Imagine There's No Heaven

This post does not address the intermediate state of Paradise, only the final destination of Christians.

It is paramount to understand the difference between our 21st century concept of Heaven and the first century (Jewish) concept of Heaven.

The first century Jews believed that "Heaven" was the Messianic Banquet--not a "place where we go after the Earth is gone."

I believe that the Lord's Supper is that banquet.

Luke records,

"... When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, 'Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God...'" (Luke 14:15). 

And

"... People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God..." (Luke 13:29).

Examining the key passages of 2 Peter 3:10-13 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, used to support the belief that the Earth will be annihilated, reveals that annihilation of the earth is not the proper conclusion when we read the Bible with first century glasses.

2nd Peter 3:10-13 states:

"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells" (NIV 2011).

In his book, The New Testament and The People of God, N. T. Wright says,

"The 'kingdom of god' has nothing to do with the world itself coming to an end. That makes no sense either of the basic Jewish worldview or of the texts in which the Jewish hope is expressed. It was after all the Stoics, not the first-century Jews, who characteristically believed that the world would be dissolved in fire…."

But doesn't the Bible teach that the Earth will be "destroyed" and that "we will meet the Lord in the air?"

Yes. But not in the way we have been taught.

1st Thessalonians 4:13-17 reads:

“For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”

Assuming the first century concept of "Heaven" is the Messianic Banquet which is something a 21st century non Jewish Christian would not naturally assume, what did Paul's metaphor of this 'return of the king' in 1 Thes. 4:13-17 mean in first century context to a first century hearer or reader?

In Farewell To the Rapture, concerning 1^st Thessalonians 4:16-17, Wright states: 

"Paul conjures up images of an emperor visiting a colony or province. The citizens go out to meet him in open country and then escort him into the city. Paul's image of the people "meeting the Lord in the air" should be read with the assumption that the people will immediately turn around and lead the Lord back to the newly remade world…."

This interpretation has profound effects on our worldview, especially regarding the Lord's Supper and Second Coming. 

More details concerning 1 The. 4:13-17 are given at the end of this post, but, for now, let's consider the extremely important Biblical concept of "hope."

HOPE IS BASED ON THE EVIDENCE OF RENEWAL INHERENT IN CREATION--NOT POST-ENLIGHTENMENT, MACRO-EVOLUTIONARY PROGRESSIVISM

Say what?

In his article Apocalypse Now, originally published in The Millennium Myth, Wright continues:

“For the last two or three centuries the Western world has been nurtured on a belief in Progress. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we have been taught to believe that the world is getting better and better. Industrial progress, technological innovation, and the many-sided wisdom of the Enlightenment, have produced and will produce a world in which old evils will be left behind. Try telling that to a Holocaust survivor, a Tutsi refugee, a Honduran peasant….”

“Hope has to do, not with steady progress, but with a belief that the world is God’s world and that God has continuing plans for it. The signs of this hope within the world at large are not the evidences of an evolution from lower to higher forms of life, or from one ethical or political system to another, but the signs built in to the created order itself…. Some parts of our world simply point beyond themselves, and say “Look! Despite all, there is hope.”

So, where do we see this type of hope found in the Bible?

 EXODUS, RESURRECTION & THE LORD'S SUPPER

“Within the biblical story, there are several moments that give particular focus and clarity to this hope: The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt after their slavery; The return from exile in Babylon. The public career of Jesus, announcing the kingdom of God; And particularly, after his shameful and unspeakably awful death, Jesus’ astonishing resurrection from the dead."

"From the very beginning of Christianity, the events concerning Jesus were seen as the fulfillment of the hope to which the Exodus had pointed. [Passover Supper--Lord’s Supper, sp]. This was the real liberation. The future had arrived in the present. Hope came to meet us in Person."

The Passover Meal symbolized the exodus from Egypt or deliverance from the bondage of slavery:

Moses writes,

“Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the LORD. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen with you, and no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory. You shall tell your son on that day, 'It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt” (Exodus 13:6-8).

