Ask Randy Alcorn
Lesson Overview
Ask Randy Alcorn with Randy Alcorn, interviewed by Brannon Howse
This standalone session is an interview with Randy Alcorn, founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries and author of many books, including his large study Heaven. Brannon Howse asks him questions, some submitted by conference attendees, on heaven and the new earth, open theism, the importance of doctrine, a biblical view of money, and the problem of evil. Use this overview to review the key points after watching the full video.
Why He Wrote About Heaven
Alcorn explains that he spent about three years researching Heaven, reading around 150 books on the subject, motivated in part by the death of his mother and by reading Revelation 21 and 22 to her before she died. What struck him was how tangible those chapters are: real rocks, metals, gems, gates, streets, a river, and fruit-bearing trees, not a vague, ghostly existence. He notes that he went through Bible college and seminary without ever studying this, and that many pastors tell him the same.
Heaven Now and the New Earth
Alcorn draws a distinction that runs through the whole interview. When a believer dies now, they go to be with the Lord in the present heaven, but that is not the final state. The ultimate hope, he stresses, is bodily resurrection and eternal life with God on a new earth. From Revelation 21 he notes that God will change His dwelling place: the New Jerusalem comes down, and “the dwelling of God is with men,” God living with His people on the new earth forever, with the resurrected Christ, whose incarnation is permanent.
On the destruction of the earth (2 Peter 3), he offers a helpful parallel: just as our bodies are destroyed yet raised as new bodies with continuity to the old, so the old earth is “laid bare” by fire and the new earth comes out of it. The new earth is not a non-earth but a redeemed, renewed one.
What Heaven Will Be Like
Several attendee questions concern the nature of life in heaven, and Alcorn’s key interpretive principle is that the new earth gives us a reference point. Just as we know what a body is because we have one, we know what an earth is, so the new earth will be recognizable, minus the curse, sin, death, and disease.
From this he addresses many specific questions. We will eat and drink (Jesus speaks of dining with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, real people who keep their identities). We will retain and even sharpen our memories, since we give an account at the judgment seat of Christ. We will serve and rule (“his servants will serve him”; being put over cities). We will create and work, as Adam was given the garden to tend, so there will be culture, art, and beauty. He suggests there is a learning curve in heaven, since only God is omniscient and to be a creature is to be finite; citing Ephesians 2:7, God will go on revealing the riches of His grace “in the ages to come.” He argues that people in the present heaven are conscious (not “soul sleep”), citing the martyrs of Revelation 6 who cry out, reason, and feel, and that Scripture indicates there is time in heaven (the half hour of silence in Revelation 8, the monthly fruit of Revelation 22).
He also addresses the “mansions” of John 14, noting the word means dwelling place, and connects Luke 16 to the idea that we may have individual dwellings and welcome one another as guests, sharing fellowship with believers throughout history. His governing pastoral point: do not project present boredom or suffering onto eternity; joy will be “the air we breathe,” and every chapter, as C.S. Lewis pictured at the end of Narnia, will be better than the one before.
God at the Center
Alcorn is careful to guard against a heaven that is merely pleasant activities. God, he insists, will be the center of everything, the source and fountainhead of all joy. Citing 1 Corinthians 10:31 (whatever you do, do all to the glory of God), he argues that eating, creating, and enjoying creation are not distractions from worship but occasions for it, because in every secondary joy we thank the primary Giver. Enjoying an animal, a person, or a place rightly means seeing in it the beauty of the Creator and enjoying fellowship with God Himself.
A Caution About Universalism
Asked about the population of heaven, Alcorn declines to guess, noting the tension between “few there be that find it” (Matthew 7) and the promise that every tribe and nation will be represented, and mentioning Spurgeon’s view that children who die young are with the Lord. But he uses the moment to warn against universalism, specifically naming Rob Bell’s book Love Wins as teaching, in his view, that everyone will ultimately be saved. Alcorn affirms an eternal hell, which he says Jesus emphatically taught, but argues it will not overshadow heaven’s joy or diminish Christ’s redemptive work: in the end God wins, and even the justice of hell reflects God’s holiness. He cautions against reducing God to a single attribute, love, redefined however one wishes, noting that the angels cry “holy, holy, holy,” not “love, love, love.” This is Alcorn’s position within a real debate among professing Christians about hell and universalism.
