Our Final Authority
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” - (Isaiah 40:8)
Although we don’t know a lot about heaven, I think heaven knows more about Earth. In other words, although I don’t really know what my loved ones are doing in heaven right now, I think they may be more aware of what I am doing here.
We have to be very careful in this area, however, because if someone we love has gone on before us to heaven, we tend to wonder what it is like. We want to know more. Maybe this is why there are books on the bestseller lists written by people who say they have gone to heaven and have returned to tell the story.
Maybe you have read some of these books. I was looking at one the other day and was concerned to find (only a few pages in) some discrepancies. I found things that did not line up with Scripture. What concerns me is that I have met Christians who have formed their views about heaven based on what they have read in books like these.
Perhaps the authors did go to heaven and returned to tell us the story. On the other hand, maybe the authors never went to heaven at all. I don’t know. All I know is that I have only one source to measure these things by, and that is Scripture. God has given us one Book to tell us about heaven, and that is the Bible.
Do you think God was waiting around for someone to have a return-from-death experience so they could come back and suddenly enlighten the rest of us? I don’t think so. Everything we need to know about heaven is in God’s Word. Remember, if it is new, it is not true. If it is true, it is not new. So proceed with caution.
Summary sentence: God’s Word is the final authority on heaven!
Tags: heaven, Bible
Copyright © 2012 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Greg’s latest resource, Hope for America, is written for all believers. It is a roadmap on how our nation can get back to the values that made us strong, and it shows how we can have a spiritual awakening in the nation.
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