Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 15

THE PARLOR“You fill me with joy in your presence.” –Psalm 16:11
The world’s leaders use throne rooms, executive offices and legislative halls to conduct state business. But they also use the more informal setting of a small meeting room for honest negotiations with other decision makers. In Heaven, we’ll expect our King of Kings and Lord of Lords to have a Throne Room. But could we also enjoy time with the One who called us “friends” (John 15:15) in a friendlier gathering room, like an old-fashioned parlor? I’d like to think so.
Even though Jesus sits in honor at the right hand of the Father in the Throne Room, He remembers earth’s humbler ways. He was born in the filth of a stable, wore simple, home-made sandals and clothes, and never had a home of His own. He wasn’t too important to kick back and relax with His followers. He will understand our comfort level for meeting together as “just friends.” In fact, we’re already having “parlor times” with Christ every time we read our Bibles and pray. He is there, though He cannot be seen.
Admittedly, “parlor” is an old-fashioned word. For me, it brings up memories of the 1950s and my Uncle Pete and Aunt Lauretta’s humble home on an isolated eastern Montana farm. The home had three bedrooms but no inside plumbing. They pumped their water from a well. There was a huge kitchen and a small “root cellar” with walls lined with home-canned food. Poor by many standards, Pete and Lauretta were rich toward God. That’s because of their daily visits with Jesus in the small “parlor” just off the kitchen. Pete kept his well-worn Bible next to his armchair with its sunken leather seat. Lauretta, her Bible also well-used, talked often of God’s promises and answers to prayer.
It’s not hard for me to transition from their earthly “parlor” visits with Jesus to imagining their first “just friends” meeting with the Savior. Was there a long, grateful hug? What did they talk about? Perhaps Pete told Jesus, “Remember that wheat field that I said was my tithe to You? I’ll never forget how You spared that field when hail destroyed crops all around. I still got enough from the rest of the harvest to live on. Thanks, Jesus. I knew it was You.”
How will we know it’s Jesus that we’re meeting in Heaven? Isaiah prophesied that Jesus’ human form wasn’t movie-star quality: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). Indeed, people found it hard to believe that the carpenter Joseph’s son could be the Messiah. Isaiah also predicted Christ’s flogging and crucifixion, hundreds of years before executioners nailed the condemned to crosses: “His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness” (52:14). Yet I believe we’ll recognize Jesus, and see the scars remaining on His resurrection body. I’ll know Him by the face that says, “I love you. I gladly died for you.” I’ll realize it’s truly Him by the way He says, “Welcome to the home I prepared for you.”
Will we be frightened, feeling unworthy in His presence? No. His death for our sins means we’re presented “holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Col. 1:22). That was true of the moment on earth you accepted Christ’s gift of salvation, and remained true as you stayed “unmoved from the hope held out in the gospel” (Col. 1:23).
When He enters the parlor, He will remind you that you are friends. As a worship chorus says, we will glory in His embrace. Or as Charles Gabriel put it in his old hymn, “Yet, just a smile from my Savior, I know, will through the ages be glory for me.” Friends hug, talk, laugh, rejoice, and connect. He will tell you, “Come and share your master’s happiness” (Matt. 25:23).
What a joy to anticipate: being with Jesus again. Maybe it will be in the intimacy of Heaven’s version of a parlor, maybe in the midst of a Heavenly work assignment. No longer will we have to meet with Him without seeing Him, as we did on earth in that quiet seat in a parlor or some other spot with a Bible and a prayerful heart.
Throughout Heaven, genuine, heartfelt, and clear communication will take place. We’ll know the intimacy expressed in Isaiah 64:1: “Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.” In His presence, as Psalm 16:11 says, we will be filled with joy!

Prayer: Jesus, thank You for being both my Savior and my Friend. Amen.

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 14

THE THRONE ROOM
“Day and night they never stop saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.’” –Revelation 4:8

How would you meet the King of Kings? One of Wheaton College’s great presidents, Dr. Raymond Edman, was trying to explain that one day in chapel. He wanted students to take worship seriously, so told about his visit to Haile Selassie, former emperor of Ethiopia. Before seeing the monarch, Edman was briefed about royal protocol and told how to bow with respect as he entered the king’s presence. “In the same way,” Edman said, “we must prepare ourselves to meet God.” At that moment, Edman slumped onto the pulpit, fell to the floor, and died. Just like that, he entered the presence of the King of Kings. In the context of his message, his death stunned the Christian community. Many said Edman in dying that way “had the easiest transition to heaven of anybody they’ve ever known, that he lived so much of his life in the presence of God down here that he simply changed venues.” (David Jeremiah, Prayer: The Great Adventure, Multnomah, 1997, p. 98).

