Bringing Heaven Down To Earth
Connecting This Life to the Next
by Nathan L.K. Bierma
Chapter 6
Future Presence: God With Us
• Synopsis
• Discussion Questions
• Quotation Citations
• Further Reading
Synopsis
The greatest hope for heaven is not just the restoration of nature and culture, but the restoration of “God with us,” a promise Rev. 21:4-5 repeats three times as the final piece of the heavenly puzzle. This is all we really need to know about our heavenly existence--that we will be restored to wholeness of fellowship with our Maker. In fact, by coming to know in this life a love as deep and true as God’s, we come to believe in eternity automatically, since the love we learn is stronger than death. This promise of relational restoration should anchor our current relationship with God and with other people.
Discussion Questions
• How do we already imagine "God-with-us" in heaven? What hymns, images, verses, and personal ideas shape our imagination of heavenly "God-with-us"? In what new ways can we imagine this?
• How could we pray with a "rope-around-the-ankle" sense of realization that we are entering God's glorious presence?
• How do we currently understand what happens to the Christian at death? How does this understanding compare with Hoekema's explanation of Paul's words, "with Christ"?
• Why is loneliness the epitome of hell?
• What are some ways we can, as Keller says, become not just "a me," but "an us"?
Quotation Citations
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Further Reading
Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1960.
Lynch, Thomas. The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. Penguin, 1998.
Kuyper, Abraham. Near Unto God. Faith Alive Christian Resources, 1997. trans. by James C. Schaap.
McFadyen, Alistair I. The Call To Personhood: A Christian Theory of the Individual in Social Relationships. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990.
Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Putnam, Robert. Better Together : Restoring the American Community. Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Harvard Univ. Press, 1989.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Lament for a Son. Eerdmans, 1987.
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