Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Heaven

Did you see the Barbara Walters special on Heaven Tuesday night? I usually don't bother with television at all, but since I have been sick, I thought it would be a good use of my time. I wrote out an entire review of it as I watched but my laptop mysteriously deleted it all. God is sovereign over deleted posts!

Since I cannot remember everything I wrote, I will just raise the one issue that affected me most deeply.

First of all, why don't they interview people like John Piper, Al Mohler, or C.J. Mahaney for these "specials"? I don't feel like the evangelical response and understanding to the questions about Heaven was very well represented.

The evangelical they chose was Ted Haggard. In fact, I think they called him the "pope" of evangelicalism because he is the president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

He said some good things, BUT, the general feeling that he left with America is that there may be another way to get to Heaven besides being born again. He said that the only "sure" way is through Jesus, but those in other religions will have to work that out on their own. His advice was to trust Jesus because we know for sure that we can get to Heaven through Him. In other words, there could be many roads to Heaven but why not take the known one?

This saddens me. For obvious reasons.

Bonus thoughts: In all the talk about Heaven (2 hour special) not once was the glory of God and the joy of His presence given as a reason to want to go to Heaven. All the "Christians" talked about seeing loved ones and eating a lot in Heaven.

They should have talked to Randy Alcorn who has written the book on Heaven.

2 comments:

Rob Tombrella said...

I'm sorry I missed that Justin--sorry I didn't get the full post either. Hey, thankful for 2 things today from you
1. Thanks for the new CJ book! I've been waiting to get this--thanks so much. Yours is in the mail--hope you like it.
2. You saw my post on Purgatorio--yes--that left me rolling today! I hope people go to your site and join the discussion--this is one of the best original discussions i've seen this month.

pastor justin said...

Update: 13.7 million people saw the special on Heaven.