Gomes’s book is also well-written, but in a straightforward, this-is-what-the-Bible-teaches sort of way. He brings compositional verve to his book. Alcorn is, after all, a novelist in addition to being a Bible teacher.

Alcorn’s book is not only informative it is also inspiring, which may account for its popularity.

Gomes doesn’t even bother to address such ideas. For example, Alcorn speculates that we may be able to travel to vast sections of outer space, and maybe even back in time to view past historical events.

Alcorn also mines the Scriptures, but is more willing to speculate about the eternal state than is Gomes.

Gomes adheres closely to what the Bible teaches or suggests while tending toward silence when something isn’t explicitly taught or inferable from the Bible.

The most obvious observable difference between these two books is that Gomes writes about both heaven and hell.

Both agree that eternal life is only promised to those who put their faith in Christ in this life, that purgatory is not a thing, that God will assign rewards to believers, that we will know each other in the eternal state, that marriage won’t exist and that we will be constantly learning and carrying out new God-given responsibilities.

(Actually, neither mentions marshmallows that was my addition.) Both authors correctly support the idea that “heaven” for resurrected believers will be a physical existence on a reconstituted earth-and that in our resurrected (physical) bodies we will, say, be able to eat good food.

Both authors agree that the picture of disembodied spirits floating around on white clouds and eating marshmallows is the incorrect view of the eternal state.

Their primary concern is with what the Bible teaches about heaven. Unlike many popular books about heaven that are merely personal reflections from people who claim to have had near-death experiences in which they visited heaven, neither of our two authors place much weight on such testimonies.

Both authors seek to present a biblical case for what heaven is like.

So I was delighted to read my Talbot colleague Alan Gomes’s brand new book 40 Questions About Heaven and Hell. A decade or so ago I read Randy Alcorn’s influential book: Heaven. What follows is not a full-fledged review of either book, but a short list of comparisons and contrasts between these two books. In fact, thinking about the brevity of life in comparison to the length of eternity was what got me on track and motivated me to really follow Christ as a teenager. Ever since the day God got a hold of my life as a teenager, I have wanted to learn everything I could about heaven.

Tell me about heaven randy alcorn