The Bible says Heaven is God’s throne and earth is his footstool (Isaiah 66:1, Matt. 5:34). That’s beyond our understanding, along with the unfathomable truth that the all-knowing, all-present, all-seeing, and timeless One created the world and each of us. When the prophet Isaiah had a vision of God’s throne room, he struggled to express God’s greatness: “I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1). He wrote of six-winged creatures flying about the throne, continually calling out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” The doorposts and thresholds shook and smoke filled the temple (6:2-4). Experiencing all this, Isaiah could only cry out, “Woe is me.”

Eight hundred years later, after Christ’s time on earth, His disciple John had another vision of God’s throne room. By now, John was the last surviving disciple, an old man of ninety imprisoned on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. One day, as John was what he called “in the spirit”—perhaps in prayerful communication with God--he had that memorable vision. What he saw put him at a loss for words. He could only say the Person on the throne “had the appearance of” precious stones (Rev. 4:3). He also saw:

Brilliance: A rainbow “resembling an emerald” (does this stretch your imagination?) encircled the throne (4:3)
Assistants: The thrones of twenty-four “elders” who fell before the One on the throne and offered him their crowns as they praised Him (4:4, 9-10).
Mighty noise: “Flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder” (4:5).
Blinding light: “Before the throne seven lamps were blazing” (4:5).
Amazing flooring: “Before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” (4:6).
Countless heaven-creatures: “I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand” (5:11)
Incredible praise creatures. Like Isaiah, John saw six-winged creatures, but got a closer look at four. Full of eyes, one was similar to a lion, another to an ox, a third to a man, and the fourth to an eagle. They never stopped saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (4:6b-8). One author remarked he always wondered why these magnificent creatures said the same thing over and over. “The answer was an epiphany,” he said. “The wonder of being in God’s presence never wore off.” (Dan Schaeffer, “Paradise Found,” Discipleship Journal, Issue 136, July/August 2003, p. 39).

Have you considered what you’ll do when ushered into God’s throne room? Will you curl up, face covered, because of His blazing holiness? Or will you dance in purest joy that you’re finally there? Will you be aware of others worshiping as well? In John’s vision there “was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9).

What will be the most astounding aspect of the throne room? Perhaps King David anticipated it: “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). The old apostle John also anticipated gazing on the beauty of the Lord: “We shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:3). “They shall see His face” (Rev. 22:4).

What will be the most wonderful part of Heaven? No question: the Throne Room, where we shall see the King of Kings in all His glorious splendor.

Prayer: Great God of all, help me to worship You now as I anticipate seeing You on your Heavenly throne. Amen.

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 13

CEILINGS
“I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third Heaven…to Paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.” –2 Corinthians 12:2, 4

Ceilings in the Sistine Chapel in Rome display some of the most famous paintings in the world, stroked five hundred years ago by Michelangelo. Painstakingly brushed into fresh lime plaster as he lay on his back on scaffolding, the frescoes depict Creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, and Noah and the flood. To see them, people must look up, just as we instinctively look skyward when thoughts turn to Heaven. Why up? Perhaps because we consider Heaven the “ceiling” of all creation. Though its location and nature are wrapped in mystery, Heaven is beyond our understanding of time and space. But it’s real.

Jesus said He came “down” from Heaven (John 6:33). When He ascended after His resurrection, His body rose steadily upward from land until clouds obscured his passage (Acts 1:2). His followers would have stared at the sky all day if two white-garbed beings hadn’t told them, “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into Heaven” (Acts 1:11).

To avoid any misunderstanding about what we call “outer space” and true Heaven, it’s helpful to realize that the Bible refers to three “heavens.” The first Heaven is the firmament and atmosphere, what we call “sky.” It is space where manned and unmanned rockets have flown. But it’s not God’s home. Soviet cosmonaut and atheist Yuri Gargarin, the first man in space in 1961, revealed his ignorance of the spiritual realm when he scoffed, “I saw no God.” He died in a plane crash in 1968, the same year that an American astronaut reminded the world of God’s indescribable creative greatness. Aboard Apollo 8 in a lunar orbit, Frank Borman beamed back to earth stunning photos of his home planet in a black vastness, plus read the creation account from Genesis 1: “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth….”