Open Theism
The conversation turns to open theism, associated with Greg Boyd (and Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, and others), which Alcorn addresses in his book If God Is Good. He explains open theism as the teaching that God does not know in advance every future free choice that people, angels, or Satan will make. He notes its seemingly compassionate motive (a loving God who foreknew a tragedy would surely prevent it, so perhaps He did not foreknow it), but argues it fails on two counts: it reasons backward from us to God rather than trusting God’s revelation that He knows all things, and it does not even work on its own terms, since God still knows the present and could intervene. He offers instead the comfort that God came down and suffered with us and uses all our present suffering for eternal purposes. This too is his side of a real intra-Christian debate.
The Importance of Doctrine
Alcorn argues that doctrine, which simply means teaching, has wrongly gained a bad name, and that the church needs to focus on truth (John 17:17). He voices concern that children in Christian homes no longer know basic Bible stories, and that many young people, especially boys, are not learning to love reading, which he ties to whether they will ever love reading God’s Word. He recommends Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology and a historical theology text, and warns against what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery,” the assumption that whatever is new is better. Heresies, he notes, present themselves as new; the faithful line of believers through history keeps us from “doing theology on the fly.”
A Biblical View of Money
Asked about the economy, Alcorn turns to 1 Timothy 6. He warns against the health-and-wealth or prosperity gospel, and lifts up “godliness with contentment is great gain.” Money, he says, is meant to bless others, further the gospel, and provide for one’s family, not to be a source of security, which belongs in Christ alone. Using the image that money and possessions have “mass,” and mass has gravity that holds us in orbit, he argues that generous giving “breaks the back” of the money idol. He balances this carefully: material things are a gift of God to be enjoyed, not the center; the rich are commanded (1 Timothy 6) not to trust in wealth but to be generous and rich in good deeds, laying up treasure for the age to come. He mentions that he gives away 100 percent of his book royalties to missions, pro-life, and other ministries.
The Problem of Evil
The interview closes on suffering and evil, the subject of Alcorn’s book If God Is Good. His counsel: do not apologize for the problem of evil, but do not tell people they have no right to raise it, since Scripture itself raises it (Habakkuk, the Psalms). His apologetic move is to turn the question around: every worldview must account for evil, and also for good. Naturalism and survival of the fittest might explain a degree of ruthlessness, he argues, but not genuine goodness, so if evil counts against God, goodness should count for Him. He concludes that the Christian worldview, in which God brings maximum and eternal goodness out of a real fall through redemption (supremely at the cross), accounts for evil and suffering more satisfyingly than any alternative.
Key Terms
The present heaven and the new earth: the intermediate state with the Lord now, versus the final resurrected life on a renewed earth.
The new earth as reference point: Alcorn’s principle that the redeemed earth will be recognizable, like our present world without the curse.
Soul sleep: the view (which Alcorn rejects) that the dead are unconscious until the resurrection.
Universalism: the belief that all will ultimately be saved, which Alcorn opposes.
Open theism: the view that God does not foreknow future free choices, which Alcorn critiques.
Chronological snobbery: C.S. Lewis’s term for assuming the newest idea is the best.
Verses to Know
Revelation 21:1-3, the new earth and God dwelling with His people. Revelation 22:1-3, the river, the tree of life, and God’s servants serving Him. 2 Peter 3:10-13, the old earth laid bare and the new heavens and new earth. Revelation 6:9-11, the conscious martyrs crying out. Ephesians 2:7, God revealing the riches of His grace in the ages to come. 1 Timothy 6:6-10, godliness with contentment, and the love of money. John 17:17, sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
Takeaway
Alcorn argues that the Christian hope is not a vague, ghostly heaven but bodily resurrection and everlasting life with God on a redeemed new earth, that sound doctrine and a high view of God’s knowledge and holiness matter deeply, that money is to be held loosely and given generously, and that the Christian worldview accounts for evil and good better than any other, because God is bringing eternal joy out of redemption with Himself at the center of all things.