What will Eternal Life be like?

September 3, 2021 Tom Creedy

In this edited extract from his new evangelistic book, Martin Salter shares what he believes eternal life will be like...

Almost everything you’ve been told about heaven is wrong. Clouds, harps, pudgy babies with rosy cheeks and blonde curls – all wrong. I’ve no idea of the origins of these ideas, which seem to appear in anything from old paintings to modern TV adverts for soft cheese. What I am certain of is that none of them appears in the Bible’s own description of eternal life.

Yet most of us are unaware of the rich and vivid picture in the Bible, so we think the whole idea of eternal life looks, well, a bit boring. The writer Mark Twain quipped, ‘Most people can’t bear sitting in church for an hour on a Sunday. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for an eternity?’ In similar vein, the author Isaac Asimov wrote, ‘Whatever the tortures of hell, the boredom of heaven would be worse.’ Friedrich Nietzsche suggested, ‘In heaven all the interesting people are missing.’

Is that really what it will be like?

Will it be an eternal disembodied boredom?

It’s easy to see why people might be uninterested in the afterlife. Yet we can’t quite bring ourselves to throw the whole idea out. We still like to think that our loved ones have gone somewhere better. We’re just increasingly unsure about where, what and how. I seldom attend a funeral at which there isn’t a mention of a deceased loved one who is ‘looking down’, is in a ‘better place’ or is still ‘with us’ in some way.

It all raises the question: if there is eternal life, what is it like?

1. Eternal life will be physical

There is a lot of confusion, as we’ve seen, with most of our images coming from popular TV and film portrayals – blue sky, white fluffy clouds, long robes – and, to be honest, it does look pretty underwhelming.

The Bible, however, describes eternal life very differently. Jesus himself speaks about his Father’s house – a place with many rooms (which sounds more like a palace than an ordinary house). The last book of the Bible, Revelation, describes a beautiful city with grand walls and gates, and a garden-oasis with a crystal-clear river and fruit-laden trees. 

Our eternal life won’t be a disembodied floating through space. It will be a physical material existence – we will see, hear, touch, taste and smell – in a place more wonderful than we can ever imagine.

2. Eternal life will be perfect

Life here is often good but we know it’s not perfect. Most of us live with a varying mixture of good and bad, health and ill-health, wealth and want, trial and tribulation. Whatever good we do experience here is not perfection – that still awaits us.

The apostle Paul wrote that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9). The Puritan Richard Baxter describes the perfection of God as being like an ocean:

‘All good whatsoever is comprised in God and all in the creatures are but drops of this ocean.’

Baxter is saying that, in God’s new creation, we will experience the perfection of the good things we enjoy on earth. If we think of God’s perfection as being like an ocean, our best experiences are a drop in that ocean. Eternal life will be a journey of learning and experiencing more and more of an ocean of perfection. 

3. Eternal life will be . . . eternal

To state the obvious: eternal life will be eternal.

But let’s consider the implications.

You’ll have heard that ‘time flies when you’re having fun’. I expect that will be true to an infinite degree in the new creation.

We sometimes think of eternity as being a really, really long time. How then is it that we won’t become bored? Our conception of duration and time is rooted in our present existence, in which the passing of time can be subject to frustration and boredom.

Eternal life isn’t a really, really, really long time. It’s a different mode of existence. Currently, we are creatures bound by a particular understanding of time. The Bible tells us that, for the eternal God, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day. Could it be that, in the new creation, eternity means we won’t suffer the frustrations related to the passing of time as we now know it?

Whatever our experience, we can be assured that time will never drag.

We sometimes encounter those moments that we wish could go on for ever: perhaps hanging out with friends at the beach, enjoying a special meal or a holiday somewhere beautiful. We wish time would drag so that we could stay where we are and enjoy it some more. Yet it cannot be. We still have to go home, do the washing-up, iron clothes and get the kids to school the next morning.

I suspect our eternal life will be more like that ‘moment’ of deep joy, peace, happiness and satisfaction, a ‘moment’ that will last for ever, in which we won’t even have to worry about clocks or chores. The other benefit to eternal life is that, unlike the aftermath of a holiday of a lifetime, we’ll never have those sad feelings of our joy coming to an end. Here’s Richard Baxter again: ‘The very thought of once leaving it would else embitter all our joys; and the more would it pierce us because of the singular excellencies which we must forsake.’9 In this case, eternity – an eternal future with God – means nothing less than joy without end.

4. Eternal life will be life with God himself

The best thing about heaven and the new creation is that God himself will be there.

That might not excite you as much as the thought of eternity to enjoy beaches, barbecues, mountains and music, but I want to show you that the greatest reward of eternal life is God himself.

Think of it this way.

Who do you most enjoy spending time with now? Perhaps it’s time alone with a partner, playing with your children, or eating steak and drinking whisky with good mates. What is it about those times together that are so fulfilling and refreshing? I guess it might be the deep conversation, laughing together or just being with someone who understands you and cares about you. There are some people whom we love being around because we can absolutely be ourselves. We don’t even have to try. It’s just pleasurable and enjoyable. We look forward to such times. Now, magnify all those feelings by a million; you’re still not close to the experience of being with God. He is the one who really gets us, is interested in us, fulfils us and energizes us.

We can only begin to imagine what it will be like to have that perfect relationship with God and with one another. It will be totally unspoiled by us or by others. We will know happiness and fulfilment of the kind we’ve tasted only occasionally and fleetingly. Eternal life isn’t all harps and halos. It’s about being more human, perfectly human, in a perfect and beautiful physical world, and enjoying one another, enjoying creation and enjoying God. It will be mind-bendingly beautiful. It will be free from all hurt and harm. Without end.

Here is one final quote from Richard Baxter that is well worth reading and then rereading:

In the meantime, let this much kindle thy desires, and quicken thine endeavours. Up, and be doing; run and strive and fight and hold on, for thou hast a certain, glorious prize before thee. God will not mock thee: do not mock thyself, nor betray thy soul, by delay or dallying, and all is thine own . . .

We hope this blog post is an encouragement to you - if you are are exploring faith, we'd say the best thing to do is find a local church. In the meantime, the books below might help you explore this thing called 'eternal life'...