What’s Heaven Like? The (Non-Boring) Future You Were Made For: Dane Ortlund

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What’s Heaven Like? The (Non-Boring) Future You Were Made For

Guest:Dane Ortlund

From the series:Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven (Day 2 of 3)

Air date:July 21, 2026

Dane (00:04):

The reason He raised Lazarus was as a foreshadowing of His own resurrection and to show, I believe, the contrast between them. Because when Jesus was raised, it was not like Lazarus. It was to an immortal existence. It was to the life of the age to come. Because when Jesus walked out of His tomb, He was the first instance of what the three of us and every listener in Christ is going to experience. If He was raised, we will be. Not with a Lazarus body back to mortal existence, but to an immortal existence.

Ann (00:46):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave (00:52):

And I’m Dave Wilson and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Ann (01:05):

So today we’re going to talk again with Dane Ortland about being Finally Home.

Dave (01:10):

Yeah, the hope of Heaven. That’s what we’re talking about. And I can’t think of a better person to talk about Heaven than Dane because not only is he going to be biblically sound; he’s going to give you an excitement and joy about heaven that you may not have ever experienced.

Ann (01:24):

Yeah. You guys, I feel like my mind was kind of blown talking about some of these things and you’re going to love this too.

Dane (01:34):

In Genesis 2, God put Adam in Eden to work it and keep it; gave him a job. In the book, I listed out 25 jobs that will go away and 25 that will not.

Ann (01:43):

Oh good. Let’s talk about some of those.

Dane (01:45):

All right. I’m curious what you all think about this one. So as I understand it, work is good. It’s corrupt, thorns and thistles will come. Our work has futility shot through it.

Dave (01:55):

Genesis 3, yeah.

Dane (01:56):

But work itself is inherently good.

Ann (01:59):

It’s a gift.

Dane (01:59):

It’s a gift. It’s good. As I understand it in the new Earth, every job that is a result of or connected to the fall goes away. Law, medicine, insurance, everything like this. I mean, many of our major industries today are going to melt away and those are good things.

Ann (02:19):

Transportation, that would be interesting to know, wouldn’t it?

Dane (02:23):

Yeah. I don’t know.

Ann (02:24):

I don’t either.

Dane (02:24):

I do think technology comes into the New Earth because of that verse right at the end of Revelation 21 where it says, “The kings of the earth bring their glory into the new earth.” I take that to mean the thousands of years of culture and technology built up in a rinsed clean, not fallen way come into the new heavens and the new earth. That’s how I understand that.

Ann (02:44):

That’s fascinating to think about.

Dane (02:45):

But then the jobs that will continue are those that are not Genesis 3 connected, but Genesis 1 and 2: chefs, artists, florists. I love to fish. I’m going to go fishing this afternoon. Fishing guides. Everything that is a matter of cultivating and enjoying this world that is not connected to the fall. So we will be working in a non-futile way. I welcome your thoughts, guys. Do I have some weird theology going here or what?

Ann (03:12):

No, I love talking about this.

Dave (03:14):

Well, I mean, I want to know is there going to be sports?

Ann (03:17):

I knew you were going to say that too.

Dave (03:19):

Is there competition?

Ann (03:20):

I think there is, don’t you?

Dane (03:21):

Oh yes.

Dave (03:22):

I mean, do I want to beat you at something?

Ann (03:23):

Without sin.

Dane (03:25):

Without sin. Yeah. So does that mean that we—

Dave (03:28):

Is the golf joke, you know the golf joke true?

Ann (03:30):

What’s the golf joke?

Dave (03:31):

You know the guy dies and says, “Hey, I want to know if there’s golf in heaven. Let me know somehow.” And the guy wires back and goes, “There’s golf in heaven.” He goes, “Really?” He goes, “That’s good news. Bad news is you’re in our foursome tomorrow.”

Ann (03:43):

That’s funny.

Dane:

Well, the way I understand it guys is there will be. Of course, that’s part of the kings bringing their glory into the new earth. Does that mean that we’ll never miss an easy golf putt? No. Of course we will.

