Sermon by Pastor Dale Wolcott
June 9, 2001
(Scriptures quoted are from New King James Version unless otherwise noted)
Once a month for the past ten months, starting in September, we’ve been "Exploring the Saga of Salvation History." It began in Eden -- actually, before Eden, with the story behind all the Bible stories: the story of war in heaven, how there came to be a Satan -- the beginning of the Great Controversy.
So for 6,000 years of drama and trauma, God has been working to persuade His fallen, rebellious children on Planet Earth that HE IS LOVE. The central story of the saga is the story of the cross. Last month we moved from history to prophecy as we previewed what it’s going to be like when Jesus comes again. And now we’re ready for the grand finale: Happily Ever After - Beyond Virtual Reality - what the Bible tells us about heaven and the new earth.
The Bible says, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love Him." [1 Corinthians 2:9] I was reading just the other day about some of the things astro-physicists are discovering with the Hubble Space Telescope. Have you ever wondered if someday some telescope will zero in on heaven? One of the things this article said was that they now believe that about 85% of everything "out there" is what they call "dark matter." There’s indirect evidence that it’s there, but they are completely unable to see it, hear it, smell it or feel it -- the only thing they can tell about it is that there’s something else out there!
People who read the Bible have known that for centuries. Paul said, "the things which are seen are temporary; but the things which are not seen are eternal" [2 Corinthians 4:18] With our sin-damaged senses we simply cannot perceive ultimate reality. So the fact is that ever since Adam and Eve tearfully abandoned that Garden paradise, just about everybody on this planet has been living with virtual reality.
Nancy and I had a friend in Arizona who announced that she and her fiancé were going to have the world’s first virtual wedding. They would be married on the internet: the bride at one computer, the groom at another, the pastor at a third. Anybody in the world was invited to log in and be their guest. Virtual reality can be nice, I guess. I suppose a virtual wedding is okay too. But I wouldn’t want to try to maintain a virtual marriage!
The Bible says the day is coming when we are going to know God as well as He already knows us; the day is coming when we’re going to see clearly what today is unseen to our sin-blinded eyes; the day is coming when we’re going be delivered from this sin-cursed prison of virtual reality, and get back the full use of our senses which Adam and Eve lost when they ate that fruit so long ago! I want to be there, what about you?
The Bible teaching about heaven is a bit like a real estate prospectus - God wants us to want to be there, to choose to buy into His eternal reality! The Bible is better than any space telescope. So let’s take a look at some of the things we can know about heaven and the new earth.
Incidentally, did you know the Bible teaches that heaven is actually going to come down to earth? Revelation says that 1,000 years after Jesus comes and takes us to heaven, the Holy City is going to "come down from God out of heaven." From then on, it says, "the tabernacle of God" will be "with men, and He will dwell with them." [Revelation 21:3] God will actually move the capital of His universe to the very place where His Son came and died to save this rebel race. The "ground zero" battleground of the war with Satan is going to be recreated into the worship center of universe; it will be the place where Jesus and His redeemed creation will celebrate His victory forever! So we sometimes speak of "heaven" and "the new earth" interchangeably.
All right, let’s get on with the prospectus! [See handout used with this sermon, printed below: "Celestial Realty, Inc."] Please take this home and make it a family worship study. Note the "Further Information" references also.
First: Location. Where is heaven right now? Job 22:12 says it's "beyond the highest stars."
About 150 years ago a 17-year-old girl by the name of Ellen Harmon (later married to James White) was given the privilege of seeing beyond virtual reality. Over the course of a seventy-year public ministry, she received several hundred prophetic visions, in fulfillment of a prophecy in the Bible, in the book of Joel, where God promised that in the last days, He would pour out His Spirit on young men and young women, and some of them would "see visions." [Joel 2:28, 29]
In one of her earliest visions, back in 1849, when she was just 21 years old, she looked up into the sky and said she saw an "open space" in Orion. [Early Writings, p. 41] Later she described it as "a clear space of indescribable glory." [Great Controversy, p. 636] She was told by the Lord that the New Jerusalem is going to come down through that open space. Back in the 1800's, astronomers had already turned their telescopes to the constellation Orion, and noticed a strikingly luminous celestial cloud which has come to be known as the Orion Nebula. At least one 19th-century author had vividly described it as an immense, glowing passageway in the heavens, a star-spangled corridor, if you will.
