God's Story Is Our Story: From Acts to New CreationSample

What happens after the church age? Is this the end of the story? John tells us that the story goes on. There is a new heaven and a new earth. There is no evil, sin, death, or pain. There is no longer separation between God and humans.

John's description is a lot about what's not there and gives us images that seem more evocative than journalistic. We are left with a lot of questions of what life will be like in the new heaven and new earth. The Bible isn't as concerned with answering our questions. Perhaps we couldn't understand them even if we were given them. But the Bible gives us enough of a picture to say that it will be worth it. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined what God has prepared for those who love him." We cannot even imagine the beauty and goodness that lie in wait for us.

Two quotes from C.S. Lewis' "The Last Battle" have helped me feel a bit of what the Bible is describing. One character who lived in his fictional land of Narnia but also died in a great last battle is shown entering a new land and says:

"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this."

Lewis adds his own narratorial comments at the end:

"And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."