Heaven, Earth, and the Fullness of the Gospel
In the previous lesson, we introduced the biblical worldview and examined why it is so foundational—how it shapes our message, our mission, and our manner of life. To rightly grasp where the message of Scripture and the story of the end of days are headed, we must first understand the framework of the biblical worldview. This is where ideas move from theory to practice—where we begin to explore their implications, ramifications, and applications in daily life.
The “Physics” of Heaven and Earth
Scripture gives us a coherent way to think about heaven and earth that most believers never articulate: both realms are spiritual and physical. We tend to assume “earth = physical” and “heaven = spiritual,” but the Bible doesn’t draw that line. Angels and the Lord Himself eat, speak, sit, stand, travel, and even wrestle (Gen 18–19; 32). After the incarnation, the risen Jesus eats fish and cooks breakfast (John 21). Heaven has voices, songs, thrones, and altars—tangible realities—just as earth has spiritual realities (unclean spirits, the human spirit, the Holy Spirit’s activity).
Humans are presently bounded to earth and the lower heavens; God and His angels move freely between realms. We may not grasp how passage between realms works, but the Bible insists that it does.
Two Major Rivals to a Biblical Worldview
Two worldviews regularly collide with the Bible’s:
Modern secular naturalism: Reality is only what can be empirically observed. By definition, the supernatural is excluded. (Ironically, some scientific models allow for unobservable dimensions, but in practice naturalism resists any spiritual ontology.)
Greek philosophical spirituality: Less obvious—and often more corrosive—this stream treats “spiritual” as non-physical and views materiality as inferior. This has shaped much Christian imagination, often more than secular science, smuggling in a disdain for embodied creation and a disembodied view of salvation.
Naturalism dismisses the Bible’s heaven-and-earth schema as ancient myth. Hellenistic spirituality “spiritualizes” it—retaining religious language while hollowing out the embodied character of biblical hope.
Why This Matters for the Gospel
A biblical worldview keeps redemption grounded in real life. God’s kingdom isn’t just a feeling or a vague idea—it’s the promise of a real future. One day, the Messiah will return, raise the dead, bring justice, and restore creation. That future hope gives meaning to how we live now. It fuels our daily choices—turning from sin, pursuing holiness, loving our neighbors, and persevering through trials—because our bodies, our actions, and this world matter to God. The gospel is not about escaping from creation; it’s about God’s unwavering commitment to renew it.
Is the Bible Just Another Ancient Myth?
Some critics today claim that the Bible is no different from the myths of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, or Canaan. They point to stories like the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Baal myths and say all of these cultures shared the same “primitive” picture of the universe: a flat earth sitting on pillars, a solid metal sky holding back waters, and stars fixed in a dome overhead. From this perspective, the Bible is written off as just another ancient myth—interesting, maybe, but ultimately false.
You’ve probably seen the charts online that claim to show this “ancient cosmology.” The argument seems simple: if the Bible reflects the same outdated worldview, then it belongs in the same category as all the other myths. But this reasoning doesn’t actually hold up.
The Bible Uses Everyday Language, Not “Primitive Science”
It’s true that the Bible speaks in the same everyday terms that people still use today—“sunrise,” “the heavens above,” “waters below.” But that’s observational language, not a scientific claim. The Bible never says, “The earth is flat” or lays out a mythological model of the cosmos. It simply describes things in a way that made sense to its first hearers and still makes sense to us. After all, even now we talk about the sun “rising” and “setting,” though we know it’s the earth that moves.
The key point is this: nowhere does the Bible make a statement that clashes with modern scientific observation. Its language is flexible enough to be understood across time without locking us into an outdated worldview.
Why “All Myths Are the Same” Doesn’t Work
When you actually read ancient myths, they aren’t consistent with one another. They’re full of gods who are part monster, cosmic battles, and strange fantasy creatures. While there are broad themes that repeat—like creation stories or flood accounts—the details are wildly different. To say they’re all basically the same, and then toss the Bible into that same pile, is lazy thinking.
Where real similarities exist—like flood stories found in hundreds of cultures worldwide—the most straightforward explanation isn’t that the Bible copied pagan myths. It’s that other cultures preserved distorted fragments of the original event described accurately in Scripture. The echoes remain, but the clarity is in the Bible.
Unlike those myths, the Bible tells its stories as real history. They read plainly, without monsters or magical exaggerations, and they carry the weight of truth rather than fantasy.
