Tag: Jesus

Interacting with God in Eternity

Today, especially if you are living as a disciple of Jesus, you interact with God. At the most basic level, God keeps you and the universe you live in functioning. God is aware of your actions and thoughts. He hears your prayer, considers your situation, and moves in this world for your well-being. You can experience God teaching you when you study the Bible. You can experience God working through you when you step out to serve. It’s good but it is not what we would like.

We want to see Jesus and touch Him. We would like to see and feel the Father and the Holy Spirit. Will we?

The best and certainly the most underrated blessing of eternal life with God is the interaction we will have with God in Heaven and in the New Earth. What will that be like?

My understanding is that we will always be a creature that is in one place at a time. There will be no omnipresence for us even in Heaven. That said, I understand the Bible to say that we will ultimately have a very vast domain to explore: a recreated universe (not just a planet) and the whole domain of Heaven. With that I would infer that our means of movement will be greatly enhanced; but no matter where we go, Jesus will be near us. That will be a great blessing.

Right now, Jesus is with us as well, but we don’t perceive that. After we leave this life, Jesus in His already resurrected body will speak with us, comfort us, guide us first just in Heaven and then after Judgment Day everywhere.

For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Revelation 7:17 (ESV)

What about the other persons of the Trinity? It is true that when you encounter Jesus, you encounter them all, but will we specifically experience the Father or the Holy Spirit?

Jesus is still the incarnate Son of God. While omnipresent, He has a specific, human form. The Father and the Holy Spirit are spirit(s). I believe that means that they can take on forms but are not specific in their appearance.

One way we will experience the Holy Spirit is as the waters of the River of Life.

 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Revelation 22:1

I don’t think this river is just something to look at. I expect that it is something to experience. We will wade into the river of Life and experience an interaction with the Spirit unlike anything we have in this life.

It would not be surprising if we encounter the Spirit in many forms, including human form. It will make for a uniquely beautiful relationship.

How will we experience the Father?

 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

Revelation 22:3-4

The curse is attributed as being the cause of many woes in this life: illness, natural disasters, defects in genetics, really anything that is not directly caused by sin. But what is it? I think it is just God stepping back a bit from the controls (Not stepping away). The world operates out of sync. It is a part of our rejection of Him as God. The curse also phases in (in Genesis) as people lose the face-to-face interaction with God. In Heaven and the New Earth, that will no longer be an issue.

There we will see the Father’s “face”. Does He have a face being a spirit? I’m not sure. What we will behold will be glorious. How we will behold it is still a mystery. Seeing God’s face implies a broader and more personal interaction. It is not just reserved for when we enter His throne room.

The experience of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, will be the pinnacle experience of eternal life. The limited revelation we have and our best speculations I’m sure don’t come near to describing it. There is value, however, in trying to imagine what will come. It keeps us looking forward. There is also value in making the most of the interaction that we can have now. That sense of personal relationship with God keeps us strong in the faith.

Jesus and Eternal Life

Admittedly, this blog has put a lot of trust in the words of the Bible to inform us about life after death. It has especially put trust in Jesus’ message. Why? How do we know that Jesus wasn’t a fictional character, or a first century person with delusional disorder, or a liar, or a charlatan, or just a person with a great imagination, or misunderstood and mistranslated? How would we know the same things about other religious leaders, both living and departed, who claim to have revelation about eternal life. There are plenty of ways to explain away Jesus, if you want to do that.

There are exhaustive rebuttals for every negative theory mentioned above and then some. I will keep it basic. Several layers of objective evidence should make you at least be curious and listen to what He says. The final proof that moves you from skeptic to believer will have to come from God interacting with you directly. Nothing in history, or reality for that matter, is entirely above some skeptic angle of reasoning to reject it. Still truth is truth and reality is reality. Our perception and understanding of it is the thing that can be false.

So here are the “layers of evidence” that I would put before you on behalf of the credibility of Jesus:

  • Unlike many other “religious” accounts, the story of Jesus establishes a specific time and place. Jesus did not exist, “Once upon a time.”
  • While that time was a long time ago, approximately 2 B.C. to 33B. C.; it was not so long ago that we do not have outside archeological and documented references from outside of Christianity about Christianity and most of the places referenced in the story of Jesus.
  • Jesus’ life and many of the specifics of it were clearly foretold hundreds if not thousands of years before they happened. This includes specifics that you would not or could not arrange: place of birth, unique means of birth, general time period of life, location of ministry, miraculous proofs, style of death and more.
  • Eyewitnesses recorded acts of Jesus that were clearly miraculous and not likely to be illusions. These eyewitnesses all suffered for their testimony and did not seem to have a reason to lie.
  • Jesus’ greatest promoter after his death was a former enemy of the faith who encountered a resurrected Jesus.
  • The Bible is the most recorded document from antiquity by far. Detailed study of manuscripts can detect copying errors, but they are few and identifiable by comparison studies. The earliest manuscripts can be dated to within decades of the actual events.
  • Both the time of the conception, birth and death of Jesus can be correlated to certain conjunction of stars and a full lunar eclipse, which are verifiable through mathematical means.

While the life of Jesus is full of such things as healing the sick, raising the dead, teaching about God, teaching about good and evil; the main mission of Jesus was connected to doing something specific (and to the sensibility of many, strange) to establish the possibility of a desirable eternal life for human beings, who actually didn’t deserve it according to the Law of God.

