The older you get, the fewer marriages you attend and the more funerals you go to. So it is natural for older believers to spend more time thinking about heaven and the like. But any thoughts about the next life should have relevance for how we live our lives now. I have written about various related topics here on this, such as:
Here I seek to draw all these themes together, as I discuss a chapter from a book by one writer I quite appreciate. Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary has penned around a dozen quite helpful volumes. I have ten of them:
Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Eerdmans, 2011) All That God Cares About: Common Grace and Divine Delight (Brazos, 2020) Called to the Life of the Mind: Some Advice for Evangelical Scholars (Eerdmans, 2014) Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport: Making Connections in Today’s World (Zondervan, 2004) Divine Generosity (Eerdmans, 2024) The Challenges of Cultural Discipleship: Essays in the Line of Abraham Kuyper (Eerdmans, 2012) He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eerdmans, 2001) How To Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor (IVP, 2022) Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (IVP, 1992) When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Eerdmans, 2002)
In an earlier piece I said this about his 2002 book:
Twenty years ago Richard Mouw of Fuller Theological Seminary in California released a slim little volume called When the Kings Come Marching In. It is based on some lectures he had given a few decades earlier, looking at Isaiah 60. Before going any further, let me say this: If you like people like Abraham Kuyper and the notions of common grace and the cultural mandate, you will quite like Mouw, since he writes about these matters so very often. https://billmuehlenberg.com/2022/08/09/politics-creation-and-new-creation/
I quoted from that book in that article, and I want to do more of the same here, particularly looking at his chapter titled “What Are the Ships of Tarshish Doing Here?” In it he looks at the next life and how we might understand our calling for this life. He says this early on:
Our ultimate goal is to be raised up for new life, a resurrected life in which we will realize our true destinies as followers of Jesus Christ. And it is with regard to this condition, our ultimate goal, that the biblical imagery of the Holy City must be viewed as central.
The Christian life is directed toward a City, a place in which God’s redemptive purposes for his creation will be realized. If we think of the future life as a disembodied existence in an ethereal realm – which is not, I have suggested, our ultimate goal – then it is difficult to think of our present cultural affairs as in any sense a positive preparation for heavenly existence. But if we think of the future life in terms of inhabiting a Heavenly City, we have grounds for looking for some patterns of continuity between our present lives as people immersed in cultural contexts and the life to come. The Bible, I think, encourages us to think in these terms.
Nothing that is said in these meditations should be taken as suggesting that we can in any significant way “build” the Holy City here and now. The Holy City comes “down out of heaven from God” (Rev. 21:2); the Lord is its “builder and maker” (Heb. 11:10). The arrival of this City will constitute a radical break with the present patterns of sinful life.
But the Holy City is not wholly discontinuous with present conditions. The biblical glimpses of this City give us reason to think that its contents will not be completely unfamiliar to people like us. In fact, the contents of the City will be more akin to our present cultural patterns than is usually acknowledged in discussions of the afterlife.
Isaiah pictures the Holy City as a center of commerce, a place that receives the vessels, goods, and currency of commercial activity. Camels come from Midian, Ephah, and Sheba, carrying gold and frankincense (v. 6). The City receives the flocks of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth (v. 7). Ships from Tarshish, bearing silver and gold, sail into the City’s harbor (v. 9). And costly lumber — the cypress, the plane, and the pine — is imported from Lebanon (v. 13). Animal, vegetable, mineral — they are all brought into the renewed Jerusalem. (pp. 18-20)
When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalemby Mouw, Richard J. (Author)
And yes, he does raise the question of whether our pets will be with us in heaven. He notes how Isaiah 60 says animals will have a functional purpose in the world to come (see especially verses 6-7) and not just serve as playful pets. He says this about the matter:
[I]t is instructive to see just why Isaiah’s inclusion of animals and other non-human entities in the Holy City has little to do with our eschatological concerns about our own pets. When we wonder about heaven we often limit our attention to questions about how much of “me” or “mine” will be carried over into eternity. Will I still be able to pet Rover? Will Irving still be “my husband”? Will I be able to play golf or collect stamps? Will I eat pizza in heaven?
But Isaiah seems to be much more interested in “them” and “theirs.” When the Day of the Lord arrives, what will become of the sailing fleet of Tarshish? Is there any future in Kedar’s sheep-raising business? How will all the silver and gold in the world finally be disposed of?
