Heaven

Nicholas told me the other day he wants to go to heaven and now he understands that he can't go yet until he dies. But I do tell him that we can now enjoy heaven in our heart because we have Jesus in our heart. He wanted to know what Heaven looked like. He asked whether heaven would have PS2 games? I smiled and said I am not sure as the bible does not spell out such detail. I showed him a picture of what heaven looked like from my Holman Study Bible and he said "It looks so old" because it was just a faded visual of city, a river running through it and palm trees on both sides of the river.

After listening to Ps Vernon Falls and Leong Tien Fook I am beginning to understand that heaven is not just a spiritual place as I always thought it was. People tell me it will be more beautiful that I can imagine but I can't imagine it because they don't feed me with enough information. Now that I've gotten hold of the Randy Alcorn's book "Heaven", I am completely enjoying it and have reached Chapter 10 thus far.

Heaven is going to be a "new heaven and new earth" as mentioned in Revelations 22 and God who created the heavens and the earth will not give up on his creation. It is His ultimate plan to redeem us and that means what He planned all along will come to pass. He is not a God who realised his mistake and start afresh with a new "spiritual place" for us. It will be right here on planet earth. When Jesus returns, we the believers will be caught up in the air with Jesus in the clouds. Then those who have died before us will be resurrected. Then comes 1,000 years where Jesus will rule on the earth. Then, we will come back to planet earth and return to a renovated earth. There will be glorified bodies and natural people on earth. During this time Satan will be thrown into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. During that 1,000 years, there will be peace on earth and Jesus will reign as King of Kings.

After that, Satan must be set free for a short time. He will go about deceiving the nations again before He is defeated this time once and for all in the burning lake of sulphur to be tormented forever and ever. Those who are not in the book of life will also be thrown in the lake of fire. The new heaven and earth will be a new earth and as Randy puts it the heavenly dimension will be brought into earth and become one and God will dwell amongst his people. It will be a city. And a city consist of buildings, houses, people, entertainment, arts, culture, businesses, adventure. There will be nations. There will be mountains, rivers, trees, fruits, we will be able to eat and feast. We will see Jesus and we will fall on our face and worship Him. He will pick us up because He loves us. We will have remembrance of our family and friends and there will be no pain, no tears, no sorrow, no hurts. We will still have our memories but the presence of God and the beauty of being with God far outweighs any sad or pain we went through before. That is the heaven we can look forward to.

So to Nic's question, I better tell him yes, there will be games better than he can imagine! :) But for me, I can rejoice that there is heaven in my heart today and there will be continuity to this new heaven and earth where God will dwell amongst us soon. :)