Author: Lutzer, Erwin
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Rick Shrader‘s Review:
This is a 2015 book by Erwin Lutzer, long-time pastor of The Moody Church in Chicago. Lutzer’s writings are usually very solid and reliable. This book consists of 8 chapters covering the Christian process of dying, good information on both heaven and hell, and a very helpful chapter on what believers can know about those who have gone on before us. Of various discussed and disputed views, Lutzer holds to a two-compartment theory of Hades; that there likely are degrees of hell depending on actions in this life; that spirits in heaven may not need an intermediate body; that those in heaven don’t need to know what we are doing on earth; and that infants do go to heaven when they die before an age of accountability. His chapter on the New Jerusalem is more coherent than many New Creationists today. He believes the New Jerusalem may exist in heaven now but the old earth and heaven will be done away with, and the new earth will be totally new. He does, like New Creationists, suppose that we may be doing various job-related activities all over the new heaven and earth. Being a good premillennialist, he does not unnecessarily mix millennial passages with eternity.
One interesting (initially confusing) aspect is his definition of hell being separate from Hades, Sheol, Gehenna, and Tartarus, yet hell is still cast into the Lake of Fire in Revelation 20. The problem is that the word “hell” is always a translation of one of those biblical words. In addition, he makes current suffering in Hades not as bad as future suffering after the judgment in the Lake of Fire. However, if you can sort through these definitions, the book is still a profitable book for the Christian looking for answers about death, heaven, and hell.