The second Heaven is the matchless celestial universe. The psalmist wrote, “The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Psalm 19:1). When my family slept in the backyard on sultry summer nights, we lay amazed by the display of the moon and innumerable stars. It’s said that President Teddy Roosevelt and American naturalist William Beebe had a nighttime ritual when they were together. They’d find the constellation Pegasus in the night sky, then look for a speck of light nearby. Then they’d chant: “That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.” Then Roosevelt would conclude, “Now I think we are small enough. Let’s go to bed.” A hundred more years of scientific discovery would shrink them even more. Now scientists claim they undercounted the number of stars in our galaxy by billions. That’s just our galaxy.

The Bible’s third Heaven is the dwelling place of God. The Bible talks of God looking down from Heaven and from his lofty, holy and glorious throne (Isaiah 63:15). God said that Heaven is His throne and earth is His footstool (Isaiah 66:1). We struggle to understand this because God is a spirit. How can a spirit “dwell”? Yet we know that Heaven is a realm that can accommodate the special body Jesus had after His resurrection. Paul referred to this Heaven in his report of a heavenly vision of “inexpressible things” (2 Cor. 12:1-4). The aging apostle John, given a vision of Heaven, had the same problem. He had only earth-bound words and symbols to try to describe God’s dwelling place.

Our finite minds simply cannot envision the dwelling place of an infinite God. But He permits us to lift our hearts upward, however that comes about—even if just a ceiling in a home. One woman told how the glitter-embedded textured ceiling in her bedroom drew her heart toward Heaven during a time of sickness. “As I lay in bed, sun from the window made that ceiling glisten like the stars,” she said. “It made me homesick for Heaven, even though I knew my ceiling wasn’t the sky, and even outer space isn’t Heaven.”

That being the case, how will we ever find the way to Heaven? Jesus already answered the question: “I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:3). We do not need a map. He knows the way, and that is enough.

Prayer: God, that part of your creation I can see is amazing. It reminds me of your vastness and power, so far beyond what I can understand now. Amen.

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 12

THE WARDROBE
“Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our Heavenly dwelling.”
–2 Corinthians 5:2

“Is this really it?” I whispered to the librarian who checked me through “security” to the C.S. Lewis collection in the Wheaton College library. Before me stood an ornate dark brown wardrobe. Carved by his grandfather more than a century ago, it was a prized piece in the 1973 auction of Lewis’s estate.

This might have been just another old, bulky piece of furniture if Lewis had not written his famed Chronicles of Narnia. In the first book of the fantasy fiction, four children were staying at the country home of a bachelor professor to escape London’s wartime bombing. One boring, rainy day, the children decided to play “hide-and-seek” and the youngest climbed inside the wardrobe. The back of it led her to the frozen land of Narnia.

Was this the wardrobe that inspired Lewis’s imagination? His late brother Warren said it was. Seeing it sparked my imagination about Heaven having a wardrobe, located just inside the entry hall for the coats of invited guests. I thought of the verse, “For this mortal must put on immortality”(1 Cor. 15:53 KJV). In death, we shed our “mortal coats.” We cast off the bodies ruined by disease or injury and immediately go into the presence of the Lord. This is usually called the “intermediate state,” because we won’t get our resurrection bodies until Christ returns to earth.

But being “body-less” won’t impair our joy of Heaven. Besides being with Christ, the Bible says we’ll be among “thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly” (Heb. 12:22). Can you imagine the dynamism amidst so many joyful beings? The closest we can come on earth might be opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympic games. But those earthly events, despite all the hoopla, are just dots in the infinity of eternity. This is Heaven!

We’ll be with believers of all ages (Heb. 12:23). Maybe, in wonder, we’ll say, “Look, over there--Martin Luther, the Wesley brothers, John Calvin—and D.L. Moody and Augustine and John Wycliffe and Bill Bright and early Christians that Nero threw to the lions--and great-grandma and that older lady from church who poured her love of Jesus into me and….” I think the discoveries will go on and on. We’ll be perfectly conformed to Christ in our spirits (also v. 23). No shame or regrets, just fellowship. No wonder Paul declared that departing to be with Christ “is better by far”(Phil. 1:23).

