The resurrection of the body and the true meaning of eternity is one of the most misunderstood ideas in Christianity, as many believe that the goal of being a Christian is to “go to heaven” after we die.
And BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey and theologian Wes Huff are setting the record straight.
“It’s a sign of restoration, Allie,” Wes says of the “resurrection of the body.”
“It’s a sign that when Jesus says, you know, ‘I’m making all things new’ in the book of Revelation, that that’s a promise. That we understand that the world was not created to be the way that it is. That it was created good,” he tells Stuckey.
Huff points out that the phrase “it’s good” is repeated throughout the Bible as a reminder that the world is “marred by sin, but it was meant for so much more.”
“And that’s going to be restored. We’re going to see how God makes all things new,” he says.
As for going to heaven, Huff begins by noting “we often have this understanding that our end goal is to get to heaven.”
“We leave this mortal coil and that’s it, and we’re trying to escape. That’s actually an ancient pagan idea. The ancient platonic philosophers and the gnostics believed that the physical was bad and the spiritual was good and that our spirits are really trapped in these meat prisons. And the goal is to get away from this all,” he explains.
“And I think we swallow something that’s false when we think of heaven as the final goal. What we read about and what you see within the Old Testament in the hope of the resurrection is that all of the created order is going to be aligned and made new and restored and that’s going to be beautiful,” he continues.
God’s creations — the sunrise, the mountains, the ocean — will be restored to what they were meant to be.
“We’re going to be in awe once again at mountains, at stars, at oceans, at valleys, at, you know, forests, at deserts. These things are going to continue to bring us into awe in eternity because God is going to resurrect us in a body that is, I think … probably analogous to something that we have here on earth, but much, much better,” Huff explains.
“Heaven is the layover. It’s going to be a great layover. It’s going to be an amazing layover,” he says, adding, “but it’s not going to be the end goal.”
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