GOD'S FORGIVENESS IS THE MOST READILY AVAILABLE FORGIVENESS

'The good news is that it's easier to be restored to a positive relationship with God than with any other being. As difficult as this is to grasp, when we do, it's happiness making in the extreme.' 

Randy Alcorn, Does Want Us to Be Happy? p.110.  

JOY = HAPPINESS

'The notion that we can have joy without happiness has perverted the meaning of both words and helped spawn a culture of Christian curmudgeons. Feeling morally superior, they may affirm that they have the joy of Jesus deep in their hearts, but apparently it's so deep it never makes the way to their faces.' 

Randy Alcorn, Does God Want Us to Be Happy? p.48. 

HEAVEN

‘I’ve never been to heaven, yet I miss it. Eden’s in my blood.’
Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.458.

TEMPTATION

‘The lack of an eternal perspective sets us up not only for discouragement but also for sin. We tell ourselves, If I don’t experience an intimate relationship now, I never will. Or If I don’t have the means to go there, I never will. Then we feel desperate, tempted to take shortcuts to get what we want (what we think we want). We’re tempted toward fornication, dishonesty, or theft. Or we live in regret, greed and envy. But if we understand that we’ll actually live in a new heavens and New Earth, a new universe full of new opportunities, then we can forgo certain pleasures and experiences now, knowing we can enjoy them later.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.436.

HEAVEN

‘Our belief that heaven will be boring betrays a heresy – that God is boring. There’s no greater nonsense. Our desire for pleasure and the experience of joy come directly from God’s hand. He made our taste buds, adrenaline, sex drives, and the nerve ending that convey pleasure to our brains. Likewise, our imaginations and our capacity for joy and exhilaration were made by the very God we accuse of being boring. Are we so arrogant as to imagine that human beings came up with the idea of having fun?

“Won’t it be boring to be good all the time?” someone asked. Note the assumption: sin is exciting and righteousness is boring. We’ve fallen for the devil’s lie. His most basic strategy, the same one he employed with Adam and Eve, is to make us believe that sin brings fulfilment. However, in reality, sin robs us of fulfilment. Sin doesn’t make life fulfilling; it makes life empty. Sin doesn’t create adventure; it blunts it. Sin doesn’t expand life; if shrinks it. Sin’s emptiness inevitably leads to boredom. When’s there’s fulfilment, when there’s beauty, when we God as he truly is – an endless reservoir of fascination – boredom becomes impossible.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.410.

HELL

‘...in a sense, none of our loved ones will be in Hell – only someone we once loved. Our love for our companions in Heaven will be directly linked to God, the central object of our love. We will see him in them. We will not love those in Hell because when we see Jesus as he is, will love only – and will only want to love – whoever and whatever pleases and glorifies and reflects him. What we loved in those who died without Christ was God’s beauty we once saw in them. When God forever withdraws from them, I think they’ll no longer bear his image and no longer reflect his beauty. Although they will be the same people, without God they’ll be stripped of all the qualities we loved. Therefore, paradoxically, in a sense they will not be the people we loved.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.362.

HEAVEN

‘Christ is not simply preparing a place for us; he is preparing us for that place.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.224.

JOY

‘God isn’t displeased when we enjoy a good meal, marital sex, a football game, a cozy fire, or a good book. He’s not up in Heaven frowning at us and saying, “Stop it – you should only find joy in me.” This would be foreign to God’s nature as our heavenly Father as it would be to mine as an earthly father if I gave my daughters a Christmas gift and started pouting because they enjoyed it too much. No, I gave the gift to bring joy to them and to me – if they didn’t take pleasure in it, I’d be disappointed. Their pleasure in my gift to them draws them closer to me. I am delighted that they enjoy the gift.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.177.

CHRISTIANITY & CULTURE

'To say “This world is not your home” to a person who’s fully alive and alert to the wonders of the world is like throwing a bucket of water on kindling’s blaze. We should fan the flames of that blaze to help it spread, not seek to put it out. Otherwise, we malign our God-given instinct to love the earthly home God made for us. And we reduce “spirituality” into a denial of art, culture, science, sports, education, and all else human. When we do this, we set ourselves up for hypocrisy – for we may pretend to disdain the world while sitting in church but when we get in the car we turn on our favourite music and head home to barbecue with friends, watch a ball-game, play golf, ride bikes, work in the garden, or curl up savouring a coffee and a good book. We do these things not because we are sinners but because we are people. We will still be people when we die and go to Heaven. This isn’t a disappointing reality – it’s God’s plan. He made us as we are – except the sin part, which has nothing to do with friends, eating, sports, gardening, or reading...

...These experiences are not Heaven – but they are foretastes of Heaven. What we love about this life are the things that resonate with the life we were made for. The things we love are not merely the best this life has to offer – they are previews of the greater life to come.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.167.

