Heaven

What If You Were Heir to a Kingdom?

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

We’ve all probably tried to imagine it at one time or another—it’s part of being a child and playing make believe.

The fantasy is…what if you inherited your own kingdom? What would you do?

As a child, it’s fun to imagine such scenarios. And it’s easy to dream of all the things you would do if you did inherit a kingdom.

Perhaps your dream as a child was to sit on a throne and issue decrees to the citizens of your kingdom. Maybe you’d love to have others wait on you all day long, taking care of your every need.

The list could go on and on of the fun things you could do if you had your own kingdom to rule over.

Unfortunately, few of us will ever come into a kingdom—at least here on earth.

The good news is that if we’re believers in Christ, we’re guaranteed a kingdom someday. 

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

Luke 12:32

Think about these words for a minute and let them sink in.

Your heavenly father is actually going to give you a kingdom! It’s like all your childhood dreams have come true.

But what does this mean exactly? Without a doubt, there is controversy over the meaning and timing of the word “kingdom” in this verse in Luke and similar verses.

However, one meaning it could have is Jesus’ millennial kingdom on earth that He establishes after His second coming.

Many believers overlook this 1000-year reign of Christ on earth; however, it is an important part of eschatology (the study of the end times or last things).

Besides our being a part of the eternal kingdom of God in Heaven, I believe that Jesus may be referring to his millennial kingdom.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:2a:

Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world?

Believers in Christ are the saints Paul refers to in this verse.

What world is he talking about? It could very well be the world during Christ’s 1000-year reign. 

If so, then we’ll reign alongside Him:

Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.

Rev. 20:6

Could it be that we’ll sit beside Jesus and co-reign with Him? I believe that’s what the Bible tells us.

We’ll get to have a kingdom, after all!

Ed Hindson’s wonderful book, Future Glory, details the millennial kingdom and all the other wonderful things God has in store for believers. I highly recommend it.

However, to receive this kingdom, you have to accept Jesus as your Savior while you’re still on earth. 

If you haven’t done that yet, it’s the most important decision of your life. It will determine where you spend all of eternity—not just the 1000 years of Christ’s reign on earth.

The choice is yours. However, once you’ve passed on from this life, it’s too late. Make the decision today to begin your new life.

And look forward to reigning with Christ during the millennium.

Thinking About Eternity

/ Clay D. / 3 Comments

He has put eternity into man’s heart.

Ecc. 3:11b

Most of us at one time or another have wondered what it would be like to live forever. As the above passage tells us, God has planted the idea of eternity into our hearts. 

Yet, eternity is something that we as humans can hardly even begin to comprehend.

 Even if we live a long, full life, we can at best hope to be on this earth for a scant 100 years. That is nowhere near eternity.

In fact, our minds have no way of understanding what it is like to live forever. 

eternity

God gives us enough interest in eternity so that we can hope for it, although it is something we’ll never begin to understand until we reach Heaven and spend forever with the Lord. 

Eternal life is promised to those of us who have trusted our souls to the Lord Jesus. Without Him, we will face eternal separation from our creator. 

You see, we’ll exist forever one way or another, either being forever alive and in the presence of God, or enduring eternal destruction and separation in Hell without any hope of reconciliation with God.

The choice is ours how we want to spend eternity. 

Once we die, our decision has been made—there are no “do-overs.” We don’t get to go back and rethink our decision because at that point it’s too late; our fate is sealed. 

Think about it—we have the choice whether we get to live with God and worship Him for all eternity. 

We can live in Paradise with the God of the Universe or suffer in separation and agony without Him forever. 

There’s really no decision when you think about it. 

Even if you’re not totally convinced that Heaven and Hell are real places and that there is a loving God who wants us to live with Him forever, logically you have nothing to lose by choosing to make Jesus your savior. 

If Christians are wrong and you are right, you’ll simply cease to exist when life leaves your body.

However, if you’re wrong and Christians are right, you have all eternity to lose. And that’s a whole lot for a very, very long time. 

If you’ve never made the decision to let Jesus into your life, there’s no better time to do it than right now. 

Pray to Jesus, asking Him to forgive your sins where you’ve fallen short (because we all have) and letting him become Lord of your life. 

Proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God, then connect with a Bible-believing church where you can get baptized and begin the journey of learning more about what it means to be a follower of Christ.

Heaven

Then, the answer of where you’ll spend eternity will be settled. You can rest easy knowing that you’ll live forever with God. 

We don’t know many specifics about what eternity in Heaven will be like, but we can be certain that the experience will be far better than anything we can imagine. 

So, don’t just wonder about eternity. Make plans to secure your place with God by accepting Jesus as your savior today.

Just one more question, please…

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

Am I a closet deist? I think I might be just a little bit. I struggle greatly with the question of how much control God exerts over the world He created.

A big part of me thinks most of the time that God created the natural world and all its many, many systems and now just pretty much lets things take care of themselves.

For example, humans have sex to create more humans. Whether or not a woman conceives is up to one, mighty sperm to break through the walls of her egg. God created all these individual components of the reproductive systems of both the male and the female. Now they do their thing. Conception is totally left up to nature, as are the myriad of other systems in our world, and only rarely does God intervene to change the course of nature (in order words perform a miracle). Why should He have to step in? He set the world up long, long ago, and now it’s running just fine on cruise control.

That’s one theory of mine.

But what if things are not like this? Perhaps God always guides the one sperm He wants to penetrate the egg, having a plan all along to create this one particular individual that He will watch and cheer for from his or her birth, all the way through life, up until the moment of death.

If a lion attacks a group of zebras, snagging a young one in its powerful jaws, is that Providence? Or is it just nature? Or is nature Providence? Does God will that the lion catch the zebra, or is He sitting high up in the stands in Heaven watching all the action take place? He knows what will happen of course, but does it happen because of the excellent programming He put into His world so long ago, or at that moment does He point and say, “That lion will catch that zebra right there”?

Is the world running off of God’s huge program, Universe 1.0, or is God actively calling the shots at each moment for each person?

Perhaps I’m asking too many irrelevant questions. We will never know the answers this side of Heaven, and maybe not even then.