I Believe in Heaven on Earth

I BELIEVE IN HEAVEN ON EARTH
By Tony and Patricia Higton
Hodder & Stoughton. 194 pages. £6.99
ISBN 0 340 71390 9

This book, the fourth in the new 'I believe' series, commends itself by the importance of its subject and the eirenic spirit in which it is presented - for within the bounds of reverent submission to the Scriptures as the Word of God devout students of eschatology have not always agreed and not infrequently taken each other by the throat!
The Higtons earn our gratitude for a remarkably wide and calm coverage. Four chapters clear the ground: what will happen? Is there life after death? Is hell outdated? Will Jesus return? Four chapters follow, on the 'millennium', understanding the Old Testament, modern Israel, and interpreting Revelation, with a concluding summary and application.
From the start, telltale expressions prepare the reader for the later admission that the writers hold a pre-millenarian view. If they are unlikely to persuade anyone out of a different eschatological position, it is partly because their book attempts too much and leaves too many questions unanswered.
This is particularly true in the chapter on the Old Testament, which on the one hand grapples seriously with the concept of 'fulfilment' but is equally seriously defective in supposing that those who do not expect a (so-called) 'literal' fulfilment of, for example, the territorial promises 'spiritualise' them.
They do not grapple in depth with John 18.36 and seem not to mention Acts 15.15ff. The chapter on Revelation is too hurried to be helpful.
A number of offbeat ideas are aired: that the new heaven and new earth are 'elsewhere' while the present earth is left to the damned; that the date of the Lord's return is not yet fixed but adjustable in relation to events on earth; the people of the Old Testament are assumed to be 'Jews' and the Old Testament assumed to be 'their' book. Life is never dull with the Higtons.

Alec Motyer

© Evangelicals Now - September 1999
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Main Articles

• Christ on the airwaves
  A look at Christian music and spreading the gospel on radio
• Holy molars!
  Questions raised by the recent dental phenomena of gold fillings and other alleged miracles
• Pentecost or Plotinus?
  A discussion of the origins of word-faith teaching being Plotinus not the Pentecostal movement
• A trip to the dump
  The story of a remarkable church growing among the garbage collectors of Cairo in Egypt
• Cloning . . . Cloning . . . Cloning
  The science behind cloning for reproductive and therapeutic purposes
• Augustine of Hippo
  The story of the champion of free grace and one of the church's greatest theologians

Other articles

• The Matrix
• You in Your Small Corner - the elusive dream of evangelical unity - How baptism is a major obstacle to unity - an extract from the book You in Your Small Corner - the elusive dream of evangelical unity
• Intimacy - CD review
• Welsh Calvinistic Methodism
• Knowing the Times - An extract from the book Knowing the Times on evangelical unity
• God, Revelation and Authority
• Beware the New Prophets
• Read Mark Learn - John's Gospel
• A New Start? Hopes and Dreams for the New Millennium
• Religion in Victorian Britain - 1 - Traditions
• Now You See It - Using Illusion to Present the Gospel
• I Believe in Heaven on Earth