"Heaven and the Believer" from feb 23 2013

"Heaven and the Believer"

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One thing the irritates me is so many believers stifle discussion of heaven by saying “it is beyond human comprehension” or “it is beyond anything we can imagine” or the old standard “eye hath not seen nor has it entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for him” and then expect people to get all excited about being raptured to heaven. Excuse me how can I get excited about going to a place I have no way of knowing anything about????

The biggest problem I see is people use the “eye hath not seen....” verse incorrectly because they stop the sentence at the end of the verse BEFORE the end of of the thought. the 2nd half says that it has been revealed to us by his spirit. So yes eye has not seen BUT God has revealed it to us.

If you were going to be moving you and your family to a new city or even a new country would you tell them “we can’t possible know what is there but I want you really excited about moving there”??? or that “it is useless to speculate about things that are there we will just have to find out when we arrive but get excited”???? NO! You would find out using travel brochures and books what is there. (Take for instance if moving from Maine to Florida you probably would wand to know how cold it get there so you know what heavy clothes you need rather then pack up the heavy winter gear and arrive and find out the lowest temp is in the low 50’s. You might want to give away that snow sled rather then haul it down and find out the only place you could possible us it would be the beach and you would look pretty stupid doing so. While we don’t have clothes to pack or sleds to worry about we still should look into where we are going and learn what we can.)

Well we have a wonderful brochure from the mayor of our new city and king of our new land that give some details about where we are going it is called the bible and he is more than willing to discuss with you if you call him up and ask. In fact some good additional brochures have be written by people using the original brochure – the bible – as their guide and relying on guiding from the Holy Ghost. So shouldn’t we be reading these brochures/books rather then trying to tell people to look forward to a place they can’t imagine and know nothing about??

I realize some might point out that going to a surprise place can be exciting, well yes although more so for children then for adults, but which do you think would excite a child more: being told ‘we are going to a surprise fun place tomorrow that you will really love’ or ‘we are going to Disney World tomorrow’??? I think the kids would be more excited by knowing where they are going then just a general description of ‘a surprise fun place’.

I recommend “Heaven” by Randy Alcorn as a wonderful resource as he give you the scripture to support what he says.

I would avoid books that are recounting supposed visits to heaven or the NJ mainly because most have scriptural problems with them and often contradict each other on several points.

Paul