Isaiah’s interests are more “cosmic” than ours often appear to be. Isaiah is, in contemporary jargon, interested in the future of “corporate structures” and “cultural patterns.” And his vision leads him to what are for many of us very surprising observations about the future destiny of many items of “pagan culture.” He sees these items as being gathered into the Holy City to be put to good use there. Thus, not only are his questions different from the ones we often ask about the afterlife, but his answers are different from those that many of us might give. If we were to ask Isaiah’s questions (about the future destiny of the items he mentions) in most contemporary gatherings of Christians, we would probably get much more negative answers. We – at least many of us – seem to assume that the present patterns and entities of corporate life will simply be done away with when the time for “heaven” comes. (pp. 23-24)
Mouw discusses how Revelation 21 and other passages speak about the role that the nations will play in the new Jerusalem. He writes:
But why is God so interested in gathering in this “glory” and “honor” and “wealth” from the nations? It is helpful to keep in mind Paul’s citation of the Psalmist: “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” The actual wording in Psalm 24:1 is even a little more helpful for our present purposes: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”
The “fullness,” or the “filling,” of the earth belongs to God. When God created all things in the beginning, he appointed the first man and woman to be stewards over the earth’s resources. He told them to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). The command to “fill” the earth here is not merely a divine request that Adam and Eve have a lot of babies. The earth was also to be “filled” by the broader patterns of their interactions with nature and with each other. They would bring order to the Garden. They would introduce schemes for managing its affairs. To “subdue” the Garden would be to transform untamed nature into a social environment. In these ways human beings would be “adding” to that which God created. This is the kind of “filling” that some Christians have had in mind when they have labeled this command in Genesis 1 – helpfully, I think – “the cultural mandate.” God placed human beings in his creation in order to introduce a cultural “filling” in ways that conformed to his divine will. (pp. 34-35)
He notes how this command to fill and subdue has been distorted because of sin. However, it will still continue in the sin-free world:
But God has not abandoned his good creation, even in its presently distorted form. The earth’s “filling” still belongs to him. He sent his own Son to rescue the entire cosmos from the effects of sin, and his rescue efforts take into account the facts of sinful historical development. As a number of writers have noted, the Bible begins with a Garden and ends with a City. When God originally created, he formed a rural place for human beings to occupy. But in bringing in his new creation, he will not recreate the original Garden. In the end time, the product of God’s transforming work will be a renewed City.
There is an important sense in which the Holy City is the Garden-plus-the-“filling.” During the course of history sinful human beings have created a misdirected “filing.” The things they have added to the Garden are, contrary to the Creator’s intentions, perverse and idolatrous. But God still insists that the “filling” belongs to him. And he will reclaim it at the end time, in doing so transforming it into the kind of “filling” that he originally intended for his creation. This is why the “wealth” and the “glory” and the “honor” of the nations must be gathered in when the Day of the Lord arrives. God’s ownership over the “filling” must be vindicated at the end of history.
Human beings have continued to fill the earth since Isaiah’s day. And the earth and all that is in it still belong to God. Therefore it takes little imagination to see that Isaiah’s message must somehow apply to our own day. We must not envy those instruments of commercial, technological, and military strength that cause people to boast today. God alone is our protector. Only the Lord is worth of our ultimate obedience and trust. Recognizing that God still intends to renew his creation, we must wait confidently for the appearance of the transformed City, when the ships of Tarshish will sail into the harbor, bearing silver and gold to the glory of God. (pp. 36-38)
He finishes by speaking about how some items of pagan culture will be preserved – but transformed:
Not all of the items of pagan culture will be gathered as is into the Holy City. A pagan ship will be changed into a redeemed ship – but it will still be a ship. But other things will have to have their identities, their basic functions, transformed; some of them will be changed almost beyond recognition. Swords will become plowshares. Spears will be changed into pruning hooks. . . . Once again, the emphasis here is on transformation, not destruction. God is still pictured as working with the “filling.” (pp. 40-41)
Mouw closes the chapter with these words:
God will work with what he has created and with the “filling” that human beings have added to what he made in the beginning. The fruits of history, even sinful history, will be gathered into the City, and made into fitting vessels of service.
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). We do not have to abandon the works of human culture to the Devil. All of the commercial and technological and military “stuff” that we see around us still belongs to the world that God has made and will someday redeem. Simply knowing that this is the case, or course, does not generate easy answers to many difficult practical questions.
But we must first of all allow this knowledge to shape the basic attitudes and expectations that we bring to our wrestling with the practical questions. We must train ourselves to look at the worlds of commerce and art and recreation and education and technology, and confess that all of this “filling” belongs to God. And then we must engage in the difficult business of finding patterns of cultural involvement that are consistent with this confession. If, in a fundamental and profound sense, God has not given up on human culture, then neither must we.
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” – even the ships of Tarshish. (p. 42)
All of which is well worth thinking about, whether or not we fully agree with all that has been said.
