If This Isn't Heaven, I Don't Know What Is

Biblical Reasons Why We Should
And Practical Suggestions on How We Can
Create Heaven on Earth

If you're like most Christians, you're expecting to go to heaven. Either when you die, or when you get raptured, you're expecting to go to heaven.

Id like to suggest to you that you haven't really thought about what heaven is like, and if you did, you might not want to go there.

But I'm not here to try to convince you to not want to go to heaven. Quite the opposite.

My point is that if you expect to go to heaven later, you better start acting like it now.

You should live your life on earth as if you were already in heaven.

Let me go back to that first point: that if you thought about heaven, you might not want to go there.

Heaven is not harp-playing and bouncing on fluffy clouds. Heaven is a place where you meet a completely holy and righteous God face to face. Isn't that what you believe? Have you ever read what the Bible says about people who have confronted God? It's a terrifying experience. There are no excuses, no masks, no rationalizations, no "I was just following orders."

If you were in heaven and God ordered you to sing a song or play a harp, could you say, "Later God, I'm busy right now."

Here's my point: if you can't sluff off God in heaven, what makes you think you can do so in this life? If you're unwilling to obey God completely, perfectly, instantaneously, and continually here on earth, why do you want to go to heaven, where obedience is more totally demanded?

Most people want to go to heaven because they believe heaven is care-free, life-of-ease, no more troubles. It means a re-union and eternal gab-fest with old friends. It's complete self-indulgence.

But the Biblical picture of heaven is nothing short of rigorous. Very few people can read the description of heaven in the Book of Revelation and honestly say, "I want to be there."

Very few people are comfortable with physically bowing before God. Very few are even comfortable with spiritually bowing before God in this life. Why would they want to be in heaven where there is no escape from God, and perfect obedience is demanded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

There are other reasons why longing for heaven is a mistake. If you really think about it, most people's idea of heaven is fictional, not Biblical. Millions of people have substituted a longing for a fictional heaven in place of a Biblical world-view. They are ignoring Christ's commands in this life and dreaming about something that really won't exist in the next life.

Click here to begin thinking about what heaven is really like.

If you really want to go to heaven, you should start living as if you were already in heaven, here on earth.

I would like to suggest that many people who believe that Christ is going to return to earth and set up a physical kingdom have ideas which are incompatible with heaven. Their conception of the kingdom is Jewish, the same conception that Peter and the Apostles had, which Jesus rebuked saying, "Get thee behind Me, Satan!" In short, many people hold a demonic conception of the kingdom, and they live their present lives in an unheavenly manner.