Biblical Reasons Why We Should
And Practical Suggestions on How We Can
Create Heaven on Earth
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The 100 Million Club
There may be as many as 100 million Americans who call themselves followers of Christ who
All efforts to improve the human condition and bring about the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning a coming "Golden Age" are sinful, they believe, because things are supposed to get worse and worse until Jesus comes again, and trying to build the Kingdom of God in our lifetime would only delay His Second Coming.
This is more than a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a prescription for disaster. And the patient is desperate for a new Physician.
Many others who call themselves Christians don't think quite so passionately about "the Rapture" and "Biblical prophecy," but they do think about heaven. That's where they're going to go when they die, they believe, and they don't worry about injustice, pain and suffering on this earth because it will all be gone in heaven. They're just standing by. Waiting.
I used to be a Bible-believing Christian who believed I was going to go to heaven immediately upon death. I still consider myself a Bible-believing Christian, and I'll be willing to put myself to your test in a moment. But the more I read the Bible -- including all the dusty parts about kings and prophets, and including the things Jesus said -- the less dogmatic I am about what exactly happens to me when I die, and all the details about the next life. I've heard sermons that describe heaven down to the size of the gold cobblestones on the streets of gold, and the dialogue of heavenly inhabitants. I think these sermons go way beyond what God in the Bible actually intends to teach us.
One thing I've become more dogmatic about, however, is what Jesus wants us to be doing here on earth. I would like to provide you with Biblical reasons for trying to create "heaven on earth," and Biblical reasons why we can succeed in doing so.
The idea for the title of this book comes from Kurt Vonnegut. I haven't read any of his books. He doesn't appeal to me. I just happened across a recent article of his which, while confirming the good sense of my not reading his books, did have an interesting anecdote. The article is here. It begins with a typically anti-Christian but uniquely honest statement:
If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.
So much for "Honor thy father and mother." So much for the idea that homosexuality is not a choice. (I'm sure Vonnegut would say he was just being sarcastic, but the cat's out of the bag.) (It's a weird world when the most popular authors give tips on how to hurt people, especially our elders.)
Nevertheless, here's the anecdote:
And now I want to tell you about my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
This gave me the idea for a "spiritual exercise" -- a way of stretching the mind and building spiritual muscle to be able to handle theological truth with greater ease.
Even non-Christians have commented on the psychological effects of gratitude:
Expressing gratitude is transformative, just as transformative as expressing complaint. Imagine an experiment involving two people. One is asked to spend ten minutes each morning and evening expressing gratitude (there is always something to be grateful for), while the other is asked to spend the same amount of time practicing complaining (there is, after all, always something to complain about). One of the subjects is saying things like, "I hate my job. I can't stand this apartment. Why can't I make enough money? My spouse doesn't get along with me. That dog next door never stops barking and I just can't stand this neighborhood." The other is saying things like, "I'm really grateful for the opportunity to work; there are so many people these days who can't even find a job. And I'm sure grateful for my health. What a gorgeous day; I really like this fall breeze." They do this experiment for a year. Guaranteed, at the end of that year the person practicing complaining will have deeply reaffirmed all his negative "stuff" rather than having let it go, while the one practicing gratitude will be a very grateful person. . . Expressing gratitude can, indeed, change our way of seeing ourselves and the world.
—Roshi John Daido LooriCan you see the holiness in those things you take for granted--a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
—Rabbi Harold KushnerA universal experience and a component of many religious traditions for centuries, gratitude is being recognized not simply as a desirable virtue, but also as an essential element to wholeness and well-being.
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Seeing what Christianity has done for the world is Step One in "bringing in the Kingdom." Step Two is believing that the power exists to increase this progress by many orders of magnitude.
I believe that a daily effort to be grateful and to believe in the possibility of progress in this life can revolutionize an individual's walk with God, and change the world when a sizeable minority puts these steps into practice.
But some people can't even begin to imagine that this is what God promised; that this life somehow fulfills God's end of the bargain. Some people have real hesitations accepting the suggestion of someone who says we should imagine that this is heaven. I understand that hesitation.
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I never liked that song.
I was a Christian before I was a Beatles' Fan, but I was a fairly die-hard Beatles' fan. When I was young I had to come up with some pretty creative rationalizations to harmonize some of their lyrics with my Christian ethics. ("Their manager made them put that in there.") But by 1971 I had either grown up too much or Lennon had grown too consistent with his anti-Christianity for me to imagine that there was harmony between us.
Lots of people had already been following Lennon's advice, and I don't think it was making the world a better place.
When America was a younger nation, a person could not hold any political office if he didn't believe in heaven. An oath was viewed as a promise made to and in the presence of God. An "infidel" was not allowed to take an oath, and since an oath was required to hold office and testify in court, infidels were not allowed to do either. An early edition of Black's Law Dictionary defined an "infidel" as
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Prof. Steven B. Epstein, writing in 1996 for the Columbia Law Review, tells us:
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This is only 110 years before I was born. It hadn't changed much by 1930, when an article (apparently by an atheist) in the Yale Law Journal complained:
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Laws requiring politicians to believe in God still exist today in some states, even though the U.S. Supreme Court -- just a couple of years before removing the Bible and voluntary prayer from government schools -- declared such laws "unconstitutional" (1961).