It’s clear that many ancient myths contain fragments of truth—but those fragments are distorted. The further a story drifts from the biblical account, the stranger and more fantastical it becomes. That’s why the existence of hundreds of “flood myths” across the world does not prove that the Bible borrowed from them. Quite the opposite: it confirms that the flood really happened. The Bible records the true event, while the pagan versions are corrupted echoes, watered-down retellings of the original. The same is true when we compare biblical cosmology with pagan cosmologies. The Bible preserves truth; the pagan myths preserve distortions.
This is why the Bible’s account stands apart—it presents itself as history, not fantasy. The pagan stories are filled with monsters, half-gods, and absurd embellishments, while Scripture speaks plainly and coherently. Where similarities exist, they are not evidence of borrowing, but of later cultures preserving fragments of an older, true tradition.
The Greater Threat: Greek Philosophy
Having dealt with modern critics who lump the Bible with myths, let’s turn to what I believe is an even greater challenge: the Greek philosophical worldview.
Greek philosophy is a vast subject, but its roots go back to figures like Socrates (470–399 BC), Plato (427–347 BC), and Aristotle (384–322 BC)—all before the time of Christ. With Alexander the Great’s conquests, Greek thought spread across the Middle East, all the way to India. By the first century, Hellenistic philosophy deeply influenced the Jewish world. Many Jews—“Hellenistic Jews”—grew up with Scripture but also absorbed Greek ideas, blending the biblical worldview with pagan philosophy.
After Jesus, as Gentiles entered the church, the same thing happened: Christians who had been raised in Greek culture began to merge the gospel with philosophical ideas. This syncretism has left a deep imprint on Christian thought to this day.
At the core of Platonic philosophy is dualism:
The physical realm (earth, body, matter) = bad, shadowy, corrupt.
The spiritual realm (immaterial, invisible, heavenly) = good, pure, ultimate.
In contrast, the biblical worldview is holistic:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Both are good.
The physical is good. The spiritual is good. Sin and rebellion corrupted both realms (Gen 3; Gen 6), but creation itself was not evil.
This distinction is critical. The Greek worldview despises the body and longs to escape it. The Bible affirms the body and promises its redemption.
Socrates himself claimed his insights came from a spiritual being he called the daimonion—a word strikingly close to demon. In Plato’s Apology (31c–32d), Socrates says that ever since childhood he has experienced a divine “sign” (daimonion) that warns him against certain actions but never tells him what to do. He describes it not as a reasoning process, but as a kind of inner voice or divine check.
Importantly: in Greek, daimon (δαίμων) didn’t mean “demon” in the later Christian sense of an evil spirit. It was a broader word meaning a spiritual being, sometimes a guardian or intermediary between gods and humans.
Early church father Tertullian noted that Socrates admitted to being guided by a spirit. If true, Greek philosophy begins not with divine revelation but with demonic deception. No wonder it stands in such sharp contrast to the biblical worldview. Other Christian writers like Justin Martyr and Lactantius also critiqued pagan philosophy as being guided by deceitful spirits.
How Greek Thought Warped the Gospel
When the gospel is filtered through a Greek lens, it gets reduced to this:
The body is bad.
Salvation is escaping the body.
The goal is to die, leave the flesh behind, and live forever as a spirit in heaven.
This is not the biblical gospel—it’s a corruption. Yes, Scripture teaches that to die is to be present with Christ (2 Cor 5:8). But the Bible’s ultimate hope is not disembodied existence in heaven. It is the resurrection of the dead, the renewal of all things, and the reign of Messiah on a restored earth.
The good news is far greater than “we don’t go to hell” or “we float in heaven forever.” The good news is that God will redeem creation itself, raise our bodies, and dwell with us in a renewed heavens and earth.
A Stark Example
To see how dangerous the Greek worldview can be, consider the tragic cult behind the Hale-Bopp comet in the 1990s. Their leader taught that salvation meant leaving the body to become spirits aboard a cosmic ship. They believed the body was a shell to be discarded, and tragically, they committed mass suicide to “escape” it.
This is simply Greek dualism taken to its extreme. The same thinking—“the body is bad, the spirit is good, salvation is escape”—still colors much of Christianity today, though in softer form. Many believers reduce the gospel to: “When you die, you go to heaven forever.”