Jesus reinterprets the Exodus in the context of His resurrection for all nations, not just Israel with kosher laws at the table of fellowship. Jesus reinterprets the Exodus as all nations sitting at His Table in His Kingdom where all food is clean. This is the first century context in which 1Tim. 4:1ff; Romans 14--15; 1 Cor. 11:17-34, etc. should be read.  (Paul also uses the Exodus as a symbol of baptism and immediately addresses the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor. 10:1-33).

Luke 22:7...20 reads:

“Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed... When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God." 

"After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:7...20).

Wright continues:

“…But (and at this point Christians and Jews would agree) the world has not yet become all that the biblical hope would indicate. We do not yet see peace and justice reigning hand in hand. The very first Christian writer known to us, the apostle Paul, wrestled with this question and came up with a clear solution. The hope arrives in two stages.”

“Jesus’ resurrection was the prototype, the beginning and the model for the new world that is yet to be. His coming out of the tomb into a new life was the personal, close-up equivalent of the Israelites emerging from their slavery in Egypt. The hope is that God will eventually do for the whole creation what he did for Jesus….”

“But that future, when it arrives, will not mean the abandonment of the present world, but rather its fulfillment. [like Jesus said the Lord’s Supper (meal among all nations at the Lord’s Table or Christian Passover, see below) was a “fulfillment” (see Luke 22:7-20, sp].”

Wright continues: 

“The whole creation, says Paul, will be liberated from its present enslavement to the forces of decay and death. You don’t liberate something by destroying it. All the beauty, all the goodness, all the pulsating life of the present creation, is to be enhanced, lifted to a new level, in the world that is to be.”

Just like Jesus' resurrected body.

Just like our resurrected bodies.

In Romans 8:18-25 Paul writes,

“For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage  to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” 

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

Wright says,

“There is no room here for…dualism…. Rather there is a strong incentive to work, in the present, to anticipate the new world in every possible way. Those who are grasped by the vision of God’s new world unveiled in Jesus’ resurrection are already sharing in that newness, and are called to produce, in the present time, more and more signposts to point to this eventual and glorious future. The central feature of the hope held out in the Bible is of course the personal presence of Jesus himself [Luke 22:15-16 above, sp].”

Until the return of the King all nations meet at the Lord’s Table as His body (1 Cor. 10:14-33; 11:17-34; 1 Cor. chps. 12-13; Romans chps. 14-16). The Lord is present with us at our Meal, His Supper, as He said He would be in Luke 22:16.

Paul writes:

“For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:6-8).

FIRST THESSALONIANS 4:13-17

Speaking of the Second Coming, Wright says:

“Many have reduced this feature of the hope to the belief that one day Jesus will appear, flying downwards from the sky, perhaps riding on a cloud…. However, most of the biblical passages that are quoted in support of the idea of Jesus returning by flying downwards on a cloud are best seen as classic examples of apocalyptic language, rich biblical metaphor. They are not to be taken with wooden literalness.”

“The son of man coming on the clouds” in Mark 13:26 and elsewhere, does not refer to Jesus’ return to earth, but to Jesus’ vindication, “coming” from earth to heaven, to be enthroned as Lord of the world…. And the one occasion when Paul uses the language of descent and ascent (1 Thessalonians 4.16) is almost certainly to be taken in the same way, as a vivid metaphorical description of the wider reality he describes at more length in Romans and 1 Corinthians.”

“Does this mean abandoning belief in the “second coming”? Certainly not. It means taking seriously the whole biblical picture, instead of highlighting, and misinterpreting, one part of it. The problem has been, in the last two centuries in particular, that certain texts have been read from within the worldview of dualistic apocalypticism, and have thus produced a less than fully biblical picture, with Jesus flying around like a spaceman and the physical world being destroyed.”

