HEAVEN AND ETERNAL LIFE

A deaf mute was asked, "What is eternal life?" Grabbing a pencil and pad, he wrote down his answer: "Why it is the lifetime of the Almighty." What a great answer to anyone who wants some idea as to just how long eternity will last. As long as the eternal God is alive, eternal time will exist. And since God will never die, for most of us that's quite long enough.

WHAT DOES HEAVEN MEAN TO YOU?

Imagine There's A Heaven!

Heaven. Like eternal life, this word conjures up many thoughts and ideas in the minds of people, both religious and nonreligious. To Friedrich Niietzche, the father of the modern-day concept that God is dead, Heaven was just a figment of enslaved man's imagination. To John Lennon, a member of the popular 1960's music group The Beatles and deceased composer of the well-known song entitled Imagine, Heaven just doesn't exist and furthermore, as he implied in his song, the belief that it does exist is one of the reasons why the world's inhabitants cannot and do not live in peace.

Yet, to the atheist, agnostic, deist, freethinker, unbeliever, infidel, and believer -- and for the Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian -- the Christ who rose from the dead revealed and taught four primary things about Heaven: (1) it is not an imaginary place; (2) it is not unfathomable; (3) it is mysterious; and (4) it is attainable.

Until someone disproved it, intelligent men actually believed and argued for years that the world was flat. Columbus proved those intellectuals, philosophers and skeptics wrong. In effect, Jesus is our heavenly Columbus who not only spoke authoritatively about the reality of Heaven; He had actually been there, lived there, ruled there, and reigned there.

TEN FOUNDATIONAL AND CORE TRUTHS ABOUT HEAVEN

                                                  1. Heaven is an abode -- a place to live.

I Can Only Imagine!

2. Heaven is a prepared abode -- a place of order and readiness.
3. Heaven is a peopled abode -- a place of resurrected individuals, including family and friends.
4. Heaven is a paternal abode -- a place where God our heavenly Father also lives.
5. Heaven is a palatial abode -- a magnificent palace adorned with God's pure light and glory.
6. Heaven is a pleasurable abode -- a place of great joy and happiness.
7. Heaven is a peaceful abode -- a place of undisturbed calm and tranquility void of war, death and disease.
8. Heaven is a perfect abode -- a place where there is no sin, fear, tear, woe or foe.
9. Heaven is a permanent abode -- a place that will last forever (the lifetime of the Almighty) and whose occupants will live for all eternity.
10. Heaven is a prescribed abode -- a place where, according to Jesus Christ, only those who believe He is the Way, the Truth and the Life can enter (John 14).

The One who is called the Resurrection and the Life, Heaven's Columbus, beckons anyone and everyone to enter into His peace concerning the reality of Heaven:

Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it was not so, I would have told you. --John 14:1-2