word here about Daniel’s soul going to heaven to be conscious in heavenly bliss. Instead Daniel was to repose in death and eventually, at the end of the age, to arise to new life. But for what purpose? “You shall rise again for your allotted portion” (Daniel 12:13). So the angel described the hope of the faithful. What, then, was Daniel to expect?
The standard Lexicon of the Hebrew Bible[1] tells us that the “allotted portion” expected by Daniel was “a share in the Messianic consummation,” the glories of which had been extolled by all the Hebrew prophets. The Messiah’s kingdom was indeed to be set up upon the earth, “under the whole heaven,” in the words of a vision granted earlier to Daniel (7:27). The promise was that “the sovereignty, the dominion and the greatness of all the kingdoms under the whole heaven [would be] given to the people of the saints of the Highest One” (Dan. 7:27). Those faithful would then rule supreme in the renewed earth in company with the Messiah.
Inheriting the Earth
From Jewish literature, both biblical and extrabiblical, we see how this passionate hope for a part in the Messianic Kingdom on earth burned within the hearts of God’s people. The glory of the Messiah’s coming rule, in which the Saints were promised a share, sustained the persecuted believers when affliction was most intense.
Exactly the same destiny is promised the faithful of the New Testament times: “[Jesus] has made them [the faithful] kings and priests and they shall reign upon the earth” (Revelation 5:10).
For centuries churches have been busydismantling the biblical hope and replacing it with the vaguest prospect of disembodied life (can anyone even imagine life without a body?) in heaven, removed from man’s home on earth. Nothing would have seemed more nonsensical to the writers of the Bible. Nothing is more destructive to God’s grand design for our planet. The earth had been given to man as his everlasting dwelling. “Inheriting the earth” was the longing of every faithful Israelite and it was expressly confirmed by Jesus in his famous beatitude (Matthew 5:5): “Blessed are the humble for they are going to inherit the earth.” He takes up the refrain of Psalm 37 (vv. 3, 11, 22, 27, 29, 34) when he promises the gentle that “they shall inherit the earth,” that is, attain to the Messianic salvation which Daniel had treasured. What’s more, the Psalmist had promised not only that the faithful would “inherit the earth” but that they
would “dwell in it forever” (Psalm 37:29).
But churches have thrown away these precious promises. As if to reinforce a long-standing tradition of uncomprehending treatment of the Scriptures by Gentiles, the Good News Bible loses the point of Jesus’ cheering hope for the future. It renders Matthew 5:5 in such a way as to have the gentle “inherit what God has promised.” Is this a sop to its audience who would supposedly make little of the promise of inheriting the earth, since all it knew was the cherished tradition about going to heaven? There is no reason to hide plain statements under a fog.
The Bible knows only of the Messianic salvation foreseen by the prophets, which Jesus came not to destroy (Matthew 5:17). To dwell in “the land of the promise” was the aim of the holy people of Israel since that oath-bound, covenanted promise had been given to Abraham. Jesus confirmed these grand promises (Romans 15:8), spurring the disciples on to their glorious destiny and assignment with Daniel in Messiah’s Kingdom at the end of the age (Daniel 12:13).
How much better it would be if Christians abandoned the non-biblical language about going to heaven and replaced it with Jesus’ words about inheriting the earth (Matthew 5:5), coming from the east, the west, the north and the south and reclining with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of the coming age, taking their places at the great Feast in Jerusalem (Matthew 8:11; Luke 13:28, 29, based on Isaiah 25:6).
The Bible is a book which deals in reality, offering a realistic hope that Christians will rule the earth with Christ when he returns. The angels celebrate this sparkling prospect for redeemed humanity: “You [Jesus] purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests [cp. Exodus 19:5, 6] to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth”
(Revelation 5:9-10).
Throughout the New Testament Christians are described as heirs of a great future inheritance — the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is a matter of promise and expectation, an inheritance to be taken up in the future. James (2:5) says: “Listen, my brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the Kingdom which He has promised to those who love Him?”
“We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Messiah” (Romans 8:17), “heirs according to the promise” (i.e., of the Kingdom, James 2:5, above) (Galatians 3:29). The Gentiles can be “heirs together with Israel…and sharers together in the promise (of the Kingdom, James 2:5) in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 3:6). And the promise to Abraham is unmistakable. He was to be “heir of the world” (Romans 4:13).
At the present time, and upon baptism into the Messiah, the Spirit of God is given us as pledge or down payment of our future inheritance. In the excellent language of the NIV, the spirit is “the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14). Obviously, then, we have not yet entered the Kingdom of God. Indeed we cannot inherit it apart from a future resurrection (I Corinthians 15:50). The spirit is the pledge of a future inheritance — of the Kingdom which is promised us, but not yet ours.
Two fundamental distortions of the Bible, learned unfortunately in church, cast a shadow over our attempts to read the Bible intelligently. Firstly we seem to imagine that we have already inherited the Kingdom of God. This sort of thinking detracts from the glory of the future and disintegrates the great hope on which love and faith are built (Colossians 1:5). Emphatically Paul states that “flesh and blood [humans in their present bodies] cannot inherit the Kingdom of God” (I Corinthians 15:50) and that the “reward of the inheritance” lies in the future (Colossians 3:24). Secondly, we speak of achieving glory at the moment of our death, when the New Testament everywhere teaches us to wait until the Coming of Jesus. The traditional “heaven at death” teaching diminishes, if not reduces to nothing, the New Testament excitement about the return of Jesus to resurrect and reward the faithful — then and not before: “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done”
(Matthew 16:27).
When next you hear talk about so and so having “gone to heaven to be with Jesus,” please gently remind the speaker that belief in disembodied souls going to heaven is the common property of pagan religions, and should be banished from Christian circles. A tremendous revolution in our thinking and speaking is long overdue.
[1] Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament,
Brown, Driver and Briggs, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968,
p. 174.