Then someday, in the glorious climax of history, we’ll get our new “coats”—our new bodies. It will happen in the “twinkling of an eye”(1 Cor. 15:52)--faster than you can blink. Jesus will descend from Heaven “with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God.” It will be sudden and loud and royal! “The dead in Christ will rise first.”(1 Thess. 4:16). The same God who supervised how molecules became the earthly “you” will re-gather those disintegrated components. It doesn’t matter to Him whether you were buried in a coffin or your body destroyed by fire, an explosion, or lost at sea. He will reassemble the new, Heaven-ready “you.” After the dead are raised and given new Heaven-worthy bodies, then the still-living believers will be called up: “After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.”(v. 17).

Imagine. Someday, life is going on as usual, except the world has gotten unbearably wicked. We’re doing our best to live for Christ. Then suddenly, faster than you can blink, “new” bodies jet out of the earth and sea, and we follow right behind—right into Heaven. No wonder the Bible says, “Encourage each other with these words” (v. 18). This new body will be “us” but it will be something entirely new. It’s like a seed on earth. When we press a pumpkin seed into the soil, it’s just a dried oval of cellulose. It doesn’t produce more dried cellulose ovals. It sends out stout vines and leaves. Then golden blossoms come, wither, and start growing green globes. After several months, these are bright orange pumpkins. So with our earthly bodies:
Sown perishable, raised imperishable.
Sown in dishonor, raised in glory.
Sown in weakness, raised in power.
Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. (1 Cor. 15:42-44)
Hard to wrap your mind around that? Don’t worry. It’s God’s doing. The “new you” He designs will be perfectly equipped for Heaven and, best of all, never die. Maybe we’ll stop, pat this new body all over, and say, “Is this really it?” And it will be.

Prayer: Lord, the promise of “new bodies” helps me look beyond my pain to the wonders of Heaven. Thank You! And, amen!

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 11

THE CLOCK
“For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed.” –Acts 13:36

Foyers of classic old homes often had a place for a tall, stately cabinet clock properly called a “longcase clock.” But we have come to know them as “Grandfather’s Clocks” because of a story told of two brothers who operated an English travelers’ inn. The clock in their lobby kept perfect time until one brother died. Then, despite repair efforts by local clock makers, it started losing time until it absolutely quit the day the second brother died.

Poet Henry Clay Work took that story and in 1875 turned it into the well-known poem and song “My Grandfather’s Clock.” Most can remember the tune with its steady tick-tock in the background and lyrics about the clock bought on the day the owner was born. The famed final lines say, “But it stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.”

Clocks make us think of our own “time.” The chiming of a classic clock gently reminds us that time is passing. If it chimed the hour and half-hour, over a typical human lifetime of 75 to 80 years it would have sounded nearly 1.4 million times. That seems like a lot of time, but to God, it’s a blip on the screen of eternity. Even the remarkable life of King David, Israel’s shepherd-turned-warrior-king, was a “blip” in time. After forty years as king, one day at age 70 he took his last breath. He touched history, and went on. God considered David’s work ended—or as Acts 13:36 says, he lived until he served God’s purpose in his generation.

We, too, live for God’s purpose in our generation. But that’s not the end of the story. Something wonderful happens with “time” when we die. The Grandfather’s Clock song failed to tell it. Even writers of hymns have a hard time expressing our “after-time” life. Think of “Amazing Grace”: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we’ve first begun.” Some people quip that’s an awfully long choir rehearsal! But remember: death takes us from earth-time to heaven-time.

Heaven won’t be “endless time” or “timelessness.” Time is a way to measure things happening, and things will truly happen in heaven. People will speak. They’ll fall down in worship, casting their crowns before the throne. Music inherently has beat—another “time” element. The Bible describes a “tree of life” in Heaven that bears twelve crops of fruit, one each month (Rev. 22:2). Does this mean we’ll have “time” as we now define by it by a solar orbit? We don’t know. Perhaps God used an earthly term to let us know this miraculous tree will provide on a regular basis.

People who couldn’t live without their pocket or desk planners, watches, or alarm clocks will be able to relax in “heaven time.” There will be plenty of time for everything that’s important—which is, of course, everything in heaven. I believe that time in heaven will most likely mean activity without physical or mental weariness. It will not tick down, like a timer. It will go on for infinity. We’ll never have to say, “I wish I had more time.”

