MacArthur - The glory of heaven: the truth about heaven, angels, and eternal life

According to a 2007 Gallup poll, 81 percent of adult Americans say they believe in heaven. Nearly 80 percent of those questioned in the 2007 poll also said they believe they will be admitted to heaven when they die. In other words, a very large majority of people believe in heaven, and almost everyone who believes in heaven expects to go there in the afterlife.

But heres a stunning irony: While interest in heaven is rapidly rising, belief in God is steadily declining. During the same decade bookended by those two Gallup polls, atheism was gaining unprecedented popularity,

It is no secret that several very powerful secularizing influences are currently at work in Western culture. The media, governments, the academic community, and the entertainment industryall the primary shapers of societys valueshave more or less banded together against the God of Scripture. They promote a materialistic worldview while relentlessly attacking historic Christian belief and biblical morality. The resulting cultural drift has been significant. As a matter of fact, belief in God declined by four percentage points in just six years time between the start of the new millennium and that 2007 polleven though there was a sharp increase in the number of people who say they believe in heaven and expect to go there. As I write these words, none of those trends has shown any signs of losing steam.

Incidentally, nearly a third of those questioned in Gallups 2007 poll said they dont believe in hell or arent sure about it. Roughly the same number say they doubt the existence of the devil.

Given the rising tides of militant atheism, postmodern skepticism, biblical illiteracy, self-love, and gross immorality, what are we to make of the current interest in heaven? One thing is clear: it does not signal any significant upsurge of interest in what biblical revelation teaches about heaven. On the contrary, the data actually seem to indicate that lots of people are simply making up whatever concept of heaven pleases them. The ideas about heaven that get the most press are mostly figments of the human imagination that bear little (if any) resemblance to that glorious realm of Christs kingdom as it is described in Gods Word.

We would of course expect New Age practitioners, cranks, and cultists to abandon the Bible in favor of their own dreams and fantasies. But this trend of inventing ones own personal concept of heaven seems to be an even bigger problem in the evangelical community than it is in the world at large. Evidence of this can be seen in several recent evangelical megabest sellers.

One of the most talked-about books of 2011 was Heaven Is for Real , by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent. The book recounts four-year-old Colton Burpos vision of heaven (as told by his father to Ms. Vincent). Colton claims he visited heaven during surgery after a burst appendix nearly took his life. His stories of heaven are full of fanciful features and peculiar details that bear all the earmarks of a childs vivid imagination. Theres nothing transcendent or even particularly enlightening about Coltons description of heaven. In fact, it is completely devoid of the breathtaking glory featured in every biblical description of the heavenly realm. That doesnt deter Todd Burpo from singling out selective phrases and proof texts from Scripture, citing them as if they authenticated his sons account.

An article in the New York Times Magazine chronicled the books success:

Heaven Is for Real was published in late 2010, became a word-of-mouth best seller and has spent 59 (nonconsecutive) weeks as the No. 1 nonfiction paperback on The New York Timess best-seller list. Recently the publisher, Thomas Nelson, spun off a childrens picture book, now also a best seller, with illustrations verified by Colton. And sometime in 2014, courtesy of DeVon Franklin, vice president of production at Columbia Pictures, who considers his faith a professional asset, a movie version should be released in theaters.

Televangelist T. D. Jakes will coproduce the movie.

Another blockbuster book in the same genre is To Heaven and Back , by Mary C. Neal, MD. Dr. Neals account of heaven is no less jejune than Colton Burpos, and it is even more doctrinally deviant. Released at the end of May 2012, this book reached the top of the New York Times best-seller list in its first month.