The cover of an old Amazing Stories magazine.
Science fiction afficionadoes, imagine harnassing stars and moving them from place to place. Or contemplate living on a planet where everyone pays one another in good deeds. Think what it would be like to meet aliens for the first time, or to live for eons upon eons. How wonderful it would be to terraform a world! Or suppose you could set your foot into the fabric of space and “feel” your way into another dimension. Think of the implications of a time machine which permits you to examine the past and answer historical questions. What if the great figures of yesteryear could be brought together in one place and you could meet them? What if you could live forever?
For many years I was an avid reader of science fiction. From Balmer’s When Worlds Collide to Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld I read fascinating speculations and longed to enter the authors’ worlds. As I grew in my Christian faith, however, science fiction began to turn me off because of its increasing trend toward hubris, occult, pornography and atheism. It was no longer the delight it had been.
However, all was not lost. Fulfillment of all the desires evoked in me by science fiction is promised in God’s word.
Jesus was able to pass through walls. Clearly he moved through other dimensions. We are to have a body like his with the same ability.
To us angels are aliens. We will meet them.
And we will meet every person ever saved by the blood of Christ. Imagine what histories of God’s dealings with men we will learn! Mathematics shows us that we can spend an infinite amount of time with every person in heaven even if we see each person only once every billion or trillion or quintillion years, because an infinite series (such as prime numbers), no matter how far separated or how sporadic, remains an infinite series.
It appears we will terraform worlds. Paul teaches us that all creation groans until the Sons of God are revealed. Evidently at that time we are going to fix some broken things.
In heaven it seems we will pay our way in love and praise.
And there will be ages upon ages of new experiences (the Hebrew for “forever” is “ages of ages.”) Paul speaks of “ages to come.” Apparently God has planned many different learning levels, each encompassing an age, until at last everything is put in God and God is all and in all. Then the inventor of everything, the creator of the longings which find dim expression in science fiction, will be our eternal delight.
What promises these are! No wonder Jesus compared the kingdom to a pearl of great price which we ought to sell everything to obtain. “Make every effort to enter the kingdom of heaven,” he said. No wonder those barred from the kingdom will go with weeping and wailing.
Lord, let us put nothing in this ephemeral world above gaining that kingdom.
