Mark Twain has been quoted as saying, “Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth.”
Remember seeing an upscale Singapore condominium complex advertised as “Heaven on Earth”.
Googled “Heaven on Earth” and got the lyrics of a Britney Spears song of obsession.
Have heard a wise person respond to the disappointments of our spiritual journey with the comment we need to remember that this isn’t heaven.
No, we haven’t been promised heaven on earth. Or have we? Not now, but later.
Didn’t sound right when I first heard it. But some well-grounded theologians in our day remind us that the Bible ends where it begins-with an earth restored to its original perfection, and with God living among his people. (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope and Michael Wittmer, Heaven is a Place on Earth: why everything you do matters to God.”)
For much of my life I heard Bible teachers emphasize that in the end of the age a spiritually restored Israel would finally get all of the land and peace promised to her while “the Church” would get heaven. While there may be some validity to the distinction, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the last chapters of the Bible speak of God merging heaven and earth in a way that will bring both closer together and more real than we have ever known them before (Rev 3:12; 21:1-4).
No, we can’t talk about the heaven on earth that is yet ahead without saying more than we know and infinitely less than what is to come. But of this we can be confident. Being in the presence of “God with us” as he lives among his people on earth, won’t be less than the best we have ever imagined… and will be “better by far”… than anything we’ve ever known…
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