Dare to Believe Inc.

Back to the Garden 

 

Have you ever felt uneasy about the thought of heaven?  Like maybe you should be more excited about it, but you are just not?  Maybe your picture of heaven is too far from what you currently know to really embrace it.  It just seems weird.  Let's start this one by just forgetting what you know about heaven.  If you don't crave heaven hopefully this will change that. 

 

God's original plan was to have us live in the garden of Eden, a perfect place where we would live with Him. Yes, like the song, heaven was a place on Earth.  Satan got involved and we as humans chose to do our own thing, then where God physically lives and where we physically live became two separate places.  Now, think about this question.  Did God lose?  Was His plan foiled by Satan?  That's really an important question, because there's a lot of dominos behind that one.  The answer is no.  God didn't concede and change his plan when things went awry.  In other words, He wasn't bullied in to picking up His toys to go play somewhere else.  He is all knowing and all powerful, so He saw this coming and He doesn't lose.  So, the plan is still the same which is to dwell in physical bodies in a physical place, but nothing will deteriorate anymore.  It says in the Bible that the new Jerusalem is going to come out of the sky and plant on Earth (Revelation 21). The final destination for those who accept Christ is not a foreign place that we know nothing about.  It's a better version of what we already know.  Doesn't that change your view of Heaven?  In other words, He didn't lose and can that plan in exchange for an alternative ethereal location in the clouds where we are plucking away on our harp for eternity and we can't step too far in anyone direction or we'll fall off our little tuft of cloud.  We will eternally dwell in a physical place with God through Christ if we choose to.  We just took an extremely rough detour, but God still wins and things will be just as He originally planned in the end.  He continues to pursue us despite our reluctance to do things His way and personally paid the price for us to make The Way back, so that things will be the way He intended.  So think about that for a moment. Does that change your view?  There's lots more on the subject. I'm just pointing to a place to dig.  Knowing this the Bible will make more sense when you read it, however, you can check out Heaven by Randy Alcorn if you want to know more about this.