Ann (03:58):

No, because that would take the fun out of it.

Dane (04:00):

Yeah. Here’s what it means. You miss that easy put? Because we are sinless, doesn’t bother you a bit. You are almost happy because your opponent is now going to beat you because you’re rejoicing in their joy.

Ann (04:14):

That’s what I mean. The competition part, the competition in us that’s bad will be gone, but we could still be competitive.

Dane (04:20):

Absolutely.

Ann (04:21):

But you’re right. We’ll rejoice. Even if we win or lose, which sounds insane. Look how happy you are that you think there’s sports.

Dane (04:29):

What are you thinking you want to do in the new earth, Dave?

Dave (04:32):

I want an eagle, a par five. That’s what I’d like to do.

Dane (04:36):

Nice.

Dave (04:36):

No, I mean, so many people in the church don’t understand this. They do not realize Heaven is Heaven on Earth. We will work. We will play. The radiance of the Son of God will be so illuminated there’ll be a sense of joy and peace we’ve never experienced in our life, but it won’t be a boring harp sing—

Ann (04:59):

Because we’re going to be working.

Dave (05:01):

Yeah.

Dane (05:02):

Guys, wouldn’t you agree, because we are not thinking rightly about Heaven, we view this short little fallen life as our one shot to enjoy golf and fishing and basketball. Ann, what’s something that you would love to do in the New Earth?

Ann (05:19):

I mean, for me, it’s people.

Dave (05:20):

She’s so spiritual, Dane.

Ann (05:21):

No, no. It’s like—

Dane:

Togetherness.

Ann:

This is what I think about.

Dave (05:26):

No, it is. She is about loving and enjoying people.

Ann (05:28):

Also, I think—and here’s one of the things—I want to see all the Bible stories played out in real time. I want to see it.

Dave (05:37):

Like a video.

Dane:

Wow.

Ann (05:37):

What really happened. And so when you’re talking about technology, will there be a way that we actually see?

Dave (05:43):

See the Red Sea parted?

Dane (05:45):

I’m curious to know. That’s one of those beyond what scripture give us.

Ann (05:47):

And the other thing is I’m really excited about is the Earth that will not be fallen, the beauty of the animals that we get to even hang out with, all of that.

Dane (06:00):

Oh, that’s going to be amazing. Yeah.

Dave (06:01):

Did you ever look at John Burke’s Imagine Heaven?

Dane (06:04):

No.

Dave (06:04):

Pastor down in Austin—we haven’t read it—did some stuff at our church. Again, it’s sort of controversial. What he did—this is years ago—is he studied near death experiences of real people that doctors say they really did have a near death, compared their stories—thousands of them—to what the Bible says about Heaven.

(06:25):

He said, “Is there congruence?” And I tell you what, you put that book down and—again, whether you believe this is true or not—you want to go there. He was saying they were talking about the colors of the earth. Nobody wants to come back here. They’re like, “I want to stay dead because it’s unbelievable.”

Ann (06:44):

And I think the older we get too; we feel a little closer to Heaven because more of the people that we have loved are there. And so that’s what I mean by people, like to be with my people, to hang out with them, to hear their stories, to laugh without having the stress, that’s kind of remarkable.

Dave (07:02):

Oh, for sure.

Dane (07:03):

No self-consciousness—

Ann (07:04):

Yes.

Dane (07:05):

—completely free.

Ann (07:05):

Yeah.

Dane (07:06):

So guys, let’s enjoy this for a minute, here what we’re talking about. I think we view retirement as I’m going to work for several decades, then I got a decade or two to be happy. Then I’ll be in Heaven in an eternal church service forever. And it’s like pining after that retirement back there. But actually, everything we’re longing for to enjoy when we’re like retired, we will enjoy in the New Earth except we’ll be in an eternal youthfulness. So we are free. The point is we’re liberated from needing to grasp after what we long for in this life. We don’t need to do that. We just enjoy this life as gift, Ecclesiastes, receive it as gift, knowing it’s here today, gone tomorrow, but we will have all of our longings and our earthy longings met in that New Earth. So it’s a liberating thing to know that.

