Why are you a Christian? What do you look forward to as a follower of Jesus? After you spend your time serving God here on earth, how do you expect to be rewarded? What’s next for humanity after this age?
The blessed hope, as taught to most Christians, is simply to make heaven. This is so widely accepted that Christians do not see any need to elaborate upon it. Just endlessly hearing and repeating this line has established it as indisputable truth. Beautiful trees, (animals?), shiny white garments, endless singing, angelic friends, (maybe some fruit!? and … seeing Jesus face to face! Of course no more pain and sorrow, and so on.
Just getting there is enough and many have been known to say that if they can escape hell by a hair’s breadth and squeeze through the pearly gates into heaven to just sit on the grass for eternity, that would be okay. As an alternative to hell, we are not really picky as to the exact conditions of this future place of peace.
But is this what the Bible teaches? Is that the hope that the apostles taught the early Christians? Is this what the Lord promised to His disciples?
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Let us Consider what the Bible Says
1 Peter 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Peter tells us that there is an inheritance that is reserved for us in heaven. So this gives the idea that heaven is not the inheritance. Rather, the inheritance has been reserved in heaven.
The Lord Jesus said:
Matthew 25:31-34 When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: And before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats: And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
Paul said in Romans 14:17 that the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy, in the Holy Spirit. As such, we can say that the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of heaven is any place where there is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Jesus even said that the Kingdom of God could be within you! (Luke 17:21)
Matthew 6:10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. The kingdom of God is where the will of God is done, and heaven is part of it. The kingdom is the domain of the King; the King’s realm. So wherever the king’s will is done, that is His kingdom.
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In Conclusion
If heaven alone does not make up all of the Kingdom of God, then heaven is not the goal for us. If heaven is not the goal, then what is?
Matthew 6:10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
A heavenly earth. In body and terrain. Like the garden in Eden. Our original inheritance.
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