Afternoon Seminars & Workshops

 

OX-01 — Bringing a New Earth Perspective to Present Earth Sufferings

Randy Alcorn

Romans 8 depicts the present creation (including people and animals) groaning under the curse of sin and death, yet anticipating God’s promise of future deliverance that will come with the resurrection of God’s children to life on a redeemed earth.

It is in light of this reality that we should understand Romans 8:28, that the God of providence and grace is working all things together for an eternal good, and 8:18 that our present sufferings will be overshadowed by future glory. Lewis addressed this in different ways in The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed and The Great Divorce, and in “The Weight of Glory” and “The World’s Last Night,” as well as in The Last Battle.

 

CAM-01 — Heaven and the New Earth in the Bible and C. S. Lewis

Randy Alcorn

The Bible promises the God will dwell forever with his people on a New Earth. The term appears in Isaiah 65 and 66, 2 Peter 3 and Revelation 21, but the place is also depicted in Isaiah 60, Ezekiel 47, Revelation 22 and other Scriptures we often restrict to an old earth millennial kingdom. The church has embraced an unbiblical Christoplatonism that disregards as unspiritual the body and the physical world, and idealizes the disembodied state. In contrast, Scripture elevates the blood-bought promise of physical resurrection and life in eternal community with God and transformed humans — active, engaged, worshipping, creative, and productive — on a thoroughly redeemed earth, where joy will be the air we breathe. We will look deeper into the Lewis passages touched on in the plenary session about Heaven and the New Earth.

 

Randy Alcorn — Author and Founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries, which is dedicated to teaching biblical truth and drawing attention to the needy and how to help them. He is the best-selling author of over 40 books, in thirty languages, with five million copies in print, including Heaven, The Treasure Principle, and his 2002 Gold Medallion-winning novel, Safely Home.  He also writes for periodicals, and he has been a frequent teacher and speaker at conferences worldwide as well as on television and radio. Prior to starting EPM, he served as a co-pastor in the Portland, OR area for 13 years.