Dave (08:00):

Do you have a perspective on retirement in this world, in this life?

Dane (08:06):

I have no problem with people retiring. I just think we do need to understand we are made to love and give. So if someone retires from paid employment, terrific. But we will become miserable if we turn our retirement into purely self-focus, but to give it to your grandkids, to your kids, to give your time. Who cares if you’re paid or not at that point, but we are actually, we’re happiest in self-giving love. That’s what we were built for. Actually, retirement creates the greatest opportunity to do that.

Ann (08:41):

And I think people, because we’ve talked to a lot of people that have retired that just have lost their identity and loss of purpose. But as again, as long as you have breath, you should be looking for, why am I still here? And as you said, we’re still here to impact and love people and that never ends. And ministry, the gospel, we get to always share that.

Dave (09:07):

We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife helped them when they needed it the most. And that’s what being a FamilyLife Partner is all about, helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here.

Ann (09:19):

And we’d love for you to join us. So click the donate button at FamilyLifeToday.com and become a partner today.

Dave (09:30):

Now do you feel since you wrote it and the book’s been out, do you feel people want to talk about heaven? Do they have an interest? I remember—

Dane (09:38):

Big time.

Dave (09:38):

—one time—I did this one time in 30 years of preaching at my church. I was doing a sermon on Heaven, and I decided to bring a casket on the stage. So I preached a whole sermon in front of this casket because I want everybody to think about, this is where we’re headed. We’re all going to be in one of these. Man, you should have seen the room when they came in, and they saw a casket up there and they were like—

Dane (09:58):

Who died?

Dave (09:59):

—what is happening? Are you doing a funeral? I’m like, I’m doing your funeral. We’re all going to be there. I just wanted people to think this is real. It could happen today, tomorrow. It could happen 20 years from now. We don’t know, but it’s going to happen. And then what happens? So do you feel like as you’ve written this and you talk to people, is this something on people’s minds?

Dane (10:16):

Very much. Ann, earlier you mentioned that we can often have a fear of what’s coming.

Ann:

Oh yeah.

Dane:

I think there’s a lot of fear wrapped around what is coming, both the process of dying and death. And I think there’s a lot of healthy curiosity. I would say guys, I mean, I wonder if you agree. I would say we don’t teach much about it in our local churches.

(10:35):

We don’t have lots of books on it. But you know what I discovered? The thinkers of past generations did. They really did. Now, part of that perhaps is because they had much higher mortality, younger mortality and you might wake up with a fever on a Tuesday and you’re dead that weekend. There’s no antibiotics. On the other hand, we today have ways of dying that they didn’t have; cars and planes and junk food that rots us from the inside out. So in any generation, I might be sitting eating lunch alone one minute and two minutes later standing before the Lord Jesus Christ without a body, my body back on earth with a large green grape lodged neatly in my windpipe. I mean, anything might take us out.

Ann:

Right.

Dave (11:27):

Of all things, you go to a green grape.

Dane (11:31):

Red grape? I don’t know. I mean—

Ann (11:33):

I think about that every time one of my grandkids now has a grape. It’s true.

Dane (11:38):

Life is precarious. Precarious. We’re under God’s hand, but life is precarious at a human level. And so yes, Dave, I strongly—don’t you think people want to know?

Ann (11:46):

Yes.

Dave (11:46):

Oh, they definitely want to know.

Ann:

Of course.

Dane (11:48):

What’s it going to be like? What’s coming?

Dave (11:50):

Yeah. And that’s why you do this as well as I do when you do a funeral. You have a captive audience that you get to talk about eternity.

Dane (11:59):

This might be kind of weird, but I like funerals much more than weddings.

Dave (12:03):

Why is that?

Dane (12:04):

Because at weddings, everyone is already happy. So it’s not a fertile environment to actually piercingly talk to the soul, to the heart. And also, I’m always afraid I’m going to screw something up when I’m doing a wedding. And I don’t want to screw it up for the bride and groom especially the bride. But at funerals, eternity is staring us in the face.

Ann (12:22):

Because they know that I will be in that place one time.

Dane (12:25):

Oh yeah.

Ann (12:26):

And I have no idea when. Every single one of us will die. And so you’re right, we’re captive to every word you say.

Dane (12:32):

We are powering down from about age 28 on. We are dying. We call it aging. A wine with time ages. Our bodies with time—I’m 47. I’m dying. I might be dead at 87, but I am inexorably on that treadmill towards that. So yeah, it’s good. It’s not morbid. It is healthy to ponder our mortality and what is coming.

Ann (12:56):

We recently had your parents on. How old are your mom and dad now?

Dane (13:00):

76.

Ann (13:01):

Do they talk about that as they get closer, older?

Dane (13:04):

Yes. I remember talking with my—he has said this to me a couple times recently on the phone, Ann. My hourglass only has a little bit of sand left. I don’t think he used that image, but it was something like that.

Ann (13:16):

That’s how you pictured it.

Dane (13:17):

I got a little bit of tread left on the wheel. I’m in the last lap here. I’m in the winter of my life. And my dad and mom feeling and knowing that acutely, they are giving themselves away.

Ann (13:28):

They’re very purposeful.

Dane (13:29):

Yes, as you two are in love.

Dave (13:32):

You just said we’re old.

Ann (13:32):

We are old.

Dave:

Yeah.

Dane (13:33):

Well, you’re a little older than me.

Ann (13:36):

They feel it. Your parents know that.

Dave (13:38):

We feel it.

Dane (13:39):

We do.

Dave (13:39):

There’s no question. Like you said, the body starts—I’m getting a new knee in a few months. It’s like I look forward to someday having the body I had when I was 20s.

Dane (13:49):

We go out about every 10 years, get a new car.

Dave (13:51):

Yeah.

Dane (13:52):

No problem.

Dave (13:53):

Yeah.

Dane (13:53):

You can’t go do that with your liver or your knee. I guess you can get a new knee, but we get one body and because of the fall it is frightfully short this life.

Dave:

Yeah.

Ann (14:04):

Let’s switch gears a little bit and go to—you have a chapter called The House of the Lord. It’s not something we really think about, but I thought this was kind of fascinating. Psalm 23:6, “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” We’ve all heard that. We know that. But when you tab that word forever, what house are we talking about here?

Dane (14:23):

Okay. Just tell me to shut up if I go on too long, here, okay.

Ann (14:26):

You can just nerd out on us. Go for it.

Dane (14:30):

The house in biblical language is the temple. Now hang on. What’s a temple? And tabernacle first and then temple. So they were wandering around in the tabernacle that the priest and Levites would pack up and move around.

Ann:

It’s a tent.

Dane:

A tent. And then eventually Solomon builds the temple about a thousand years before Jesus comes. Think RV home, tabernacle, temple. It’s just a tabernacle is a temple. It’s just portable. That’s all. Okay. What was the tabernacle? What was the temple? It was where holy God and unholy humanity connect. It’s where the immortal and the mortal, the sacred and the profane, the perfect and the imperfect, the divine and the human get together again the way they did in Eden. Now hang on. This is awesome. Eden was the first temple. When God—

Ann (15:19):

That’s kind of mind blowing right there because you’re just thinking this is just land. What do you mean it’s the first temple?

Dane (15:24):

Right. The little plot of land, little garden and God told Adam, “Work it and keep it.” Now those are kind of bland English words. Work and keep. So what? They’re the same two Hebrew words that the priests are told to do with the tabernacle later in the Old Testament.

Ann (15:37):

Oh, I didn’t know that.

Dane (15:39):

Okay. Work it and keep it. Adam was the first priest. He had perfect communion with God and was meant to facilitate it for others, and his calling was to spread God’s glory and make the entire planet earth Eden. Okay? A temple. A place where God and humanity dwelt in perfect harmony. Now, Adam and Eve sinned, God withdrew and a wall went up.