“Rather, the Bible points to God’s new world, where heaven and earth are fully integrated at last, and whose central feature is the personal, loving and healing presence of Jesus himself, the living embodiment of the one true God as well as the prototype of full, liberated humanity. When we talk about Jesus’ “coming”, the reality to which we point is his personal presence within God’s new creation.”

In Apocalypse Now, Wright continues:

“The American obsession with the second coming of Jesus --especially with distorted interpretations of it -- continues unabated…. Seen from my side of the Atlantic [Wright is British], the phenomenal success of the Left Behind books appears puzzling, even bizarre.”

[NOTE: For those of us who have been taught a separate 2^nd Coming is not The Rapture per say, these arguments still apply to Jesus removing us from Earth forever to live in “Heaven”].

Wright reveals:

“Few in the U.K. hold the belief on which the popular series of novels is based: that there will be a literal "rapture" in which believers will be snatched up to heaven, leaving empty cars crashing on freeways and kids coming home from school only to find that their parents have been taken to be with Jesus while they have been "left behind." This pseudo-theological version of Home Alone has reportedly frightened many children into some kind of (distorted) faith.”

“This dramatic end-time scenario is based wrongly, as we shall see, on Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, where he writes:

"For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God. The dead in Christ will rise first; then we, who are left alive, will be snatched up with them on clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

Wright asks and answers:

“What on earth (or in heaven) did Paul mean?”

“It is Paul who should be credited with creating this scenario. Jesus himself, as I have argued in various books, never predicted such an event. The gospel passages about "the Son of Man coming on the clouds" (Mark 13:26, 14:62, for example) are about Jesus' vindication, his "coming" to heaven from earth. The parables about a returning king or master (for example, Luke 19:11-27) were originally about God returning to Jerusalem, not about Jesus returning to earth. This, Jesus seemed to believe, was an event within space-time history, not one that would end it forever.”

“The Ascension of Jesus and the Second Coming are nevertheless vital Christian doctrines, and I don't deny that I believe some future event will result in the personal presence of Jesus within God's new creation. This is taught throughout the New Testament outside the Gospels. But this event won't in any way resemble the Left Behind account. Understanding what will happen requires a far more sophisticated cosmology than the one in which "heaven" is somewhere up there in our universe, rather than in a different dimension, a different space-time, altogether."

He explains,

“Paul's description of Jesus' reappearance in 1 Thessalonians 4 is a brightly colored version of what he says in two other passages, 1 Corinthians 15:51-54 and Philippians 3:20-21: At Jesus' "coming" or "appearing," those who are still alive will be "changed" or "transformed" so that their mortal bodies will become incorruptible, deathless. This is all that Paul intends to say in Thessalonians, but here he borrows imagery -- from biblical and political sources -- to enhance his message. Little did he know how his rich metaphors would be misunderstood two millennia later."

“First, Paul echoes the story of Moses coming down the mountain with the Torah. The trumpet sounds, a loud voice is heard, and after a long wait Moses comes to see what's been going on in his absence.”

Second, he echoes Daniel 7, in which "the people of the saints of the Most High" (that is, the "one like a son of man") are vindicated over their pagan enemy by being raised up to sit with God in glory. This metaphor, applied to Jesus in the Gospels, is now applied to Christians who are suffering persecution.”

Third, Paul conjures up images of an emperor visiting a colony or province. The citizens go out to meet him in open country and then escort him into the city. Paul's image of the people "meeting the Lord in the air" should be read with the assumption that the people will immediately turn around and lead the Lord back to the newly remade world. "

“Paul's mixed metaphors of trumpets blowing and the living being snatched into heaven to meet the Lord are not to be understood as literal...but as a vivid and biblically allusive description of the great transformation of the present world of which he speaks elsewhere."

All bold emphasis mine, sp.

http://thinklings.org/posts/nt-wright-on-the-second-coming

http://ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Apocalypse_Now.htm