But until we’re there, we live in earth time until we die. The Bible says, “No man knows when his hour will come”(Eccl. 9:12). This uncertainty bothers many people who fear death or feel unready to die. One respected Bible teacher admitted that when he started preaching across the country and needed to fly to his engagements, he feared the plane would crash and end his life. Then one day a friend counseled him: “Remember this…God’s man, living in the center of God’s will, is immortal until God is through with him” (David Jeremiah, Prayer: The Great Adventure, Multnomah, 1997, p. 216). Jesus modeled that principle for us. In spite of many threats on His life, Jesus didn’t go to the cross until He finished His work on earth.

The psalmist declared his trust in God’s timing: “My times are in your hands” (Psalm 31:15) Charles Spurgeon, a great preacher of the 19th century, called this a “golden sentence.” Because our times are in God’s hands, he said, all is well because God never changes. “Things will happen which you cannot foresee,” he commented, “but your Lord has foreseen all, and provided for all. Nothing can happen without His divine allowance” (Quoted in Ellen Vaughn, Time Peace: Living Here and Now with a Timeless God, Zondervan, 2007, p. 210).

Tick, tick, tick…those sounds remind us of God’s gift of time. Let them also assure you that His timing to come to Heaven is exactly right.

Prayer: God, comfort me and remove my fears about not having enough time. Your timing is perfect. Amen.

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 10

THE FOYER
“I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God.” –Psalm 84:10b

Who doesn’t love a surprise party? Imagine your friends hiding behind the door, tingling with excitement. “Shh!” they remind each other as you come near. You open the door and hear, “Surprise!” The fun begins—all because of you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a party’s waiting on the other side of death’s door, too. If Heaven has an entrance hall, your welcome party will begin there. In English, it’s often called the “foyer,” a word derived from Latin for “hearth” or “fireplace.” Long ago, if it was stormy outside, people looked forward to stepping inside the door and getting near the fire.

So, envision leaving earth’s physical and emotional storms behind. Your Heaven-homecoming party’s starting, and you’re giddy with anticipation. Perhaps this verse will describe your mood: “Then you will look and be radiant, you heart will throb and swell with joy” (Isaiah 60:5). You won’t have to worry about the excitement sending your blood pressure too high or feeling pain in your heart’s clogged arteries. You left that sick earthly body behind. This is Heaven, the home you’ve longed for. Maybe your reaction will be like that of the talking unicorn in C.S. Lewis’s story, The Last Battle: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now” (Collier Books, 1956, p. 171).

Yes, you’re finally, truly home.

Sadly, some religious traditions stall your progress into Heaven’s grand entryway. They say you must go into a holding room of sorts to be “purged” of past sins until you’re “good enough” for Heaven. The Bible says nothing of the sort. You can forget, too, the cartoons of St. Peter standing behind a podium with a big list, checking if you “measured up” to Heaven’s standards before you are let in. There’s not a shred of Biblical evidence for that. You make your reservations for Heaven the moment you believed that Christ died for your sins.

Who will greet you at Heaven’s door? The Bible is silent on this, but why not people you expected to see, and some you didn’t? Loved ones who shared a faith in Christ. People whose lives you impacted for Christ, whether or not you realized it. Maybe dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. Ancestors you knew only from names in the family history book may welcome you as a fellow citizen of Heaven.

Are you wondering how all these people will know you since you came as a “spirit,” not with your old, sick, or mortally wounded body? God’s big enough to have that one figured out. Somehow, the essence of you will be there. People will just know. For a glimpse of how that’s possible, remember the time Jesus took His closest disciples to a high mountain. There, His body underwent a special change. His body shone like the sun and His clothing like blazing light. Suddenly, two figures of ancient Jewish history, long dead, stood with him. Jesus’ disciples could not have known the identity of these people. Back then, no film or artists recorded history. But Peter knew—just knew—the figures were Moses and Elijah. Typical for his impulsive personality, he was so excited he suggested putting up a museum to that moment. Then a cloud obscured the setting and it was over (Matt. 17:1-8). Like Peter just knew these men, it’s probable that we’ll just know people when we get to Heaven.

Back to that party: don’t worry about forgetting peoples’ names. Because memory loss belongs to the fallen condition of our earth-lives, there shouldn’t be “senior moments.” Perhaps we’ll have the reunion to end all reunions. We won’t struggle to keep the conversations going. The main topic of conversation will be Jesus and the joy of being in Heaven. I’m guessing we’ll finally understand why King David sang out, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” (Psalm 84:10). Despite all the lavish privileges he enjoyed as king of Israel, nothing compared to the presence of God. He declared he’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God. That’s where the action was!

