This is a comprehensive guide to everything the Bible says about our eternal home There are clear answers to 44 real questions about the afterlife, angels, resurrection, and the Kingdom of God.

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This is one of the best books about Heaven that I have ever read. It comes straight from scripture. Alcorn describes what we can learn about Heaven and backs his opinions up with various Bible verses. If Heaven is where we ultimately want to go, it's wise to see what to expect. He answers a lot of questions that people have. Two thumbs up for this one! ( )

A book that succeeds at failing. I had high hopes for this book which I had seen at the bookstore and wanted to read. It was fatally flawed but in design but at least I got the chance to look at it. Sometimes you stumble upon a great book out of nowhere, and sometimes a book's high expectations leave you flat. This was written awhile back so the tone might have been different if it were written today. This Christian author tries to weave all of his past reading/source material into this book which is always a disaster from any perspective. Alcorn tries to illustrate scripture's references to Heaven with a plausible correlation to life as it is lived un-redeemed on here on earth. The issue then becomes how can a real non-speculative version of heaven be given if there is no theology for that connection. Historically this has been called Natural Theology. Natural Theology is now out of fashion but is still studied by some academics and adhered to by the Catholic Church. Most Christian denominations eschew natural theology since they adopt Luther's non-scriptural dictum of salvation by faith alone. The phrase "by faith alone" restricts faith to not allowing reason to have any place in theological self awareness. Without reason having a place in faith self-understanding, all natural theology becomes nonessential and according to Luther as an idol supplanting God's grace. Natural theology is looking at created reality and seeing traces or outlines of God the creator in his creation. This is done without recourse to the articles of faith and divine revelation itself which are not against reason but above it, as Thomas Aquinas says.
Alcorn tries hard to reconcile the Christian "by faith alone" stance, but, here at least, can't accomplish his goal except to say that Heaven's scriptural descriptions as not exactly like things here on earth now. Which is something we all already knew. Much of theology is in fact apophatic (what God is not) but Natural Theology makes it much easier to not fall victim to speculations and stick closer to the New Testament scriptures and the Old Testament prophecies. I did like that he favored C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien and tried to use personal stories of his to illustrate examples. I wouldn't recommend this book but it's obvious Alcorn put a lot of work into researching it. Decent bibliography.

This book is part of my collection that really focuses in on Biblical Commentary more than anything else (including some well known authors in the theological world). All of these books haven't been read cover to cover, but I've spent a lot of time with them and they've been helpful in guiding me through difficult passages (or if I desire to dig deeper). ( )