Daily Meditation

Planning for Eternity

Ligonier Ministries

What will the future be like? What will your income be in five years? What will your health be like in three years? Will civilization be safe for your children and your grandchildren? We ask questions like these, even if only to ourselves. Businesses and ministries also plan for the future, including five- and ten-year plans.

Do you have a two hundred-year plan? Obviously, you expect that you will have died by the end of that period.

What will your death have brought you? Job asked it this way: “If a man die, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14).

The Gallup Poll on Religion in America indicates that the majority of professing Christians believe in life after death. Most of those, however, reject any real idea of hell. The arguments for a heaven without a hell are based primarily not on sound biblical exegesis but on human sentiment. People simply prefer not to believe in hell. It is a subject very few can discuss dispassionately. Yet to deny the reality of hell, one must stand firmly opposed to the unambiguous teaching of Jesus.

Consider the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–26. This passage clearly indicates a great chasm between heaven and hell. It is unbridgeable. Where we are in eternity is where we will be in two hundred years. It is where we will be in two thousand years and in two million years.

The very point of this parable is that people are reluctant to heed the biblical warnings of a judgment that truly is final, with all further appeals exhausted (Luke 16:27–31).

Coram Deo

Spend a few minutes today reflecting on your future. What are your plans for your immediate future? What are your long-range plans? Have you made your eternal plans?

Passages for Further Study

Luke 16:22–25

Daily Meditation

Anticipating Heaven

Ligonier Ministries

Do I as a living, breathing, conscious person have a concrete hope for my future? What do I have to look forward to? At times, when I discover that my own spirit is sagging and a sense of heaviness intrudes on me, I sometimes wonder why the gloomy cloud is perched above my head.

Biblical eschatology gives us solid reasons for expecting a personal continuity of life. Eternal life for the individual is not an empty human aspiration built on myth, but an assurance promised us by Christ Himself. His own triumph over the grave is the church’s hope for our participation in His life.

We have heard so much ridicule and mocking about pie-in-the-sky theology that I’m afraid we’ve lost our appetite for it. What the Scriptures promise for our future involves a lot more than a perpetual visit to Mother Butler’s. Jesus Christ and Simple Simon have very little in common.

The promise of heaven is indeed glorious—a promise that not only anchors the soul but fires the soul with hope. Life is not an outrageous horror, though we witness outrages daily. The outrage is not the bottom line. The sting of death has been overcome.

The victory of Christ is not established by platitudes or conjured-up positive mental attitudes. Jesus is not the Good Humor Man. His call to joy is rooted in reality: “Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Therein resides our future hope—that Christ has overcome the world. He stared directly into the face of death and death blinked.

Coram Deo

Reflect on this truth as you face your problems today: Jesus overcame the world and has given you the power to do likewise.

Passages for Further Study

Revelation 21:1–3

Daily Meditation

Examining the Clues

Ligonier Ministries

John’s vision in Revelation gives us some clues about what heaven is like. Heaven is charged with the absence of things that are conspicuously present in our earthly environment. What is absent? Some of the missing things include tears, death, sorrow, and pain: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4, NIV).

Certain types of people will also be absent. No unbelievers, abominable and sexually immoral people, murderers, sorcerers, idolaters, or liars will live in that place. This indicates that heaven will be a place where sin is totally absent.

The New Jerusalem will have neither tabernacle nor temple. These were but earthly types, shadows of what is to come. When the reality appears, the shadows depart. “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev. 21:22, NIV).

The new heaven will have no sun or moon. They are unnecessary because the glory of God gives it light. In heaven there is no night. Nothing can eclipse or dim the light of the refulgent glory of God. No darkness can overcome or even intrude into the splendor of the One who is the Light of the World.

Finally, there will be no curse there. The curse on the cosmic order, which produces groans from the whole creation, will be lifted. It will be banished from heaven. No death, no pain, and no struggle will curse the human enterprise.

Coram Deo

Read Revelation 21 and 22 to learn more about your heavenly home.

Passages for Further Study

Revelation 21:3–4
Revelation 21:22