February 5, 2012

Heaven Is An Experience

Most churches teach that heaven is where Christians go when they die... but let's take a different look.

Matthew 23:13
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.


Here we have Jesus talking to the Jewish religious leaders of his day, telling them that they do not enter into into heaven, nor do they allow their fellow Jews to enter in.

Did you catch that???

Jesus didn't say that they wouldn't enter heaven when they died, but rather that they weren't entering into heaven right then in their present time! If heaven is just a place where people go when they die, then what Jesus says here makes absolutely no sense.

It is rather clear here that heaven (the Kingdom of God) isn't a place, but rather a mindset. Paul describes the Kingdom of God in Romans 14:17... is having the joy, peace & righteousness (righteousness means having a clear conscious before God) in the Holy Spirit!

2 comments:

Jane Oddo said...

Very good. Makes real sense to me. Thanks for that, Dave.

John said...

I was just thinking the other day that this "hope deferred" thing about heaven being after we die, might be the very reason why we do die. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is the tree of life." Jesus came to bring abundant life and not death, right?