{"id":1127,"date":"2016-05-26T12:29:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T18:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickduffel.com\/?p=1127"},"modified":"2016-05-26T12:29:47","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T18:29:47","slug":"audiobook-review-the-real-heaven-by-chip-ingram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/?p=1127","title":{"rendered":"AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: The Real Heaven by Chip Ingram"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><p><\/p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  wp-image-1129 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nickduffel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/9781633895867-1.jpg?resize=291%2C291\" alt=\"9781633895867\" width=\"291\" height=\"291\" loading=\"lazy\">In <em>The Real Heaven: What the Bible Actually Says<\/em>, Chip Ingram sets out to both re-frame the dominant \u201cHollywoodized\u201d vision of heaven and restore the excitement of believers at the prospect of going there someday.\u00a0 He mostly succeeds in these endeavors.\n<p>This book gives a good overview of what the Bible says about heaven, addressing the most frequently asked questions, and, indeed, building a great case for believers to be excited about going to heaven.\u00a0 In one poignant anecdote, Ingram asks the reader, \u201cIf you asked for a show of hands in your church, \u2018How many of you would like to go to heaven today or live ten more years and then go?\u2019 how would people answer?\u201d\u00a0 What a convicting question!\u00a0 How excited are we REALLY that we get to go to heaven?<\/p>\n<p>However, this book is not without its problematic sections.\u00a0 First of all, Ingram turns to the parable of the rich man and Lazarus for clues about the afterlife, but many prominent theologians, Martin Luther included, see this as a parable about rich and poor in this life and the afterlife details are not to be taken literally.\u00a0 Indeed, turning literary details into literal doctrine is a dangerous practice.\u00a0 Also, Ingram is a premillennialist\u2014which is fine, he\u2019s entitled to that interpretation of scripture\u2014but his two chapters on the end times mix afterlife doctrine and the apocalyptic language of Revelation to an unsettling degree.\u00a0 The fact is, many of the passages of the Bible that seem to speak of the life to come don\u2019t lend themselves well to a brief \u201cWhat the Bible Actually Says about\u2026\u201d book such as this one.<\/p>\n<p>That said, I really appreciate Ingram\u2019s focus on the new heaven and new earth being reflective of this earth, complete with experiences, vocation, relationships, landscapes, and more.\u00a0 The idea of heaven being \u201celsewhere\u201d ignores a core teaching of scripture.\u00a0 What we look forward to as believers is not an evacuation from this world, but a restoration of all that this world was meant to be.\u00a0 And that is worth looking forward to.<\/p>\n<p>The narration by Lloyd James in the audiobook version is well done, but he reads very slowly.\u00a0 I listened to this book at 1.5x speed in the Christianaudio app, and this the second book narrated by James that I have done that with.<\/p>\n<p>Please Note: This audiobook was gifted as a part of the Christianaudio Reviewers Program in exchange for my unbiased review of this work. This has in no way influenced my opinion or review of this work.\u00a0 More information can be found about this and other Christian audiobooks at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/christianaudio.com\/\">christianaudio.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In The Real Heaven: What the Bible Actually Says, Chip Ingram sets out to both re-frame the dominant \u201cHollywoodized\u201d vision of heaven and restore the excitement of believers at the prospect of going there someday.\u00a0 He mostly succeeds in these endeavors. This book gives a good overview of what the Bible says about heaven, addressing&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/?p=1127\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: The Real Heaven by Chip Ingram<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,12],"tags":[15,32,84,85,91,111,150,157,165],"class_list":["post-1127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-2","category-christianaudio-com","category-reviews","tag-52-books","tag-books","tag-god","tag-gospel","tag-heaven","tag-jesus","tag-reading","tag-reviews-2","tag-scripture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EHHr-ib","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nickduffel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}