By Eryl Davies
Evangelical Press. 256 pages. £7.95
ISBN 0 85234 423 6
Dr. Davies has written a book that is the product of a fine mind and a warm heart. Heaven is not the easiest subject on earth upon which to write. Many who have gone before him have become so entangled by the difficulties, various speculations and the sorting out of eschatological views that the appetite for the main course has been sadly dulled. However, here we are rarely allowed to lose sight of the mountain-top and the breathtaking view at the journey's end.
The book is divided into four parts, the first of which has quite an evangelistic thrust, stressing that only the regenerate will ever be there. Therefore, repentance and faith are explained to the non-believer or perhaps to the young Christian.
In the second section, we have the whole concept of heaven itself. Eryl Davies grapples with the intermediate state and plunges into the discussion involving the differences between 'heaven' and 'the new heaven and the new earth'.
The third section is about being there. Bernard Shaw reckoned that the conventional concept of heaven was 'so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable, that nobody ever ventured to describe a whole day there, though plenty of people had described a day at the seaside'. Of course, the problem is that it is God's present to us all wrapped up, and therefore we only have clues from the general shape of the package. However, Dr. Davies has kept faithfully to the contours of Scripture and made particular appeal to our sense of home, security and the wonder of seeing Christ. The entire question of rewards is obviously considered to be too messy to handle in the main body of the work and is farmed out to the appendix.
The final section is the challenge. In terms of the guarantee of getting there, the doctrine of election is brought into play, but there is much evangelistic material here. The reader is left with the question: 'Will I meet you there?'
This is a well-balanced book with teaching, anecdote and personal applications. There are some very touching references made to Martyn Lloyd-Jones, clearly a close friend of the writer.
Who is the book for? The biblically-aware non-believer seems to be in view quite a bit, but it is mainly the 'ordinary' Christian who will find this helpful and make him hungry for heaven.
