“Modern and postmodern culture revolves around a this-world orientation; the only long-term ‘future’ our culture hopes for is retirement. This pervasive preoccupation with living as long as possible, as healthy as possible, and as wealthy as possible has dramatically influenced the church in the West. Our knowledge of God is so weak, and our desire for the pleasures of the present is so strong, that it is difficult for us to imagine that life with God in the world to come could be incomparably better than life in this world. We honor heaven with our lips, but our hearts are far from it.”
-Scott J. Hafeman, The God of Promise and the Life of Faith: Understanding the Heart of the Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 175.
