Is Heaven for Real?
September 21, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

Today our subject is heaven. What we're doing now during these weeks we are going through some of the great doctrines of our Christian faith. It's very important that we understand what we believe, so today we're going to talk about heaven. The Lord willing, we're going to talk about hell next Sunday, and our sermon is entitled 'Whatever Happened to Hell?'. And then the following Sunday, the Lord willing, we're going to talk about the second coming of Jesus Christ, the return of our Lord to this earth. We're going to be just exploring some of the wonderful truths.

We are so earthly minded that heaven for most of us is not very important. But we only live one breath from eternity. When you take your last breath you will wake up in either one of two places, either heaven or in hell. That's what the Scriptures teaches us, and therefore I think that it's exceedingly important that we concern ourselves very sincerely with where are we going to spend eternity. And my prayer is that you'll be in heaven, and that you're making plans to go there even now.

Our subject today being heaven I've selected a great number of verses. I go through and mark my notes, and everything that's marked in yellow is Scriptures verses. So you can notice that most of our lesson today are Scriptures, and I'll not read them all, but they're there for your observations.

But just before Jesus died on the cross, He shared with His disciples these comforting words: "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that, where I am, there you may be also."

In His prayer in John 17, Jesus said: "Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundations of the world." And as Christ made His departure from earth at the completion of His earthly ministry, it says, Now when He had spoken these things, while they were watching, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go."

Paul writes: "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord."

I also write for you the words of Nehemiah, and then the great description found in the book of Revelation as John gives his vision as he sees the new Jerusalem. It's a marvelous picture and of course I understand, as you do, that much of it is symbolism, but it's a beautiful description of the home, our hope to spend eternity with our Christ.

I'm down at the bottom of page 2: Any careful student of Christian doctrine who wishes to obtain a well-balanced knowledge of the great basic truths set forth in the Scriptures will soon discover how little has been written on the subject of Heaven as set forth in the Bible. You know, ladies and gentlemen, one of the most fascinating things in preparing our notes for today, is to realize the tremendous dearth in the theological writings on the subject of heaven.

E. M. Bounds, the writer on prayer, wrote a book entitled, 'Heaven a Place, a City, and a Home". Wilbur Smith wrote a book entitled, 'The Doctrine of Heaven'. Dave Hunt wrote a book entitled, 'Whatever Happened to Heaven?'. But beyond that there is a scarcity of books on the subject. Almost all systematic theologies devote infinitely more space to Hell than Heaven as for instance, Shedd, who assigns two pages in his Dogmatic Theology to Heaven, and eighty-seven pages on Eternal Punishment; 2 to 87. Not a very important subject it seems to be to the theologian.

Reinhold Niebuhr in his exhaustive work, 'The Nature and Destiny of Man', by it's very title you would assume that he's going to write on heaven, but there is absolutely no treatment of heaven whatever and the only reference appears in a single sentence, which in itself many will think a regrettable statement. For a theologian to say this, "It is unwise for Christians to claim any knowledge of either the furniture of heaven or the temperature of Hell!" It's so sad that a theologian would write that when so many of the Scriptures give us a very clear indication of the worlds to come.

I write here for you, as many regrettably view the scene of the dearth concerning information, one John Baillie writes: "I will not ask how often in the last twenty-five years you and I have listened to an old-style warning against the flames of hell. I will not even ask how many sermons have been preached in our hearing about the future day of reckoning when men shall reap according as they have sown. It will be enough to ask how many preachers, during these years, have dwelt on the joys of the heavenly rest with anything like the old ardent love and impatient longing, or have spoken of the world that now is as a place of sojourn and pilgrimage."

I indicate other writings of regret by great men on the subject of heaven. Now ladies and gentlemen, I want to tell you why that heaven is not an important subject today in most pulpits. First of all, if we understand that most theologians don't consider it important enough to make it an issue of a doctrine within the theological schools, and a student graduates and he's very seldom ever talked about heaven, he's not going to preach very much about it when he gets to his pulpit. That's one of the reasons.

There's another reason why there's a dearth on the subject of preaching about heaven, and it has to do with an organization that has been under construction and under way for now about the last 30 years. It's called the reconstructionists, and their theology is known as dominion theology. And I only give these to you so if you run across them in your readings you'll know what I'm referencing. Their theology simply is this: it's up to us to take our world and change it as much as we can to be like Christian and prepare the world for the return of Christ by making it as Christian as possible.

Now I don't know how long that'll take, but David Chilton, one of their writings, says it may take 36,000 years. But the idea is this, let's keep our focus on the world around us, let's change it and make it as Christian as we possibly can, and when we have achieved our task then Jesus will come.

Now they have targeted two counties in California and the idea is to get involved in all the political paraphernalia and all the organization, take all the non-Christians out, put Christians in non-political position, change whatever laws need to be changed, and take it a county at a time. They're very serious. They are called reconstructionists and their organization is called the Coalition on Revival (COR). Again, take the focus off of the world to come and place your focus on the world that now is. I maintain these subtle forces change the focus even for Christians.

