HEAVEN Do I really want to go?

Don't know if it is about getting older or just being curious but books on Heaven seem to draw me more and more these days or years.  Just finished A BETTER COUNTRY  "Preparing for Heaven" by Dan Schaeffer.  Great thoughts and questions and answers about it all.  Maybe even too many and too much to actually digest all at one reading.

Towards the end he talks about who goes and who does not go and the whys and wherefores of that.  I believe, as a Christian, and student of God's Word, that there is only one way - a narrow way - and that is by faith in Jesus Christ and His grace through His death and resurrection that can and does get us there.

Again my old favorite, C. S. Lewis stated it wisely well.  "There are only two kinds of people in the end, those who say to God 'Thy will be done' and those to whom God says...'Thy will be done.'  All that are in hell chose it.  Without that self-choice (free will) there could be no hell.  No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.  Those who seek find.  To those who knock it is opened."

In Revelation when it foretells of all the horrific things that will come upon the world wreaking havoc and destruction it says more than once "and still they did NOT repent."  Free will allows us the choice to refuse to believe or go to heaven.  I never forgot a TWILIGHT ZONE featuring a "ne're-do-well" villain who killed without mercy or reason, used women for his own amusement only, drank, gambled and seemed to enjoy every minute.  One night he got shot and when he woke up a dapper gentleman told him that he was there to take care of his wound, which healed immediately, and providing him with whatever he asked.  Needless to say - true to form - he had women, money, gambling until he tired of it all.  In his exhaustion he asked his gentleman provider why such a man who lived the life he lived could have ever deserved to be let in the doors of heaven.  The ending of that particular show still rings loud and clear.  "Why my dear man, whatever made you think you went there, not at all.  You are in the other place."  With only seconds left you could see in his eyes the realization of what an eternity of getting what we want would actually be.

So again I say I'm happy to be a firm believer in CHRIST ALONE as the reason why we get to go to heaven rather than to be on our own and making the selfish choices we would make without Him.

C S Lewis

Some people think he is hard to read and all his books seem text booky.  I guess, because my first to read was SCREWTAPE LETTERS, that I saw his humor,  great deduction of and possible ways of looking at all the various philosophies and worldly ways hitting us every day, it was easy for him to be one of my favorite of all Christian authors.

I am reading THE BUSINESS OF HEAVEN right now and as always I am fascinated by his take on thinking ways of man.  Lewis told of an old man who said he had no need of religion per se for he knew there was a God.  He had "felt" him alone in the desert at night.  Lewis' retort was "Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man."  He went on to say he believed he probably had an encounter with God.  But Lewis went on to expound on how we can "feel" something as we stand at the ocean's edge, and when we look at a map or book of pictures of it, we certainly will "feel" less.

The fun of Lewis is he goes on and leads us further into it.  A navigational chart or the "theology" of the ocean put in a book or an Atlas may not cause the same feeling as being at the ocean's edge with the water washing over our feet.  But if we ever want that ocean to take us somewhere we are going to need the map.

I almost cry every time I read Romans 1 when it tells of the creation of God and how He meant it to reveal HIMSELF to us.  And then the verse that almost causes me to weep, Romans 1:20 "...they will be without excuse..."  As simple as that - you may believe in God - the devils believe and tremble but if we do not desire to learn and grow more knowledgeable of Him in a church or the Bible or prayer or fellowship with other Christians more mature who can lead us forward into it, then we do or know nothing more.  It is just NOT enough. C.S Lewis is great at making us think!