(16:02):

What is the rest of the Bible? From one perspective, it is simply a temple recovery project. The tabernacle had a bright, beautiful blue sky. It had a lampstand that looked like a flourishing tree. Why? It’s the tree of life. If you walked into the inside of the tabernacle, you’d be blown away at the beauty of it. Why? It was Eden. It was a little garden of Eden that they’d pack up and carry around. When you go into the Tabernacle, you’re meeting with God, you’re doing what Adam and Eve got to do before they fell. And then the temple, same thing. And then the temple gets destroyed four or 500 years before Jesus comes. And then it gets rebuilt 70 years later. Now the old men in the book of Ezra, the old men who see the new temple, but they saw what Solomon’s temple looked like.

(16:45):

Do you remember this? They cry because it’s so pathetic compared to that. And then you get to Ezekiel and the last nine chapters of Ezekiel are picturing this coming temple with a river flowing out of it and it’s lush and luxuriant. It’s the Garden of Eden recovered.

Ann (16:59):

I’ve never thought of that.

Dane (17:01):

Now hang on. Jesus shows up and He shows up and John 1 says, “The word became flesh,” and then it uses the word tabernacle. Tabernacle among us. And then he says in the next chapter, John 2, “Destroy this temple, and I’ll rebuild it in three days.” Jesus was what Ezekiel was prophesying. Jesus was the garden. Jesus was the temple in the sense that he was where the immortal and the mortal can connect yet again. Now the old temple, if you’re a leper or you’re sick or you’re unclean, that temple says, “Get out.” Jesus, the new temple walks around and if you’re a leper or if you’re unclean, he says, “Get over here.” And in the Old Testament, clean plus unclean equals unclean. If Dave is unclean and I’m clean and you touch me, we’re both unclean.

(17:53):

If I’m a leper and I touch Jesus, he’s clean and I’m clean. I don’t make him unclean. He makes me clean. Then in Ephesians 2, Paul says—now hang on a minute—you all, Jesus is the cornerstone of the temple. You all are living stones being built up into this. When you get united to Jesus Christ, we are part of the temple. What does that mean? It means we now have that full perfect access that Adam had before the fall that the high priest had just once a year. And so you get to the end of the Bible book of Revelation, and it says, “And I saw no temple.” Why not? Because what Adam was supposed to do has happened. The whole planet earth has become a temple where the immortal and the mortal, the divine and the human are now connected in perfect fellowship because there’s no more sin.

(18:38):

So that’s the house of the Lord. I can’t wait to get there.

Dave (18:42):

Bam.

Ann (18:43):

Okay. Did that blow your mind a little bit?

Dave (18:46):

That was an entire sermon.

Dane:

Thanks for bearing with me.

Ann (18:50):

No, that’s kind of mind-blowing.

Dave (18:51):

They better cut that and make that a reel. That is—

Ann (18:54):

I’ve never even heard of that or thought about it. Have you?

Dave (18:58):

No, I’m playing that the next time I talk about heaven at my church. Here’s Dane talking about the house of the Lord. I mean, seriously, you connected so many dots that people never really understand. I mean, the more you talk, the more excited I got.

Dane (19:13):

Well, wouldn’t you both agree? We go through life with a sense of being alienated or outside. I’m out.

Ann (19:20):

Yes.

Dave:

Right.

Dane (19:22):

The temple theme touches that emotionally and psychologically, not just theologically. You’re now in. You’re the ultimate insider. You are in. It’s awesome.

Ann (19:30):

It’s what we all long for.

Dane:

Yeah, it is.

Ann:

We all hope for.

Dave (19:33):

Yeah. And we’re afraid. I mean, we all have a sense—I think everybody has a sense—there’s something broken in me. The Bible says it’s sin, but we take that brokenness and we’re afraid to get near God because He’s holy and we are afraid His judgment will—and we are the leper. He makes us clean. So we run away and we should run too. And that’s heaven. Forever.

Dane:

Amen.

Ann (20:00):

That was kind of mind blowing. I’m going to have to listen to that over and over again to be reminded.

Dave (20:05):

Yeah. Talk about resurrection.

