Matthew Donnelly. Capturing Heaven. Word and Spirit Publishing, 2023.

Capturing Heaven is subtitled Why You Don’t Have to Suffer. The subtitle sounds hopeful but perhaps unrealistic. The author makes it clear that he is talking about healing and sickness, not suffering at the hands of people. Ironically, the book is based on the Book of Job, a book about someone who clearly did suffer painfully. There are some great books out there about Job, I have read a few including Why Bad Things Happen to God’s People, The Remarkable Record of Job, and Moby-Dick.

The first has been reviewed on these pages. The second emphasizes the marvels of God’s creation as described in the closing chapters of Job. The third tells a fictional story of a sea captain who is an anti-Job, who suffers, curses God, and tries to get even with Him. Capturing Heaven is different. Its basic thesis is simple: What happened to Job ought not to happen under the New Covenant.

Donnelly presents a close reading of the dynamics of the book of Job. His emphasis is that things have changed since then. He gives us some perspectives such as Job lived at the time of Abraham.¹ His trial lasted no longer than six months, probably less. Also, perhaps most important, “Job had no mediator.” This is the complaint in Job 9:33. At least Abraham had the priest Melchizidek. Job, living in Uz, had no one.

That last observation obviously brings in the Gospel. Jesus is the high priest of the world. He is the mediator for anyone who calls on Him. Now, God calls Job his servant, but Donnelly says that under the New Covenant, believers in Jesus are meant to be more than servants. Jesus called his disciples His friends (John 15:15). Speaking of the Book of Job, we are told, “The entire book was written to show man’s plight without God as his Father” (151).

Capturing Heaven expresses one theme in some detail: “The apostles did not view Job’s tragedies as a blueprint for God’s will concerning sickness and loss” (151). The only mention of Job in the New Testament is where he is commended for his patience in James 5:10-18.

If we look at the whole context, James commends Job for enduring through suffering, suffering which the Bible tells us came from the devil. Job is named as a prophet who suffered, and most prophets suffered at the hands of people—no doubt many of their persecutors were tempted by the devil. “James relates Job’s experience as something more related to persecution than to God’s will for our bodies and our health” (163).

In fact, in the same context James speaks what to Donnelly are contrasting ideas. If suffering, pray; if sick, call for prayers so that “The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will restore him to health…” (James 5:15). For the “prayer of faith,” James uses Elijah as his example, not Job (James 5:17-18). Donnelly does remind us, too, that Job was restored to health after he prayed for his friends (Job 42:10).

Perhaps the most significant point made in this book is about the confrontations in the beginning between God and the devil. Many translations make it sound like God is tempting the devil, but Donnelly tell us:

Job 1:8 in Young’s Literal Translation brings out the full flavor of what was really said about Job, from God to Satan:

And Jehovah saith unto the Adversary, “Hast thou set thy heart against my servant Job because there is none like him in the land, a man perfect and upright, fearing God, and turning aside from evil?”
—Job 1:8 emphasis mine [i.e., Donnelly’s]

God did not sic the devil against Job, but rather he called out the plan that had already formed in Satan’s heart. God was pointing out the irony of the devil’s crazy scheme. It was as if God was saying, “Of all the people in the world, you want Job? He is the most righteous man on the planet. Why him?” (547)

Donnelly spends a long time explaining how Adam, when he sinned, gave authority to the devil and how the devil used that to accuse Job. Job’s biggest problem was simply that there was no New Covenant yet.

So Donnelly then presents one of the most detailed analyses of the Gospel message. First, “Man started it, so man had to fix it” (646). So Jesus would “stoop so low” to become a human. And die. After all, “Death was the prescribed payment for Adam’s sin” (663). And,

The “Son of God” clause is in effect. Adam was a son of God [see Luke 3:38], and that gave him the right to rule creation like God intended…A son of God gave it all away, and it would have to be the Son of God who restored it.

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body has thou prepared for me.
—Hebrews 10:4-5 KJV (669-673, emphasis Donnelly’s)

The author, of course, notes that the sacrifice had to be “spotless.” Jesus had to be without sin. He was. But there is a warning. The Law tells us how to behave but also shows us when we fail and do sin. However, the Law also can produce self-righteousness. It is still sometimes a mystery to me how people could hate Jesus and want him crucified when all he did was heal people and teach what the Hebrew Scriptures taught.

The opposite of righteousness is not sin; it is self-righteousness. Sinners loved Jesus because Jesus was “made” for them. In other words, Jesus is a Savior to sinners. He was born to do that very thing. Sinners were drawn to the Master, and they followed Him because He had what they needed; He was the thing they needed…But self-righteousness is, at its core, anti-righteousness. It stands against everything God loves while also striving to serve God and imitate His holy nature. It is the original fruit that hung from the tree that killed Adam and Eve. (791-794)

Man, disconnected from God, willing himself to be good, stimulates certain self-righteous elements in his nature that drive him to kill anything truly like God. (812)

Paul sums it up:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. (Galatians 2:20-21)

Eve and Adam’s sin was that they thought they could be like God apart from God. It has been that way with self-righteousness ever since. Interestingly, Derek Prince noted the same thing about Adam and Eve and self-righteous people when he wrote about Job in When Bad Things Happen to God’s People.

So was Job self-righteous? No, because God declared him righteous. He complained. He was looking for a sin that could accuse him, but found none.

Donnelly does claim, then, that while Job’s exact situation no longer applies, we can learn from it. If we understand the Gospel—if we understand God’s righteousness through Jesus, then there is no longer any accusation that can stand against us.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. (Romans 8:1-3)

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (Romans 8:32-34)

“All things” mean all things. Creation is the “all things” that is being spoken about here. The universe is the “all things” that is now starting to work for our good instead of the hijacked version that was constantly against us. (1216, italics in the original)

When Job repented near the end of the story in the Book of Job, “Job was not repenting of some broken commandment, but from living out of his own self-generated knowledge” (1284). “Satan was silenced when Job met God.” (1345)

Not only is the New Covenant of Christ a better covenant than any that preceded it, but the person declared righteous because of faith in the Son of God and His blood has authority in the kingdom of God. Such a person does not have to endure sickness the way Job did. He or she can have faith, and “the prayer of faith will raise him up” as James says. Very hopeful. Very positive. Lord, let it be true for your people (including me…)!

Notes
¹ The Bible is not clear which Uz Job’s homeland was named for, but they all were around the time of Abraham. One was a grandson of Shem (Genesis 10:23), one a son of Abraham’s brother Nahor (Genesis 22:20-21), and one was the grandson of Seir, namesake of the land where Esau settled (Genesis 36:28 cf. Genesis 36:8). All, anyhow, would have been either a contemporary of Abraham or alive not too long after he lived. Presumably, Job would have been not too long after whichever Uz his country was named for.

N.B.: Parenthetical references are Kindle locations, not page numbers.