Theologian and author John Piper admitted the concept of eternity in heaven is “hard to grasp,” but the pastor is nevertheless certain it won’t be “boring.”
Piper addressed the topic on a recent episode of his “Ask Pastor John” podcast after receiving a question from a listener, Mason, who said he has been “struggling with the concept of eternity lately.”
The listener said he has read Christian author Randy Alcorn’s book, “Heaven,” because he “had difficulty imagining” what the afterlife might look like.
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“After reading, I began to understand joy for thousands, millions, or even billions of years,” said Mason. “However, even a hundred trillion years still seems nothing in light of eternity. I struggle to process something with no end; how will we not get bored?”
The Desiring God founder first acknowledged heaven is a tough reality for humans to fully understand.
Piper said, “It is beyond question that eternity — whether we conceive of it as time without beginning or ending, or whether we conceive of it as a dimension beyond time, timelessness — is hard to grasp. I mean, I don’t even know what ‘grasp’ means when it comes to something like that.”
The Minneapolis-based preacher referenced Ecclesiastes 3:11, in which King Solomon wrote, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”
Piper, 79, said the verse “means … God intends for us to be aware of a reality of a kind of eternal time or non-time that is not fully comprehensible.”
He went on to reference a quote from famed Christian author C.S. Lewis’ book, “Mere Christianity,” in which the 20th century thought leader wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
While there are a great many mysteries about the life to come, Piper pointed out to Mason that God does not leave believers without any information. For example, he said, heaven is addressed in Revelation and 1 Corinthians.
In Revelation 21:18, John described the New Jerusalem as a city of “pure gold, as clear as glass.” And in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 (NLT), Paul wrote about the bodily transformation Christians will experience:
It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.
Piper said, “We are going to be embodied persons, and yet, embodied in a way that is … incomprehensibly unlike our present bodies. You won’t ever run out of the ability to see glory, be amazed, be refreshed, be thrilled forever.”
He added that believers “will have [bodies] perfectly suited to eternal, supernatural, unimaginable pleasures — [bodies] so unfathomably more capable of enjoyment than you could ever imagine.”
When it comes to Americans’ view of heaven, a Gallup survey from 2023 found 67% of adults in the U.S. believe in an eternal paradise — a staggering decline from 83% in 2001. A Barna Group study from the same year found approximately 54% of American Christians believe they will experience heaven after death, and only one-third of respondents (33%) believe in the Gospel — that is they will experience heaven because they confessed their sins and need for a savior.
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