To carry on the comparison, who else might be in the foyer greeting you? God’s angelic messengers, perhaps ones dispatched to help and protect you on earth? And why not the Lord Jesus Himself, welcoming His loved one Home? Remember, He loved parties on earth. He even made a stature-challenged tax collector named Zaccheus climb down out of a tree and put one on for Him (Luke 19:1-10)!

Close the door. Let the party begin. The honored guest is here.

Prayer: Lord, I love the thought of a welcome party when I arrive in Heaven. Thank you for loving me so much! Amen.

Heaven: The Greatest Home Makeover--Day 9

THE DOOR
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
–Matthew 11:28

Picture someone at Heaven’s door. Maybe they’re surprised to be here. They expected more years of life, but an accident or sudden, fatal illness propelled them here. Maybe death came after a long, painful and discouraging illness. They may hesitate, fully aware that they have never been here before. Yet, at some point they made a commitment to live forever on the other side.

They step back just a bit, enough to see that the door is held together by cross-shaped timbers. The only way to Heaven is through that cross. They remember what was said of this: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). They know there’s no turning back, only going forward. What would they tell those they will leave behind? Here are some famous dying words:
*“Into Thy hands I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, O God of Truth.” –15th century German reformer Martin Luther, who repeated the prayer thrice.
*“The best of it is, God is with us.”--the great British preacher John Wesley, 1791.
* “Earth recedes, Heaven opens before me. If this is death, it is sweet! There is no valley here. God is calling me and I must go.”--Evangelist D.L. Moody, 1899.
*“The Lord is coming for me today. He’s at the foot of my bed now.” --Audrey Wetherall Johnson, founder of Bible Study Fellowship, 1984.
*“Rejoice with me because I am no longer in this earthly tent. I am in the presence of the living God, satisfied at the deepest core of my being.”--Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright, 2003.

Whether we’re famous or unknown, at death’s door only Jesus matters. Janet recalls of her mother Doris: “The presence of the Lord was so apparent the last few days of her life. She kept saying, ‘Alleluia, praise Jesus,’ as though she had constant communion with her Lord.”

We’re also equal at that door, marked by a Cross. Jesus’ call is the same. “Jesus is calling, ‘Come unto me,’” Georgia kept telling her dying friend Eleanor. “And I will give you rest,” the weakening woman would reply. “Are you ready?” Georgia asked, knowing Eleanor’s earthly life would soon end. “Oh, yes!” Eleanor answered. Georgia noticed that a wall near Eleanor’s bed had a print of Salmon’s famous brown-tone painting of the head of Christ. Georgia decided to bring another famous print, Reed’s depiction of the hands of Jesus, known by the title “Come unto Me.” “See Jesus’ hands?” Georgia asked Eleanor, pointing to the artwork she’d brought. “He’s saying, ‘Come unto me. Are you ready?” And Eleanor, despite being so ill, managed a confident reply: “Oh, yes!”

When Eleanor lapsed into a coma, her daughter began a death vigil. Georgia came to give the daughter a break and began reading Bible passages aloud to Eleanor. “I knew she was in a coma,” Georgia said, “but I also know that hearing is one of the last senses lost. I decided to read from John 14—‘Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father’s house are many rooms.’” A nurse came in, checked Eleanor and told Georgia, “She’s really failing.” Georgia kept reading aloud. About five minutes later, the nurse checked again and said, “She’s gone.”As the nurse went to call Eleanor’s daughter, Georgia felt compelled to keep reading aloud, this time from Revelation 21 about Heaven meaning no more death, pain, or sorrow. From the other side of death’s door, Georgia believed, that would be Eleanor’s message to her loved ones.

Someday, each of us will hear the same invitation: “Come unto me.” Philip Keller, author of A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, said, that for a child of God, death is not an end but a “door into a higher and more exalted life of intimate contact with God.” (Zondervan, 1970, p. 84).

When Heaven’s door opens, where will you look? Down—at the nail prints in His hands? Then up—at His wonderful look of love? His voice will melt all doubts as you step over the threshold.

Prayer: Jesus, I love You and I want to come unto You, through the door marked by a cross. Amen.