52 Books in 52 Weeks - Book 8 - "The Last Battle" by C.S. Lewis

Since audiobooks and books on CD are acceptable formats for this challenge, I checked 3 unabridged CD books out of the library last week - the last 3 of the Chronicles of Narnia. It was a busy week. But it was still easy to finish all 3 of these books. I listened to the CDs in the car and while I did chores around the house. Then I picked up the books to continue reading where the CDs had left off in the evenings.

Several years ago, my Sunday School class studied Randy Alcorn's book "Heaven". In that book, Alcorn puts forth the rather radical idea (it was radical to me, anyway) that the afterlife - our life on the New Earth that will be created at the end of Time, will be like life is on Earth now. Except that all that is bad, painful, and evil will be gone, and all that is good will be exponentially better than it is now. Life on this Earth will seem like a dream - a shadow of our true eternal life on the New Earth. We will have physical homes & live in physical cities, or maybe in the country. We will have jobs - jobs that we love that exactly fit our skills and temperament. Industry, development, and advancement will continue as they do now, only as they would without the impediments resulting from the fall. Time spent with our Lord and our family and friends will include games, entertainment, relaxation, and travel. Of course, a lot of this is speculation and conjecture, but I found his contention that our physical glorified bodies will be best suited to a physical life on a physical Earth very compelling. Also, his theory that the rewards promised to us in Scripture have been unjustifiably spiritualized (also put forth in his books "The Treasure Principal" and "Money, Possessions and Eternity") has a lot of merit. But this is not a review of "Heaven".

I had not read the "Last Battle" in a number of years. I was surprised as I re-read (or re-listened to it!) to see that C.S. Lewis' idea of Heaven is very, very similar to Randy Alcorn's! "The Last Battle" is the story of the end of Narnia. In this book, all the children from the previous stories are re-united at the end of time (for the Narnian world). They see Narnia destroyed and are saddened. But, then they realize that the pleasant, beautiful, sunny land they are in is actually the New Narnia. Pristine, perfect, and better than the Old Narnia, but with the same landmarks, and the same cities. They even see, from high on top of Aslan's Mountain, other lands, and recognize England.

"Why!" exclaimed Peter. "It's England. And that's the house itself - Professor

Kirke's old home in the country where all our adventures began!"

"I thought that house had been destroyed," said Edmund.

"So it was," said the Faun (Tumnus). "But you are now looking at the England

within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that

inner England no good thing is destroyed."

Oh, the longing this picture of the New Earth creates! I do not believe that all that Alcorn suggests in his book "Heaven" is true, but I hope - oh, how I hope, that most of it is. But for now, we continue to live in the Shadowlands.

Sojurner