Now let me take it a step further. We live in an evangelical world where much emphasis is being placed upon material things. You can claim God and He's going to give you anything you ask Him, and you create the heaven around you. And if things around you and your materialistic comfort is such, you enjoy this place, you don't give much concern for the world to come. And in a very subtle way this kind of theology makes us to become focused on the things of time, and as a result, we lose the focus of the eternity. It's subtle

There's one other issue. You may not agree with me, but I'm going to be a prophet. And that is this: I am deeply disturbed by these national religious organizations who are great in their efforts and in their ministry, but who take their resources and from time to time with their mailings...blast their mailings with those on their mailing list with the issues that are political, and they turn the minds of the Christians to political issues. Now I know there are moral issues and I believe that's when we stand up, but we can become so caught up in the vortex of politics of this world that it becomes an all-consuming thing. And in that consuming involvement, again, it distracts us and our attention is on again the things of time, and not on the hope that we have as Christians. Do you see my point?

And sometimes as a Christian pastor my desire is: don't send out that information; let's keep our focus, let's keep the attention turned on God and on heaven not on the things of this earth. This earth with vanish and it will go away, but where we're headed never will. That is far more important than the things of time. And again I say, the reason for the dearth is because too much attention is being spent on getting our concentration and our focus on the things around us instead of the things that are above us.

Many times when I stand at the door and bid you goodbye, I say, I'll see you in heaven. That most people just say, no, pastor, I'll see you on Wednesday night at the Bible study. I hope not! Wouldn't it be better to meet in heaven? And when I say that I mean it with all my heart. We must live with that expectation. Maybe the next breath we take will be in heaven. Maybe the next handshake we shake will be the saints of the ages. May our hope never fade, but the hope of seeing Jesus face to face and to spend eternity in His place of heaven, may that always burn brightly within us. Do you see my point? God help us to keep the focus where it should be on eternal values and not on earthly things.

I'm now at the middle of page 4. Our interest today is to learn about heaven, the abode of God. When you read the Scriptures you'll realize that the hope of the New Testament church was the hope of the soon return of Jesus Christ. In fact, it was so real to the folks over in Thessalonica they just quit their jobs. I mean, Jesus was coming so why work? Now Paul had to write them and correct them about that. But at least you get the point. The anticipation was so strong -- maybe Jesus could be here tomorrow. And you find in the writings of the New Testament this constant anticipation, the expectancy, of the returning Christ and being waft into His eternal heaven.

Now in our notes I suggest that even though we are told in the Scriptures that the heaven of heavens cannot contain God, and that God is everywhere present, on the earth, as well as in heaven, nevertheless, the same Scriptures clearly teach that God does dwell particularly in heaven, a place often designated as His habitation.

Isaiah 63:15 says: Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and of Thy glory; where are Thy zeal and Thy mighty acts? The yearning of Thy heart and Thy compassion are restrained towards us. Some of the very names for God reference Him as "THE GOD MOST HIGH." There are a great number of statements, both in the Old and the New Testament, which find their real meaning in this concept of heaven as being the abode of God. Jehovah said to the children of Israel at the time of their sojourn at Sinai, 'I have talked to you from heaven.' And later Moses reminded the Israelites, "Out of heaven, He made thee to hear His voice."

So when we think of heaven, even though God is omnipresent, the Scriptures indicate He designates heaven as His abode. Heaven is a place. Heaven in the Bible is represented as a place in contrast with earth. The earth is a place, but unstable, insecure and fleeting. Heaven is stable, it's secure and its eternal. Earth is but a pilgrim's stay, a pilgrim's journey, a pilgrim's tent. Heaven is a city, permanent, God-planned, God-dwelt, whose foundations are as stable as His throne.

When Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you," He meant a place where the saints of the ages would dwell for all of eternity. In God's House, Jesus says, there are many mansions or abiding places. In heaven no tears will be shed, and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. Now let's stop.

You know, I've tried to think this one through. If God has to wipe away tears then there must be a moment in heaven when we weep, and maybe that could be the breakage from time into eternity when we for a moment think of earth's journey. It might be that we're there and we realize that some of our family are not there. Or it could be that we realize we've missed glorious opportunities, but now time is no longer and tears come to our eyes. And the Bible says that God wipes away every tear. And I believe what he's saying is God wipes away the memory of earth's journey, because heaven wouldn't be heaven if we had to constantly think of all the problems of our earthly journey. So there will be a moment when God wipes the tears and earth's journey will be no more.

Tears are a sad heritage for this life. Sorrow and pain flow from a thousand sources, and deepen and widen and darken earth's sorrows. Our sweetest relations give birth to our greatest sorrows, and our distresses often flow from our joys and death reigns. But all this will be changed, and everything which gives pain and sorrow will be forever barred from heaven. God will shut it all out. How bright the eyes undimmed by a tear! How strong and free our souls and bodies will be, utter and eternal strangers to pain! How bright and joyous our hearts, with never a cloud, never a sorrow. How full of richest and largest life, untouched by decay, unshadowed by death, will heaven be.

I guess it's possibly one of the marks of growing old, that heaven becomes more real than it was when I was younger. My journey now gets short and I realize how true that statement is...One breath lost or gone and you move on to eternity.

