Heaven — And Who Will Go Therere
C. R tam
Most
people are surprised when y larn that the Old Testament, though
three times as large as the New, does not contain one single promise
about going to heaven. God’s people, in Old Testament times, looked
forward to a glorified earth, with Messiah as its Ruler.
This
was so even when our Lord was on earth and continued to be so through
Pentecost. Peter, addressing his kinsmen just after Pentecost, said in
essence: “Repent, and God will send Jesus down here” (See Acts 3:19-20),
but Paul, in his epistles, says by divine inspiration: “Believe, and
God will take you up there.”
This
apostle of grace teaches us that God has already given believers in
Christ a position and “all spiritual blessings” in heavenly places in
Christ (Eph. 2:4-6; 1:3). And he teaches further that at the close of
this dispensation of grace “the dead in Christ shall rise” and “we which
are alive and remain shall be caught up together …to meet the Lord… and
so shall we ever be with the Lord” (I Thes. 4:16,17).
Thus
it is that Paul, God’s special apostle for our day, declares that “our
conversation [or citizenship] is in heaven” (Phil. 3:20) and writes of
“the hope which is laid up for you in heaven” (Col. 1:5). Thus it is
that he encourages persecuted saints, saying: “Ye…took joyfully the
spoiling of your goods, knowing…that ye have in heaven a better and an
enduring substance” (Heb. 10:34). And thus he writes even of death:
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dis- solved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (II Cor. 5:1).“…to die is gain….to depart and to be with Christ…is far better” (Phil. 1:21,23).
King James Bible
The Preserved and Living Word of God
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