What does the New Testament actually teach?
By Lanre Ogundipe
The controversy over Abel Damina’s teaching on heaven and the return of Christ deserves to be settled neither by sensational headlines nor by reflexive condemnation. The proper test is the New Testament itself. That requires hearing Damina’s fuller argument, rather than judging his position solely by its most provocative formulations.
Damina’s central challenge is to the popular conception of heaven as a distant physical destination somewhere beyond the sky to which Christians simply escape after death. On this point, his corrective has biblical substance. The New Testament teaches that believers already participate in heavenly reality. Paul says God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” Ephesians 2:6. He also says that “our conversation,” our citizenship, “is in heaven” Philippians 3:20. The Christian, therefore, does not wait until death before having any relationship with heavenly reality.
But the New Testament does not stop there. Present participation does not exhaust future expectation. Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” and immediately added, “I will come again, and receive you unto myself” John 14:2–3. Those words may carry dimensions deeper than the popular picture of heaven, but they are difficult to reduce to an exclusively present experience within the believer.
The same pattern runs through the New Testament. Believers already possess eternal life, yet Paul says they are “waiting for… the redemption of our body” Romans 8:23. Their life is already “hid with Christ in God,” yet “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear,” they will “appear with him in glory” Colossians 3:3–4. Christianity therefore lives in the tension of already and not yet. Christ is present, salvation is present, heavenly participation is present, but the consummation remains future.
Paul’s teaching on resurrection makes this especially clear. In 1 Corinthians 15, he declares that “we shall all be changed.” Mortality will put on immortality and corruption will put on incorruption. Transformation is unquestionably central to Christian hope. But in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, Paul also says that “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven,” the dead in Christ shall rise, and those who are alive shall be “caught up” to meet the Lord. The New Testament therefore holds together transformation, resurrection and the return of Christ. One should not be used to cancel another.
Nor is Christ’s return merely an inherited religious expression. After the ascension, the angels told the disciples: “This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven” Acts 1:11. The words “this same Jesus” are significant. Christian hope is centred on the risen Christ, not merely on an inward spiritual experience of Christ.
There is also the question of the believer’s state between death and resurrection. Paul speaks of his desire “to depart, and to be with Christ” Philippians 1:23. In 2 Corinthians 5:8, he speaks of being “absent from the body” and “present with the Lord.” Whatever theological distinctions may properly be made concerning the intermediate state, these passages sit uneasily with the proposition that there is no meaningful heavenly reality beyond the believer’s present earthly experience.
Yet the popular doctrine of heaven also requires correction. The Bible’s final picture is not of redeemed humanity permanently abandoning creation for a disembodied existence. Revelation 21 speaks of “a new heaven and a new earth” and of the New Jerusalem “coming down from God out of heaven.” Its climax is the declaration: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them.”
This is where Abel Damina’s corrective deserves serious consideration. The final Christian hope is not adequately described as simply “going to heaven.” Resurrection, renewed creation and God’s dwelling with His people belong to the biblical climax. But that correction does not require the elimination of heaven from the biblical picture.
The New Testament speaks of heaven as the realm from which Christ came John 6:38, the realm to which He ascended, the realm from which He will come again Acts 1:11, and the realm from which the New Jerusalem ultimately descends Revelation 21:2. It also speaks of believers as presently participating in heavenly realities Ephesians 2:6.
The difficulty, therefore, is not in saying that Damina has challenged an inadequate popular conception of heaven. He has. The difficulty arises when that corrective becomes so exclusive that other New Testament affirmations have to be reinterpreted away.
The believer participates in heavenly reality, but the believer is not the definition of heaven. Christ is with His people, but Christ is also coming. Salvation is experienced now, but its fullness awaits resurrection. The New Testament therefore holds together present heavenly participation, the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of creation. Any account of heaven that excludes any of these strands risks saying less than the New Testament says.
Ogundipe, Public Affairs Analyst, former President of Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists, and an itinerant Bible teacher writes from Abuja.