Heaven? One of my friends said,"everybody wants to go the Heaven, but no one wants to die." That made me think about John 17:15 where Jesus says, "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one." The Lord's prayer: "...thy Kingdom come thy will be done on EARTH as it is in heaven..." If you pray like this you are actually praying for heaven to come to earth. I used to say things like, "I'm a stranger passing through this land, heaven is my home!", but according to the Psalms heaven is not man's home, earth is. Psalm 115:16, "The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to man."
I know it sounds good to escape this treacherous world for a better place, but let us carefully examine what the bible really says. No crying in heaven? Really? That's not what John saw. Revelation 6:9-11:
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: 10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?11 And white robes were given unto every one of them;and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, shall be fulfilled.
Wait a minute! Why would people who are in heaven have anything to complain about? Shouldn't they be enjoying themselves? Or maybe those people know the whole story and are anxious because they know that heaven is not their home. Maybe before they died they read Revelation 21:3 which talks about the new heaven and a new earth and it says, "...the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them..." Notice it says, "He will live with them" and not "they will live with Him". This is actually the fulfillment of the Lord's prayer, "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." Ironically, some of us pray every night for heaven to come to earth and then we wake up, dread going to work, and then pray to go to Heaven.
New flash! In the words of P.Diddy(que the music), "we aint' go-in nowhere!" That's right unpack your bags. If you die and you are in right-standing with God, your spirit will go to heaven temporarily but your body will someday be resurrected and the new earth will be your final resting place. So for that matter, the earth was never meant to be empty. "...He is God, He did not create the earth to be empty, but to be inhabited(Isaiah 45:18). All of this information is in the Bible that you read at least every Sunday so please don't be upset with me. If anything, I'd say take it up with Jesus. He prayed for you to stay, you pray to leave; which prayer do you think will be answered?
Please sign-up to follow this blog @ http://timothy-kennedy.blogspot.com/...Stay tuned tomorrow for a discussion on what Jesus instructed us to do instead of being preoccupied with heaven. We will also talk about why we are not necessarily living in the last days...peace.
This is a very challenging thing for people to understand because it has been taught that we are just waiting to “walk around heaven all day.” It is a type of escapism, a yearning, that people want to be close to God and have no more worries at all. But they do not understand that that is what Jesus brought back to the earth, a direct connection to God. They do not understand that they already have access to Kingdom of God which is the kingdom of Heaven on earth. They do everything “good” on earth to get in to heaven instead of understanding that they have to do everything good and right as a kingdom citizen to gain all the promises of heaven on earth in our lifetime. Heaven is so misunderstood and I thank God for you writing this blog. Keep them coming. Love you!
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