HEAVEN

‘What we have assumed about heaven has reduced it to a place we look forward to only as an alternative to an intolerable existence here on the present Earth. Only the elderly, disabled, suffering, and persecuted might desire the Heaven we imagine. But the Bible portrays life in God’s presence, in our resurrected bodies in a resurrected universe, as so exciting and compelling that even the youngest and healthiest of us should daydream about it.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.161.

THE RESURRECTION

‘A non-physical resurrection is like a sunless sunrise. There’s no such thing. Resurrection means that we will have bodies. If we didn’t have bodies, we wouldn’t be resurrected!’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.112.

JESUS

‘Heaven is God’s home. Earth is our home. Jesus Christ, as the God-man, forever links God and mankind, and thereby forever links Heaven and Earth.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.103.

HEAVEN

‘The biblical doctrine of the New Earth implies something startling: that if we want to know what the ultimate Heaven, our eternal home, will be like, the best place to start is by looking around us. We shouldn’t close our eyes and try and imagine the unimaginable. We should open our eyes, because the present Earth is as much a valid reference point for envisioning the New Earth as our present bodies are a valid reference point for envisioning our new bodies. After all, we’re living on the remnants of a perfect world, as the remnants of a perfect humanity.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.81.

HEAVEN & HELL

‘Earth is an in-between world touched by both Heaven and Hell. Earth leads directly into Heaven or directly into Hell, affording a choice between the two. The best of life on Earth is a glimpse of Heaven; the worst of life is a glimpse of Hell. For Christians, this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it is the closest they will come to Heaven.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.28.

HEAVEN & HELL

‘For every American who believes he’s going to Hell, there are 120 who believe they’re going to Heaven.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.23.

HEAVEN

‘...look out a window. Take a walk. Talk with your friend. Use your God-given skills to paint or draw or build a shed or write a book. But imagine it – all of it – in its original condition. The happy dog with the wagging tail, not the snarling beast, beaten and starved. The flowers unwilted, the grass undying, the blue sky without pollution. People smiling and joyful, not angry, depressed, and empty. If you’re not in a particularly beautiful place, close your eyes and envision the most beautiful place you’ve ever been – complete with palm trees, raging rivers, jagged mountains, waterfalls, or snow drifts.

Think of friends and family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile of his face. You fall to your knees is worship. He pulls you up and embraces you.

At last you’re with the person you were made for, in the place you were made to be. Everywhere you go there will be new people and places to enjoy, new things to discover. What’s that you smell? A feast? A party’s ahead. And you’re invited. There’s exploration and work to be done – and you can’t wait to get started.

I have a biblical basis for all of those statements, and many more. After examining what Scripture says, I hope that next time your hear someone say, “We can’t begin to imagine what Heaven will be like,” you’ll be able to tell them, “I can.”’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.18.

HEAVEN

'We do not desire to eat gravel. Why? Because God did not design us to eat gravel. Trying to develop an appetite for a disembodied existence in a non-physical heaven is like trying to develop an appetite for gravel. No matter how sincere we are, and no matter how hard we try, it’s not going to work. Nor should it.

What God made us to desire, and therefore what we do desire if we admit it, is exactly what he promises to those who follow Jesus Christ: a resurrected life in a resurrected body, with the resurrected Christ on a resurrected earth. Our desires correspond precisely to God’s plans. It’s not that we want something, so we engage in wishful thinking that what we want exists. It’s the opposite – the reason we want is precisely because God has planned for it to exist.’

Randy Alcorn, Heaven, p.7.

LIFESTYLE CHOICES

'What stops us from living on less? It's not just our love for things, it's our fear of loneliness or abnormality. If simple living were the norm in our churches, it would be much easier to live simply ourselves. But we don't want to be left out or seem weird. We need examples to follow, models of simpler lifestyles that we can observe firsthand to convince us it's really possible - and desirable. We need to see people we respect, people like us who choose to live differently. A mandate to "live simply" won't do it. It's easier to follow footprints than to follow orders. If most people in the church have new cars, beautiful homes, hot tubs, and cutting-edge entertainment centers, it's hard to remember these aren't what the church is here for.

One Christian told me, "When I look at the Bible, I get really convicted to chnage my lifestyle. But then I look around at all the other Christians who live like I do and I end up saying, "It must be okay - everybody else lives this way too."'

Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions & Eternity, p.298.

GIVING

'...the single greatest deterrent to giving - and to living more simply - is the illusion that this world is our home.'

Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions & Eternity, p.294.

GIVING

'Giving is the safety valve that releases the excess pressure of wealth.'

Randy Alcorn, Money, Possessions & Eternity, p.293.