Dane (20:07):

Oh, okay.

Ann (20:08):

I wish he’d get excited about some of this stuff, don’t you?

Dane (20:14):

Okay. Let’s do John’s gospel. Lazarus. We all know John 11. Lazarus gets raised from the dead, right?

Dave (20:20):

Yep.

Dane (20:21):

It’s exactly halfway through John. Jesus is told that Lazarus has died. He says, “Okay, I’m going to go help you guys out.” Travels to see him, and Mary and Martha greet him, say, “Hey, you could have saved him. You could have been here and saved Lazarus from dying.” First of all, it’s very poignant because when Jesus—it doesn’t say He wept when He heard that Lazarus had died. The text says, “When he saw the others weeping, he began to weep.” Now, He knows He’s about to raise this guy and turn sorrow into joy, but He is so touched. He’s such, in such emotional solidarity with His friends, He starts crying. It’s so beautiful. He raises Lazarus. He says, “Lazarus, wake up.” Why does He use Lazarus’s name? One theologian speculates because if He hadn’t used Lazarus’s name, all the dead people—such is the power of Christ’s voice.

(21:16):

So He says, “No, just Lazarus. The rest of you, it’s coming. For now, just Lazarus, wake up, rise.” They say, “Oh, do you want to do that? He’s going to stink.” Well, he comes out. He is raised back to the kind of life he had, back to the kind of body he had. If he had a lower back pain right as he died—

Dave (21:36):

Still got it.

Dane (21:36):

—He woke back up into that. Okay. In other words, he was raised to mortal, not immortal existence. Christ at the end of John’s gospels raised immortal existence. Jesus tells the people, if you read it closely, he says, “Go and unwrap his face. Lazarus is so weak and so mortal still. He can’t even get out of his funeral clothes. He has other people to do it. I suspect—I may be wrong—that he shot Jesus a look of disappointment as that thing came off of his eyes.

Ann (22:07):

I wonder that too.

Dane (22:08):

Because “Jesus, what’s going on here? Why’d you wake me back up into this?” The reason He raised Lazarus was as a foreshadowing of His own resurrection.

(22:19):

And to show, I believe, the contrast between them. Because when Jesus was raised, it was not like Lazarus. It was to an immortal existence. It was to the life of the age to come. Oh, this is awesome. Richard Gaffin was a theologian. He puts it this way. If the Apostle Paul were to walk into a theology conference that’s talking about last things, eschatology, and there’s a panel discussion going on and Paul walks in and he says, “Hey, can I join you guys at the mics?” And everyone says, “Sure. Let’s do some Q&A with the Apostle Paul.” And so someone would say, “Hey, Paul, when is the final end time resurrection of the dead going to happen? When’s it going to happen?” Gaffin rightly says that what Paul would say is “It’s already begun.” Because when Jesus walked out of His tomb, He was the first instance of what the three of us and every listener in Christ is going to experience.

(23:16):

The Bible uses the word first fruits. What is that? Jesus in His risen state is the first fruits. That means the first in gathering of one harvest. If He was raised, we will be. Not with a Lazarus body back to mortal existence, but to an immortal existence. So this is pretty great. I’m going to have a resurrected stomach, taste buds, brain, muscles. And it is going to—

Dave (23:42):

Am I going to get hair? Every bald guy’s like, “Do I get hair?”

Another great day with Dane Ortland. Again, his book is called Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven. And I tell you what, if you don’t have a hope of heaven after listening to these last two days, you’re going to have one if you pick up his book Finally Home. Go to FamilyLifeToday.com, click on the link in the show notes and get it and get a perspective on Heaven you may have never had before.

Ann (24:14):

And it’s going to bring you hope, incredible hope.

Dave (24:17):

And I know every one of us wants to grow our faith. I want to be stronger in my faith. I know you do as well. We have a site to help you do that. It’s FamilyLife.com/StrongerFaith, FamilyLife.com/StrongerFaith. You want to be stronger in your faith so do I. We put some of our best materials there, best resources. We can help you. Go there, get help now.

Ann (24:45):

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