Are Christians returning back to a Jewish notion of Heaven?
That’s one of the many questions Josh Graves, the lead minister for Otter Creek Church in Nashville, TN, discussed with me in our recent Skype interview about his new book Heaven on Earth: Realizing the Good Life Now. Graves contends that Jesus had “a very Jewish belief of Heaven, as in a realm in which all of God’s activity, dreams and longings are true.” And Jesus came into the world to show us this future and invite us to begin living it now.
But how? Graves says all the instruction for experiencing the good life now can be found in the short list of “blessings” Jesus gave us called the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12). As you’ll see in our interview below, Graves is passionate about the Kingdom of God being realized here on Earth through a fresh understanding of the Beatitudes, which he calls “an invitation to the way home, back to the heart of the Father.”
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