The Big Questions About Salvation and FaithSample
Is Heaven Real?
Before you even try to answer this question, you have to be on board with many assumptions. It would help if you remembered that science deals with facts and observations. Science can tell us about what happens in the physical world, but it can’t tell us anything about what happens after death. It can tell us about our bodies but nothing about things like our minds or our souls. To understand these things, we need to explore them differently. So, let’s assume we agree God exists and he is a good God.
He is the kind of God the Bible describes: a God who created people for a community of love. He wanted to enjoy our company, and he wanted us to enjoy his, but humanity messed up his original plan, and as a result, people die.
However, God came into the world in the person of Jesus. Through him, he made a way for us to be reunited with God and to enjoy eternal life. Heaven is what we call the place where we will spend that eternal life with God. If you have accepted God’s gift of eternal life, the end of your life on earth is not the end. Heaven and eternity await.
Because of that, I believe heaven is real, but I can’t really know anything about where heaven is and how it is made up. It’s literally out of this world!
When the Bible talks about heaven being a spiritual place, it’s not what we commonly think it means. It doesn’t mean we’ll all be like transparent ghosts in heaven, floating from cloud to cloud, playing on harps. If that were the reality of heaven, I wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to go.
The Bible describes heaven as a real and solid place filled with real and happy people with proper bodies and engaged in real and purposeful activities. When the Bible talks about “spiritual,” it just means heaven belongs to another reality, another dimension, if you like, not accessible through our present senses and in our present bodies. We’re probably not even talking about carbon-based life forms!
So, when we’re talking about whether heaven exists, it’s not really about astrophysics or scientific or eyewitness evidence. It’s about believing God is a good God, and he has a purpose for your life beyond your time here on earth. If that’s true, certainly heaven is real.
It’s ultimately not the issue. The really big question is whether you’ll be there. If so, look me up when you get there, and we’ll have a chat about whether heaven is real.
– Eliezer Gonzalez
About this Plan
The Big Questions About Salvation and Faith will help you discover what it means to believe and how it is that you are saved. The answers here will build your relationship with Jesus and give you the information you need to share your faith with others. This reading plan will encourage you to walk more closely with Jesus than ever before!
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