I have to admit that if I were falsely accused of a crime, and the only witness who could testify on my behalf was an atheist, I would want the jury to hear that testimony, even if the atheist did not believe in heaven.
But it seems to me that the world was a better place when politicians believed in heaven, and had some fear of God. We have thousands of politicians today who have taken an oath to "support the Constitution" who have never even read the Constitution, and I am firmly convinced that if the Framers of the Constitution were to visit us today, they would unanimously conclude that we are no longer governed by the constitution in any meaningful sense. Back when atheists were excluded from public office, the government didn't have to keep statistics on how many 13-year-olds had sexually transmitted diseases. Federal judges were not ordering states and municipalities to remove copies of the Ten Commandments from classrooms or other public places. The United States wasn't manufacturing weapons which could obliterate several million people at once. Politicians weren't selling this technology to communists. Nor were they giving foreign aid to violent Muslims like Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Ladin. Metal detectors were not placed at the entrances of government schools in an effort to keep violence to a minimum.
Millions of people today "imagine" that there's no heaven, and it seems to me to be creating hell on earth.
This webpage is one of over one thousand webpages designed to bring about the fulfillment of Micah's Vine & Fig Tree prophecy. That prophecy is found here. I believe we are seeing it fulfilled, little by little. D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe authored a book entitled What if Jesus Had Never Been Born. That book shows the difference Christ - and Christians - have made in the human condition in 2,000 years:
In the two thousand years since the first Christmas, much progress has been made toward the fulfillment of Micah's Vine & Fig Tree vision. Anyone living in the first century A.D. would be astonished at the progress if they could see the world today. They would consider the prophecy all but fulfilled. Many observers writing 200 years ago thought as much. "The American Dream" had become a reality for many people, just as America's Founding Fathers had hoped.
But in the last 100 years much of this progress has been reversed. Christian civilization has been eroded, and atheism and its resultant chaos and immorality have risen. Many of the liberties fought for by America's Founding Fathers have been lost. Their Constitution is a meaningless anachronism. Instead of being a "City upon a Hill," imparting the light of Christianity to the whole race of mankind (to quote James Madison), the United States has exported weapons of mass destruction, Harvard-educated dictators, and communism across the globe. "Liberty Under God" is virtually dead. During the last century, largely due to the conspiratorial efforts of Secular Humanists at the highest levels of the United States government, an average of more than 10,000 people were murdered each and every single day during the 20th century -- by politicians and their henchmen. This figure includes wars which target innocent non-combatants, concentration camps, government-orchestrated famines, and legal abortions -- murders that were largely absent from the globe 200 years ago, but which have today become routine. And ignored.
This trend can be reversed.
It ought to be reversed.
But there are at least 100 million people in America who call themselves "Christians" who deny those last two sentences; people who can and should reverse the secular trends of the last 200 years; 100 million people who represent the most powerful political and social force on the planet, and could change the course of history and bring about Micah's Vine & Fig Tree vision for nearly 6 billion of their fellow human beings.
They adamantly refuse to do so.
Many advocates of Christian Reconstruction have been told by these Americans that all efforts to improve the human condition and bring about the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies concerning a coming "Golden Age" are sinful, because things are supposed to get worse and worse until Jesus comes again, and building a Christian civilization in our lifetime would only delay His Second Coming.
This webpage is the culmination of a series of "spiritual exercises" designed to empower Christians to become a force for healing on earth. These spiritual exercises are introduced on the Vine & Fig Tree home page. Ideally the reader has already gone through the previous exercises and has the spiritual strength to endure this final workout. But I can't assume that. So I must weary the reader with a number of preparatory remarks and qualifications. Let's get them over with.
The previous publication on the internet of the ideas in this essay generated two very different but equally passionate criticisms.
Fundamentalist Christians said that this book claimed that there is no heaven, or – even more controversial – that we’re in heaven now.
Atheists (unconcerned about theological quibbling over heaven) said that the hidden agenda of this book was to impose a Theocracy on America.
It’s easy to understand how these different criticisms could arise, but both parties should be assured that they have nothing to worry about.
| I’m not saying there is no
heaven or that nobody goes to heaven when they die.
