So You Want To Go To Heaven?(Part 1)

It is amazing to me how mixed up many Christian concepts of heaven are.  They seem to be a blend of what the world believes, what superstition says and what they might have been taught at church or in bible study group.  I think the average believer spends very little time in scripture and consequently they don’t voice their beliefs with other Christians because they can’t defend those beliefs. We live in an age where the average person, whether Christian or secular, has access to many different translations of the Bible and yet we still seem to know so little of what the word of God actually says about the subject of heaven….other than it’s preferable to going to hell.

In Christianity, Islam, some schools of Judaism, as well as Zoroastrianism, heaven is the realm of afterlife where good actions in the previous life are rewarded for eternity, with hell being the place where bad behavior is punished. Atheists believe that there is no God and no life after death and that death is the cessation of the existence of the individual. People with no belief in reward or punishment tend to live lives that are selfish and hurtful to others because they don’t believe in real consequences for their earthly actions.

Take, for example, a person who talks about Jesus.  We assume they are referring to the same Jesus we know. When a person says they believe in God, we aren’t really sure which god they are referring to unless we ask them.  We may be surprised by the response if we do venture into a deeper conversation, rather than just a surface one. I have talked with so many people over the years that, on the surface, seem to be talking about the God of the Bible and yet they really are talking about a Hindu god or a Muslim god.  What is even more sad is to see world leaders, like the Catholic Pope, talking with a Muslim eman and they both agree they serve and love the same god.  If that is true, then neither of them know the God of the universe that the Scripture depicts.

This brings me to the main topic of the idea and concept of heaven. So, people have many views about what heaven is and how you get there.  But how did they come to that conclusion?  The average person believes in heaven but not hell. The average person in the world believes they will go to some type of heaven because they are not that bad and they believe they deserve it.  This is not surprising.  Who wouldn’t want to go to a place that is happy, joyful and without pain?  Here is the problem.  There seems to be many “IDEAS” or concepts that make up their beliefs but they are based on nothing more than wishful thinking, not scripture. I recently talked to a Christian who believes science is more reliable than scripture.  Truthfully, more and more young people have been taught to trust science above all else. Somehow, they have embraced that scripture is flawed and science is not, regardless of the facts. When I ask them if they realize that for 3,000 years “BLOOD LETTING” was believed to cure people until the late 19th century.  They agreed that science is always changing yet they still held that science was more reliable. Education is no guarantee we will recognize when something is false or true.  Ironically, often current education does just the opposite by “DUMBING DOWN” intelligent people.

So, back to the idea of Heaven. Let’s examine what the Bible says while knowing full well there can be different ways to interpret scripture. My hope is that on this important subject we can get a better handle of the idea and place of heaven.

First, I think most people would agree that heaven is a good place to go when you die. The idea of heaven is always depicted as a place to go to that is both pleasant and without corruption or violence.  Yet, if we read the scripture we discover that there was a war with a third of the angels in heaven, including Lucifer, that were cast out of heaven for rebellion.  There are a few references in Ezk 28 & Isaiah 14. The book of Revelation, though, spells out the war more clearly.

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

Secondly, heaven is referred multiple places as God’s dwelling place and the place angels wait on God and his will. The throne room where God makes his decrees and judgment is also in heaven.

So, heaven is not without conflict and it is where God directs the heavenly host.

Thirdly, scripture speaks about heaven as the place where believers go when they die and leave their body. The apostle Paul said that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, which means we immediately go to be with the Lord. Paul instructed the church in 1 & 2 Thessalonians about heaven to encourage believers who were being killed for the faith in the first century.

Finally, scripture talks about heaven being a place where believers long to be and go to but maybe for a different reason than most would think. Paul talked about heaven being a place for saint to long to got to and be “clothed” with our dwelling of heaven.

In the next articles on heaven, I will dig deeper into the purpose and function of heaven, which is widely misunderstood regarding why we should long to be there when we leave this earthly body.

Questions:

1) How much scripture have you read in order to understand what heaven is like? We as believers should never just listen to preachers or Bible teachers about any Biblical topic without studying the topic ourselves.

2) Do you feel heaven is where your real citizenship is or is that a foreign idea? Heb 11:14-16 describes how we should relate to heaven and how we should long for it.

May God help us leave biblical ideas that have been distorted and changed by both secular and religious people and once again return to studying the word of God to know truth .

Pastor Dale