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BEHOLD, HE COMES! #12

A PLANE TICKET TO NOWHERE

There’s a wonderful soundbite that goes back all the way to 1957, the year a very young Southern Baptist preacher named Billy Graham was about to invade the Big Apple with the gospel. Even back then – and maybe back then more than now – New York was the epitome of the big, bad, wicked city. Drugs and gangs, dirty garbage and dirty movies on every corner: a veritable Gotham City. One friend with the National Council of Churches described evangelism there as being like “digging in flint.” But Pastor Graham went ahead and, as always, his public meetings were a blessing and a great success.

But the line we want to use today is from a nationally syndicated gossip columnist from that era, a Dorothy Kilgallen, who went out to Montreat, North Carolina, and spent several days interviewing Billy and Ruth. The young couple worried that they might be facing a cynical, National Enquirer-type exposé, but, lo and behold, the Hearst papers carried the full series of five glowing articles, which did a world of good for the upcoming series at Madison Square Garden.

And here’s the great line we want to borrow for our Tuesday study:

“To Billy Graham,” she wrote, “Heaven is a definite place, like Chicago. He can’t point it out on the map, but he knows it has pearly gates and streets of gold, and he is headed there as surely as if the one-way ticket were crackling in his pocket.”

Isn’t that good? And what a metaphor! Wouldn’t you like to be able to look regularly in your purse, or in that inner compartment of your laptop computer carrying case, and see, along with your passport, a one-way ticket with your name on it and the outbound destination: HEAVEN?

We’re studying in this series the Bible doctrine of the Second Coming, and so the issue of heaven becomes a central, corollary truth. Is there such a place – just like Chicago? Christians don’t believe you can buy a ticket, but can you get a complimentary one, courtesy of Calvary, and actually plan to physically go there?

Twice already in this series, we’ve quoted from the hallmark Bible passage found in John 14:1-3, where Jesus promises to come again for us. And notice the specificity of this line:

“In My Father’s house are many mansions.”

The delightful Message paraphrase puts it this way:

“I’m on my way to get your room ready.”

But what we want to think about today is this: is there a PLACE, a real PLACE, out there somewhere, where there really are streets of gold and a sea of glass and lush gardens and a banquet table and mansions? Can real people go to this real place, or is “heaven” just a spiritual concept describing the redeemed soul’s union with God throughout the ceaseless ages? As Christina Rossetti once put it:

“Heaven is the presence of God.”

In the official Catholic Catechism, dating back to 1995, we find this description:

“Heaven is the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ.” Two paragraphs earlier, in Article #1025, it says: “To live in heaven is ‘to be with Christ.’”

Over in the “B.C.H.,” the Book of Common Prayer used by our Episcopalian friends, the catechism says:

“What do we mean by heaven and hell? By heaven, we mean eternal life in our enjoyment of God; by hell, we mean eternal death in our rejection of God.”

Neither of these statements gives any indication that there is a real place, a physical City, where someone who loves God can someday walk in the grass, sit down to eat fruit from the Tree of Life, stand at the edge of a lake, or even go into a sanctuary, hear real music, and sing praises to God.

I’ve already mentioned that in my Adventist tradition, heaven must have a certain reality for not one but two reasons. First of all, Jesus is specifically described as coming FROM there. “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven,” it says in First Thessalonians 4. Secondly, going back to John 14:3, Jesus plainly says that where He is going – heaven – to prepare mansions, He will someday take us there.

“That where I am, there ye may be also.”

There’s a challenging essay in C. S. Lewis’ compilation, God in the Dock, entitled “Must Our Image of God Go?” And he makes this tough statement:

“We have long ago abandoned belief in a God who sits on a throne in a localized heaven. We call that belief anthropomorphism, and it was officially condemned before our time.”

“Anthropomorphism,” which is about as long a word as we allow on this radio broadcast, refers to the idea of “ascribing human form or attributes to a thing or a being not human, as to a deity.” So when all the animals talk in a Tom & Jerry cartoon, that would be anthropomorphism, but so would thinking that God is in one small place, sitting in one specific chair, weighing maybe 195 pounds, and eating three meals a day. And with that aspect of what C. S. Lewis is saying, I would certainly agree. God IS pure spirit, and through the HOLY Spirit, His presence fills the world and the universe. Lewis writes that the Bible describes God being “in heaven,” but also being the “everlasting arms that are ‘beneath.’” And yet, anthropomorphism or no, friend, let me go on the record in saying that I believe the Bible’s testimony is that there IS a place, a specific and real place, beyond our comprehension, but nevertheless, a tangible place somewhere out there in God’s glorious deep space . . . where this City of God actually is.

Please remember that although God the Father is a Spirit being, He IS still a being. He thinks, He talks, He decides, He acts, He directs in the affairs of the universe. In other words, He is a Person. And certainly our Savior, Jesus Christ, who lives today in heaven . . . is even more a “Person.” He has a resurrected, glorified body with nail scars in His hands and feet. There is a place where He physically is – right now. He is there today, loving us, empowering us, answering our prayers, being our High Priest and Defender and Intercessor. Mark 16:19 says about the end of His ministry on earth:

“After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them [His followers], He was taken up into heaven and He sat at the right hand of God.”

Psalm 33:13, 14:
“From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from His DWELLING PLACE He watches all who live on earth.”

Jesus, in His Matthew 5 Sermon on the Mount, spoke of heaven as being a very real place, where a reward would be waiting for the faithful. The Apostle Paul, who looked forward to being with Christ there, described heaven as the place where his citizenship was.

There’s a very scholarly book floating around in my Adventist denomination – and many of you regular listeners are familiar with the essential framework of our Bible theology regarding heaven, the soul, resurrection, etc. But Dr. Samuele Bacchiocchi makes a strong case for a heaven that is absolutely and vividly and gloriously real. He reminds us, first of all, that if Jesus is the firstfruit of those who have died, or “fallen asleep” in Him, then it stands to reason that we will have glorified bodies like His. We will still be real people. We will know and recognize each other. Just as Jesus was hungry and ate food following the resurrection, we will be capable of physical activities like meals and recreation and fun.

“The spiritual man [of I Corinthians 2] is not a nonphysical person,” he writes. “Rather, it is someone who is guided by the Holy Spirit, in contradistinction from someone who is guided by natural impulses.”

He goes on to describe the Bible’s outlining of a great City that is stupendous and exciting and tangible and eminently livable – the exact opposite of, as he puts it, “a spiritual retreat center . . . where glorified souls will spend eternity in everlasting contemplation and meditation.”

And where is this place? How far away is it? My friend and former host of our weekend program, Morris Venden, tells a marvelous parable, The Diesel Truck, describes a journey to that distant city, and he claims that it’s 105 trillion miles. Where he gets that information, I’ve never asked him, but the Bible doesn’t give us a distance. Suffice it to say, God’s angels can get from there to here in record time when a believer prays, and Jesus is fully capable to taking us there when He comes again. And when we get there, according to Revelation 21, we will find an incredible city which, if the great expressions in that passage are reality and not just powerful metaphors, is something like 1,400 miles on a side, with four walls and 12 bejeweled gates. It’s a City lit by the glory of God Himself. It has a River of Life, and a great Tree whose leaves bring healing.

So friend, there it is. I think it’s real because I believe Jesus is alive and real today, and there has to be a place where He is. And where He is . . . I want to be too. Don’t you? Speaking of a one-way ticket to that Better Land “crackling in your pocket,” Chris Blake writes, in his book Searching For a God to Love:

“Jesus urges us to keep checking our travel brochures, keep looking up, so that we can rejoin Him.”

Good advice.