HEAVEN MISPLACED (Review)

Heaven Misplaced: Christ’s Kingdom on Earth (2008) by Douglas Wilson is one of those books you wish you had read instead of spending your 40 years wandering around the wilderness, walking down dry gullies, hearing foghorns in the sea of mist, driving up dead end streets, catching red herrings, following bum steers (bummer!), misinformation, disinformation, false information, exegetical fallacies, Scofield Bible notes – you’re getting the picture. Perhaps heaven is not where and what you had thought!

This gifted writer crams so much into so few pages (140 or so), correcting many common Bible misunderstandings while engagingly teaching what it actually says.

Wilson uses humour. E.g., in his Brief Glossary he writes, “The millennium is a thousand years of peace that Christians enjoy fighting over.” (p. 132).

Getting to the heart of what Heaven Misplaced is all about, Wilson writes,

 

“The danger of radical individualism can be clearly seen from this phrase in verse 2 [of 1 Cor. 2]: “not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” I grew up in a church which thought it was the responsibility of the church to preach the gospel every Sunday, with an invitation every Sunday. And why? Because that church assumed that preaching “Christ and him crucified” was only about getting souls into heaven and nothing more. And because Paul’s words were taken in a truncated way, this gospel was limited to the salvation of invisible souls after they depart from this world. This gospel had little to say about life here on earth.

But note how Paul approaches this. His message is a message that topples the princes of this world, and everything that previously had been under their jurisdiction – and this meant the arts, politics, education, scientific investigation, building fences, cooking, and anything else that men might do. Rightly understood, preaching Christ and Him crucified is as broad as the world.” (pgs. 50-51).  

This book is a powerful foglamp shining on the road out of hazy theology. It is for anyone not yet clear where to look or even what heaven is, (yes, and it gives directions how to get there). While being ponderously pithy, Heaven Misplaced is also clear and concise.