Jesus’ death was not tragic and inappropriate. It was what He needed to do. It was not only an example of self-sacrifice. It was fulfilling requirements established by God’s own Law on behalf of our whole species. Jesus’ death and, worse yet, His being forsaken by the Father while on the cross; were all voluntary and planned. Without these actions nobody would be at peace with God. God’s judgement of our sinful rejection of Him would fall on us hard. Death would be something to avoid and delay at all costs.

The way God created us makes us eternally and consciously “alive” in one form or another according to Jesus. Jesus’ sacrifice for us gives us an existence worth having. One cannot go back in time to verify Jesus’ story with your own senses. Usually, you cannot go beyond death to verify what is there or not there either. We depend on God sharing information about these things or we reject that information. The surrounding, verifiable facts should at least make you think.

Prepared for Your Death

You are in good health. Maybe you are even young. Why should you think about death? The obvious answer is that all you have to be is alive in order to die. There is no particular age or way that it comes, and you are not guaranteed that you will grow old before death. But there is a better answer for why you should consider your own mortality. That is because living like you will die someday (and you will), will cause you to truly consider the purpose of life and help you to live fully and wisely.

If it were a fact that we just die and cease to exist, then truly life would be without purpose. In that case do whatever you want and can get away with. But that is not the case. Both the Bible and Near Death Experiences around the world confirm that we go on. The Bible also confirms that life has a purpose and it is a purpose often neglected by people.

When you don’t consider your mortality, or more accurately your immortality, you tend to do mostly what pleases you. Your life is measured by the number and quality of your experiences or the accumulation of your wealth. There is a bumper sticker that reflects this default philosophy, it says, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” If that is on your car, you may want to scape it off before I see it. I will mock you.

Wealth simply passes through our fingers. We enjoy it only temporarily. Life isn’t a contest either. You don’t win anything for being the richest or having many toys. Some of the richest people in history have even concluded that dying with massive wealth was a source of shame and not honor. It certainly hasn’t done much for family dynamics as people quarrel over the estate.

Legacy is a concern of those who truly doubt the reality of eternal life. To be remembered well isn’t a bad thing, it is just not something that will enhance your existence. It is like having a great looking monument on your grave. Others will see it and not care. You won’t see it at all.

The most important quality of both life and death is to right with your Maker. Running a course independent of that chosen by God may feel like freedom but it is actually slavery to our inherent evil. If our death deposits us into the judgment of a Being we have denied and rebelled against, then nothing else matters. We are doomed. If on the other hand, we move from a life that has always been tainted into the arms of a Being that loves us and has compensated for our inherent evil, then that is the most fundamentally important thing in life. The meaning of life is connected to whatever comes next.

The good news is that God does favor the human race. We aggravate Him. We provoke Him. We do our best to write Him out of history. But God is a different kind of being. When He has decided to love someone or something, then He loves them regardless of their response. Despite ourselves, God has enacted a plan that puts a joyful, fun, social and unblemished life after death in our laps. He just has to get through our tough defenses to make it a reality for us personally. A connection to Jesus is the most valuable and indispensable asset we can have, and it is a gift that God is trying to give.

If you have a faith in Jesus as a Savior who has given Himself to die for your sins, then God has done it. He has broken through to you. Every other preparation for death is small by comparison, but there are more. The upcoming blogs will talk about how life impacts afterlife when you are connected to Jesus through faith and baptism. I hope you are curious enough to read them.

Respecting the Danger

Imagine this.  It is a beautiful night for a walk in your neighborhood.  It is dark, but in your experience your neighborhood is a safe place for an evening stroll.  But tonight, this is not the case.  Danger is waiting for you.  Would you rather know about the danger or would you prefer to believe what you want to be true is true?

It should be self-evident that if there are a bunch of villanous thugs, or rabid dogs, or a giant sinkhole that is now part of the neighborhood, we would want to know about it.  Danger is bad, but danger we are unprepared for is the worst.  Still, many people approach death with such a wishful and ignorant attitude.  We must take the walk of death someday, but we don’t want to think about it or even hear what could await us.  As a result, many will pass through death expecting something heavenly, or to be non-existent, or to reincarnate; and that won’t happen for them.  It doesn’t matter what you believe, it is what exists.

My point is that it makes sense to think about and study claims about death, because we definitely will do it, and it will prove to be the most important thing in our existence.  I am not saying I expect all to believe the Bible on this topic.  But beware of the bias caused by what you want to be true.  The Bible actually puts forward something that I definitely don’t want to be true.  Jesus says,

Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)

I would love to deny that this is true.  But I do feel that the Bible, especially Jesus, has credibility.  This comes not only from historical and archeological evidence, but also from reason and, in the end, from the Spirit of God.  This is the giant pothole in the neighborhood.  So I definitely want to be a part of the “few” and I want you to be a part of the few as well, even if I never met you.

This narrow road is Jesus.  Oddly, God would rather this not be the fact either.  God loves people, but people willfully became sinful and this matters.  God is also a being who lives by His Law.  He doesn’t compromise it.  Jesus’ incarnation, life, death and resurrection create a path by which God can both save and fulfill the requirement of the Law.  It’s the only path.

If you don’t believe this yet or don’t understand it, please fully investigate it.  Ask God for help.  Even if you are not sure there is such a being. Understanding death, what comes after it and why, is an existence defining body of knowledge.  It deserves our time and effort. Not only will we avoid a bottomless sinkhole, we will have a redefined life and death will be but the beginning of the best part of our experience.

%d bloggers like this: