Randy Alcorn Talks About Heaven, Small Books, Christian Fiction
by Randall Murphree
November 24, 2003
(AgapePress) - Author Randy Alcorn was recently interviewed by AFA Journal editor Randall Murphree at The Cove, training center for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Asheville, North Carolina. Alcorn, an award-winning novelist and non-fiction writer, was speaking to a weekend seminar on the subject of heaven. Tyndale House will release his new book on heaven by Summer 2004. He is founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries in Gresham, Oregon. Q: You referred to your interest in heaven as a passion and a hobby. When did that begin?I would say my mother's death in 1981. When my mom, who was also one of my closest friends, was dying, each day I would read to her the last two chapters of Revelation. I was thinking, "This is where she's going. So what's it like there?"
That motivated me more and more to find out what the Scriptures say in this area. Let's say you have a friend who moves to Argentina or somewhere like that, well suddenly you're interested in Argentina. So now you might be more prone to read an article about Argentina. When you really love somebody and they're there, you want to know what it's like.
Q: You've collected 150 books on heaven, and you've read 140 of them. The book you're writing now -- was that an idea you pitched to the publisher, or did they come to you?
Tyndale House approached me about it. I had done Safely Home with Tyndale House, and also recently the revised Money, Possessions and Eternity. They said, "What would you think of doing a definitive work on the subject of heaven?"
I said, "Well, I don't know whether it would be definitive or not, but I would certainly like to do a big book on heaven. My book In Light of Eternity is a small book, a devotional book on heaven. And I would like to do something that gets into more detail."
In fact, I recently decided it really needs to be two books, because this new heaven and new earth thing, the eternal state, really needs to be emphasized in and of itself. Also, we need to deal with all the questions people have, like "Are our loved ones in heaven right now? What are they doing? Are they watching us? Are they praying for us? Do they know the bad things that are happening on earth? Will we know them when we get there? Will they remember us?"
All those things are intermediate-state-type questions. But, if we see the ultimate state and what God intends for us in the resurrection, then I think we can look backward and it gives us perspective on certain things about the intermediate state. The way it is now, people have very fuzzy concepts of the intermediate state and virtually no concept of the eternal state.
Q: How do we learn about heaven?
The Bible tells us a lot about heaven. Let's draw a parallel. Let's say you know nothing about The Cove. Maybe you've heard of Billy Graham, but that's about all you know. Having heard of Billy Graham does not give you a picture of The Cove.
All right, now we're here. (And that's the parallel of us going to heaven). So once we get here, we're obviously able to explore. But even once we get here, we don't know everything. For example, I was driving around yesterday exploring the place, so even once we arrive somewhere we don't know everything. Certainly if I were at a distance -- at home in Oregon -- and somebody sent me a brochure telling what The Cove will be like, then I'd start to accumulate information.
That's the way it is with heaven. We're going there, so what does the Bible tell us about it?
Q: Talk about the small books so popular today. Is their advantage enough to justify their brevity on weighty subjects. What challenges do Christian writers face in trying to reach people?
Good question. My feeling is that you can't say either small books are better, or small books are worse. Some people say small books are better because people read them who wouldn't read bigger books. Other people argue small books are bad because they over-simplify.
There is a Christian columnist for the Oregonian who interviewed me on the success of small books. He was primarily talking about The Prayer of Jabez. He said, skeptically, "How long are these books?"
I said, "Sixteen to 17 thousand words, which for a book is very, very small."
He said, "You can't portray truth accurately in something that small."
I said, "Well, that's interesting. If you took the Sermon on the Mount, does that convey truth?"
"Well, of course."
"How many words are in the Sermon on the Mount? I don't know, but it's fewer than 16 thousand!" And then I added, "Well, you make your living writing a column that is 800 words, three times a week. And you're telling me you can't tell the truth in 16 or 17 thousand words? If not, you're in real trouble!"
He thought for a second and said, "Good point."
It has nothing to do with length. It's just a matter of "Is this book a good book? A Christ-centered book?"
This book on heaven will be close to 160,000 words, about 10 times bigger than these little books. No book should be longer than it needs to be to accomplish its purpose. But the purposes of some books make it so they need to be substantial. I don't like the idea of a dumbed-down or less-literate society that demands that everything be compressed and small.
=====
Randall Murphree, a frequent contributor to AgapePress, is editor of AFA Journal (www.afajournal.org), a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
