There are enough speculations regarding what the next age will look like; Bible versions, entire denominations, fictionalized book series and movies have attempted to render fully what God has only revealed to the minutest degree. Much of what we believe today about the nature of hell, heaven, angels and devils was derived from literature written in previous centuries, especially Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, Paradise, and Purgatory, written in the early 1300s. But we can conclude to at least some degree that the life God has made available to us today will be tested in one way or another here on this earth. We must be overcoming the Reign of Evil in our own lives before we can overcome it in the Earth. Otherwise God would simply save us — give us His life, make us His sons — and take us to be with Him.

excerpted from “Practical Christianity”