As you know, I go visit my mother, she's 90, and my mother has taken a real turn. She now is bedfast and she doesn't breath well because she has congestive heart failure and so the lungs are now filling up with water. And I sat that there beside her bed and I listened just for a while (labored breathing sounds). You've heard the breath. But what really got to me this time, they've moved her to the room which I consider next to the morgue. She only has one more move. And one of these days mother will take her last breath. And as I walked down that corridor this last week, I said to myself, O God, O God, do these people know where they're going to spend eternity, because they're so close; a place where there are no more tears, no more pain, no more sorrow.

Now Peter looks at it from a different point of view. Notice he says, it's a place with an inheritance to be sought for and a possession awaiting us. Look at what he writes: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance, incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last times." Peter sees it as an inheritance that's ours.

Now the question that I'm often asked is this: when a person dies where does their soul go? Now there are seven major theories in religious thought. Four of them you can throw away because they're pagan, but three of them still stand. One is the theory of purgatory. And that is that when you die you go to a place of cleansing, and it'll depend on how much you've sinned as to how long you'll spend in purgatory. Now, not to be unkind, and I'm just trying to be factual and the statement; but ladies and gentlemen, purgatory is a man-made idea and it has no biblical basis whatsoever. There is not a scripture to support that.

Secondly, there is the new, it's not new, but it's becoming very, very rampant, and it's the theory of annihilationism. Annihilationism teaches that when you die you become nothing. God just simply annihilates the soul of the unbeliever. Well if the soul is going to be annihilated, you've wiped out the whole message and the warning of hell. But interesting enough that is a theory that's becoming very, very popular. And I grieve, I grieve deeply because on my shelf I have many books by John R. W. Stott the great theologian from England, and of recent months Dr. Stott has thrown away the concept of hell and has shifted to annihilationism. That disturbs me, that a great theologian, great men of the scripture have decided they're not going to believe in eternal punishment anymore but in annihilation.

There's only one other theory, and this is based on the Bible. What happens to the soul at death? And Paul says it very clearly, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Whatever that may be, it makes it very clear to me...when I close my eyes in death my soul will immediately be in the presence of God. Now maybe you've had this experience -- maybe you've stood beside the bed of a dying person who was a godly person and you knew their testimony and you knew that heaven was their anticipated goal, and the moment death takes place in the silence you almost feel the departure of the soul. It's a very interesting feeling.

The other day I stood beside one of our godly parishioners and after a moment or two I said to the family, I wonder what he's experiencing now. Because to close our eyes in death...Paul says, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Amen? So that to me in my mind solves the issue as to what happens to the soul. You say well Pastor there are some people who believe in soul sleeping. I know that, but how do you sleep in eternity when you don't have any measurements of time? It's hard for us to grasp this whole concept of eternity because if there's nothing that marks days nor hours nor events, how is time measured? There's no such a thing as time. However it will be, the Bible tells us to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

The question is when we get to heaven what are we going to be doing? As a little boy I could see myself sitting on a white cloud playing a big harp. You know, you get all these ideas. I used to think when we talked about the rapture I could just see God letting down big platforms from heaven on pulleys and we as Christians crawled on. I couldn't grasp this idea of all of a sudden (snaps fingers) being gone from Earth. There are great concepts we can't explain but when we get to heaven...first of all we're going to be enjoying great worship. And it's interesting when you read the text of the book of revelation, heaven is a place filled with music. Can you imagine a choir with 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands and thousands? Multiply it folks -- it's millions. And they're angelic. None of them sing off key. And as they sing we're going to join with them in the great anthems of eternity. We're going to worship God in song. That's why we've got to learn how to worship down here, otherwise we'll feel out of place up there. It's going to be a place of worship and joy.

And secondly, it's going to be a place of authority. In many of Christ's parables He talks about He'll give us charge over five cities or 10 cities. Now I don't know how that's going to work. But the Bible tells us that we're going to reign with Christ, and we're going to rule with Him. I don't know how that's going to work, but somehow we're going to be fitted into the vast scope of the universe and we're going to be a part of it and share the authority of its creator God. We're going to be given authority in that day in God's great domain.

And thirdly, it says we're going to serve Him. And the word for serve has always to do with what we do in our service to Christ in the temple and the church. It will be a place of serving Him. It's going to be a place of fellowship. You know when I get to heaven there are a lot of fellows I want to talk to. I'd like to really sit down and talk with Moses, and Elijah, he's always been one of my stars of the Old Testament.

What I'm trying to tell you is when we arrive in heaven it's going to be a place of glorious, wonderful fellowship. Not only will it be a place of fellowship, as the old saints used to talk much about it, it'll be a place of rest. Rest from all of life's tensions. Just absolutely utopian peace in His eternal presence. Concepts, yes; definitive explanations, maybe not. But this one thing I know, heaven is a place, God's going to be there, Christ is going to welcome us, and He's preparing for us a place so far beyond our imaginations we can't grasp it. Amen?

Lord Jesus, may we keep our focus on that eternal hope of being forever with You. In Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you all. God bless you.