Third (and I find this fact fascinating), the Bible hints that heaven is not as far away as we might think. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ." That's why Jesus told the thief on the Cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise" ( Luke 23:43).ģ. Philippians 3:20 says very plainly that "our citizenship is in heaven. His throne is there, the angels are there, and the Lord Jesus Christ is in heaven. The Bible also tells us that heaven is the dwelling place of God. It's a real place filled with real people, which is why the Bible sometimes compares heaven to a mansion with many rooms ( John 14:1-3) and sometimes to an enormous city teeming with people ( Revelation 21).Ģ. The place called heaven is just as real as the place you call home. He means that heaven ("my Father's house") is a real place, as real as New York, London or Chicago. Twice in three verses Jesus calls heaven a place. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am" ( John 14:1-3). I am going there to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house are many rooms if it were not so, I would have told you. Listen to the words of Jesus on the night before he was crucified: The most important fact is that heaven is a real place. There are three things I can tell you in answer to this question.ġ. The Bible tells us everything we need to know and I believe it also tells us everything we can know for certain about heaven. Everything else is just speculation and hearsay. The only things we can know for certain about heaven are the things revealed in the Bible. But before I jump in, I should make one preliminary point. With that as background, I turn now to consider some of the most frequently-asked questions about heaven. After all, if you're wrong about heaven, you're going to be wrong for a long, long time. Whenever you talk about living forever somewhere, it would help to know for sure where you are going. Not very many people would say they aren't going to heaven.
If you took a microphone to the streets of Chicago and asked, "Do you think you will go to heaven when you die?" the vast majority of people would answer, "I hope so," or "I think so," or perhaps "I think I've got a good chance. Not only do most Americans believe in heaven, most people expect to go there when they die. There is another fascinating statistic I should mention. I believe there is also a "heaven-shaped vacuum," a sense that we were made for something more than this life. Sometimes we talk about a "God-shaped vacuum" inside the human heart.