There is a heaven, and Jesus is there, on the Throne of David. As to what happens when we die, I don’t have all the answers. I believe God is holy and just, and nobody goes to heaven unless their sins have been blotted out by the atonement of Christ. But God is also merciful beyond my wildest imagination, so whatever happens when I die, it will be amazing. I trust God. My point is that most of what the Bible says about heaven is designed to affect our life here on earth, and was never intended to be postponed beyond death. My point is that most Christians are "so heavenly-minded they are of no earthly good." | I'm
against Taliban-style theocracies. details
In fact, I think I'm a better defender of "civil liberties" than the ACLU. The ACLU, a bunch of liberals, believes in big government. Whenever a small government in a small town acknowledges in some public way America's Christian heritage, the ACLU wants to give a bigger government more power to force the smaller government to remove the endorsement of religion. The influence of Christianity on the world has been a force for liberty, social order, and civilization. "Liberty Under God" has been a product of Christianity. Vine & Fig Tree: Consider the vision. What's your objection, Mr. ACLU? Consider our political theory. Just how is this a Taliban-style theocracy, Ms. Liberal? |
There are some Christians who are not members of the 100-million Club (and their numbers appear vastly smaller) who believe that Christ established His Kingdom at His First Advent. The first Christmas inaugurated a transitional period, "the last days" of the Old Covenant, which culminated in the destruction of the Old Temple in Jerusalem in AD 66-70, the end of the old age and the beginning of the New. Jesus described His Kingdom as one which started small, like the mustard seed, and grew very large.
Leaders of the 100-million Club strongly disagree with this, teaching that the Kingdom does not begin until Christ physically returns to earth a second time, yet future for us. Few things are more evil, under this interpretation, than efforts in this present age to "bring about the Kingdom."
Sorting Out Theological Differences
I’m trying to persuade Bible-believing Christians to change their views and become a potent political force. To “bring in the Kingdom.” So I must first establish my credentials as a Bible-believing fundamentalist. As a fundamentalist I know that I am reluctant to read anything written by authors (like Kurt Vonnegut) who question or deny the authority of the Bible. Especially if that author openly challenges traditional ideas that affect one's eternal salvation. I would never read a book that is rumored to claim that we're already in heaven if it were written by someone who was not a Bible-believing Christian (or even if it were! How could someone be a Bible-believing Christian who says we're already in heaven?)
I hope that link assures the reader that I take the Bible seriously, and defer to it as an absolute authority. But since this book is for Christians, perhaps we should now consider your claim to be a Christian. The ironic thing is, many people who focus on heaven and ignore the earth, may not even have a right to expect a ""Go Directly to Heaven" card.
What gives a person the right to say "I am a Christian and I'm going to heaven when I die?" On what basis should we evaluate that claim?
Jesus said, "By their fruits ye shall know them."
But we don't even have to get into the fruit-inspection business if a person's claim to be a Christian is theologically defective. Consider this one:
"I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is our god. He was an extraterrestrial being who came to earth and inseminated Eve, thus creating the present human race."
I don't care what kind of fruit this guy bears, he's still a nut.
How about this claim:
"I am a Christian because I prophesy in His name, and in His name have cast out devils, and in His name have done many wonderful works,"
Jesus Himself said to such a person, "I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity." (Matthew 7:23)
How about a person who says,
"I believe in God, and I believe that the blood of Christ cleanses me from all my sins, and I believe I'm going to heaven when I die."
James said, "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. (James 2:19)
In that same chapter James said,
14 What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
We live in a world that is naked and destitute (by "naked" I mean "the emperor has no clothes"), and most Christians are hoping to "depart in peace" in the Rapture. What will Jesus say to them?
I took a religion class in college, and during a conversation the professor expressed his dislike of John Calvin and Jerry Falwell; Calvin for his doctrine of Predestination and Falwell for his attempts to "impose a theocracy." I defended Calvin. "Everybody gets what he wants," I explained. "You don't want to spend eternity with Jerry Falwell do you?" No, the professor admitted. "So why do you complain that you weren't predestined to go to heaven?" No answer.
What's one thing that surely takes place in heaven?
That at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians
2:10-11 )
Why would anyone want to spend eternity bowing before Jesus if he doesn't like obeying Jesus on earth?
Here's a claim I can believe:
"Our citizenship is in heaven" (
I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who says he's a Christian because his citizenship is in heaven.
A lot of people who call themselves Christians give no evidence in this life of being citizens of heaven. I suspect a lot of people are going to be surprised when they try to cross the border into heaven and find out they haven't even got a green card.
What does it take to become a citizen of heaven?
I think it can be summed up in four words: "Allegiance to the King."
Or maybe five: "Unqualified allegiance to the King."
Most Americans who call themselves Christians lack allegiance to the King. Most of them deny that allegiance to the King is even necessary.
I've given this issue of allegiance a great deal of thought. I passed the California Bar Exam and was completely qualified to practice law, but was denied a license to practice because my allegiance to God is greater than my allegiance to the State. Here are the details. Most people have never thought about allegiance. But I believe it's a central idea in the Bible, and is the basic requirement for entrance into heaven.
I'm afraid we have to start with the basics, and because they're ignored in our day, these chapters will seem very controversial:
This is heaven?
LIST:
Kingdom of Heaven
The Christmas Conspiracy
Citizens of Heaven
I have written several essays that make pretty audacious claims. They're part of the program of "spiritual exercises" that are designed to give your spiritual brain a real workout. They are defenses of controversial claims like
These all seem like preposterous -- or even heretical -- notions, but there is a sense in which they are true, and finding that truth makes you spiritually stronger.