Proyas' "Better Place" is not Heaven

In the movie production "Knowing" by Alex Proyas, the main character is John Koestler, a college instructor and scientist who discovers a strange phenomenon involving his son and a neighbor's daughter. The children have been chosen by aliens to be saved from the destruction about to come on the whole earth. The aliens deposit the two chosen members of the human race into a strange planet and they are to be the new Adam and Eve to start the human race all over again and to prepare a "better place." Koestler apprehends that this "much better place" is where those who die end up, but the scientist comes to this conclusion, not by scientific investigation, or evidence. He does so only by faith and mythology.

This was the belief of a UFO cult called Heaven's Gate, which was based in San Diego, California. The cult members believed that planet Earth was about to be recycled, and that the only chance to survive was to leave it immediately, and believed that a "higher level" of existence was being offered to them when the comet Hale-Bopp appeared in 1997. The group committed mass suicide in their misguided belief that it was the way to go to meet the UFOs' which they believed were waiting for them beyond the comet Hale-Bopp. It appears that Alex Proyas has taken up the mantle of Marshall Applewhite, the cult's deceased leader, in preaching the UFO gospel. Proyas' "better place" is not Heaven.

Heaven is a real place, not myth. This belief is based on the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. As the first man to be resurrected, Jesus Christ is the prototype of the future resurrection. His disciples recognized Jesus, and He carried the scars of the crucifixion in His resurrected body, suggesting that there is a continuity of personality into the resurrection. The resurrected body will not be a disembodied spirit, but a physical, reconstituted body which will not be subject to decomposition or to decay. Heaven will be a place on earth but it will be a new earth, reconstituted so that it will function as the original creation was, unmarred by human sin.

Just as a single mistake in a complex computer program can cause the entire program to fail, so human sin caused a perfect creation to decay. Not so in the new earth. This is why Jesus Christ had to die, so that God's purpose in the original creation may be fulfilled, and so that human sin may not be allowed to cause destruction in the new earth. For a brillant and enlightening discussion of Heaven, read the blog and books by Randy Alcorn.