But biblically, that is not the final hope. The final hope is resurrection, judgment, and renewal. Not escape, but restoration.
The True Hope: Resurrection and Renewal
Yes—we long to go to heaven rather than hell. But our ultimate hope is not to escape the body forever. Our hope is the resurrection of the body—its redemption and renewal. A body restored to what God intended from the beginning: like Eden, clothed in immortality, free from sin, decay, sickness, and death.
The Bible’s Promise
Greek philosophy distorted the Christian hope, but the Bible is clear. Our expectation is not “heaven forever”—it is the renewal of all things. Paul writes in Romans 8:22–23:
“We know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
Creation itself groans for renewal. We too groan, because the Spirit lives in us. What are we waiting for? Our adoption, our full inheritance as God’s sons and daughters—the resurrection, the redemption of our bodies.
The Spirit within us is a down payment, a guarantee that God will raise these mortal bodies into immortal, incorruptible glory. Just as Jesus ate, drank, and spoke with His disciples after His resurrection, so will we. We will see with our eyes, hear with our ears, taste and touch with renewed senses. Not in frail, decaying bodies, but in bodies transformed by immortality—bodies like His.
That is the biblical good news.
Paul’s Warning Against Greek Philosophy
Paul saw the danger of Greek philosophy in the early church. In Colossians 2:8–10 he warns:
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.”
Notice that—in bodily form. Paul directly confronts the Greek dualistic idea that “the physical is bad, only the spiritual is good.” He insists that the fullness of God Himself was pleased to dwell in a body. God created the heavens and the earth, and both were good. Don’t let philosophy rob you of that truth.
God’s Faithfulness to Creation
At the heart of the biblical worldview is this: God is faithful to what He created. He is faithful to His people, to the earth, and to the covenant promises. From creation to fall, from Abraham to Moses to David, God’s plan has always pointed forward to restoration.
The cross of Jesus secures that plan. Through His atonement, we are forgiven and cleansed so that we may inherit the promised renewal. Without His blood, no one can stand before Him. But with it, we are sealed by the Spirit, guaranteed a share in the resurrection and the age to come.
This is not only personal salvation. It is cosmic. As Paul writes in Ephesians 1:10:
“…that in the fullness of times He might sum up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.”
Or in Colossians 1:19–20:
“For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace through the blood of His cross.”
This is what Peter proclaimed in Acts 3:19–21:
“Repent… so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the period of the restoration of all things, about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.”
From the beginning, the prophets pointed here. To the day when Jesus returns, when heaven and earth are reconciled, when everything broken is made new.
Revelation 21 gives us the clearest picture:
“I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is among men. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people… He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there will no longer be any death, mourning, crying, or pain, for the former things have passed away.’ And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’”
This is the essence of the gospel. Not escape, but restoration. Not abandoning creation, but renewing it. Not living forever as spirits, but living forever as resurrected sons and daughters of God in a redeemed heaven and earth.
The Call to Repentance
This is why we repent. This is why we flee from the corruption of this world system and hide ourselves in the cross of Christ. Because judgment is coming, and only those covered by His blood will inherit the renewal of all things.
That is the gospel. That is the good news. God is making all things new.
Conclusion: Our Message and Mission
God is faithful to His creation, and He will bring His promises to completion. In fact, He is already at work—right now—in the middle of history, unfolding His plan. And that means we are living in the middle of the story. Understanding this helps us know our role, our message, and our mission.
Our message to the world is clear:
Repent, for the day of the Lord is near. Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, for the day of restoration is coming.
This is not a casual call. It is urgent. It burns like fire, it presses like a furnace. Therefore: flee from this world’s corruption. Take refuge in the cross. Hide yourself in Christ. Cover yourself in the blood of the Lamb. Put your faith in Jesus, and you—together with all who believe—will inherit the age to come, the kingdom of God, the promised restoration of all things.
This is the heart of our mission. This is why we proclaim the gospel. Not a Greek, Platonic distortion of the gospel, but the full gospel—the good news of the renewal of all things.
And so this concludes our introduction to the biblical worldview and the gospel. We’ve seen why this foundation matters: because without it, the message becomes skewed, corrupted, and incomplete. With it, the gospel shines in its fullness.
In the next session, we’ll begin exploring the biblical covenants—the promises of God that anchor our hope. Through them we’ll discover the nature of the gospel, the nature of the age to come, and the nature of what His return will truly accomplish.