The Orion nebula continues to fascinate astronomers to this day. When I was in college, I remember a professor talking about the Orion nebula and saying, we used to think it looked like a corridor or an open space, but now we know better. And I wondered: Did God really show Ellen something "beyond virtual reality"? Or was she just imagining something she’d read about it a book?
Then in 1995 I noticed the cover of the December issue of National Geographic magazine. In red letters at the top it said, "Double Map Supplement: Orion and the Heavens." Inside, I learned that when they finally got the Hubble space telescope working properly in 1993, guess what was the first celestial object they looked at? The Orion Nebula. It also had a giant poster showing what they saw. (This is a composite picture using images from Hubble and other telescopes.) And then I read the accompanying text, which has the usual evolutionary assumptions and explanations, and doesn’t seem willing to give the Creator credit for what they’re looking at.
But my mouth fell open when I got to page 96. It’s explaining why the dust cloud glows; it has something to do with a very bright and hot star inside the nebula, called Theta 1 C. Now listen to this: "So fast are hydrogen atoms flying off [Theta 1 C], that a hole is being bored right into the molecular cloud along a visible area astronomers call the ionization front." And the accompanying picture vividly shows an open space right there in Orion. There IS an open space in Orion! And someday when ultimate reality breaks through the virtual reality which is all that you or I or Hubble can see, someday after we’ve spent 1,000 years in heaven with Jesus, heaven itself is going to come down from its place beyond the highest star, and the throne of God, the New Jerusalem, the center of the Universe, is going to sail down through that brilliantly-lit corridor in the Orion nebula, and the tabernacle of God is going to be with men here on planet earth.
So what are some of the Attractions of heaven and the new earth? Open your Bible to Isaiah 65. We’re going to see a verse here that you may have thought was in Revelation. Most of Revelation comes from somewhere in Old Testament. This sounds like Revelation 21, but let’s read it in Isaiah 65:17. "For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind."
Now come down to verse 21. "They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit." But somebody says, I thought Jesus was building the homes for us. Yes, there’s a fabulous home in the city, ready to move into at this moment, and when Jesus takes us to heaven we won’t have to do a thing but take occupancy. The whole chapter of Revelation 21 describes the city.
But when God remakes the earth - all of it as beautiful as Eden - then you can go out and pick out your own spot and build your own custom-made house. Turn to Isaiah, chapter 66. Let’s read verses 22 and 23, " ‘For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me,’ says the Lord, ‘so shall your descendants and your name remain. And it shall come to pass that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me,’ says the Lord."
So we’ll be busy and occupied throughout the week, wherever we’ve built our country home, and then every Sabbath we'll have camp meeting on the sea of glass in front of God’s throne.
I remember a friend down on the Navajo Indian Reservation talking about the experience of being a Christian on the reservation. Most of the tribe still follow the traditional religious practices of the ancestors. (Only about 30% of the Navajo population is even nominally Christian.) Sometimes when the believers get together on Sabbath, there aren’t too many
people there. They study their Sabbath School lesson; they hope maybe someone will be there to play the piano; if not, they sing from their Navajo songbooks as best they can. Frieda said, "I love to worship the Lord in our little church. But sometimes I feel like I need to go up to Lincoln, or out to Loma Linda, where there’s a big church, and worship the Lord with hundreds of Adventists, and listen to the organ and the choir, and it feels like heaven!"
Turn to Revelation 15. In the new earth, it’s going to feel like heaven every Sabbath! Here in Revelation 15, John records the spine-tingling experience of music and worship that we’ll savor again and again, from one Sabbath to another, when we go up to that sea of glass for camp meeting in the new earth. Verses 2 and 3, "And I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who have the victory over the beast, over his image and over his mark and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having harps of God. They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying: 'Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of the saints!'"
Now kids, here's a question for you: Will there be any video viewing in heaven? Turn to Revelation 20:4. This takes us back to what will be going on in heaven before it comes down to earth - during the 1,000 years. What does verse 4 say we’ll be doing during the 1,000 years? "I saw thrones." Who is sitting on the thrones? We are. "To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me in My throne." (Revelation 3:21)
And what do we do? "Judgment was committed to them." (Revelation 20:4) This will be a review of all the decisions God has made over the 6,000 years of the great controversy. God wants us to be utterly satisfied that He has not made a single mistake. How will we do that? I suspect we’ll watch the videos. But these will be ultimate-reality videos, not just virtual-reality ones like we have here. Do you suppose that in those videos we'll be able to see the activity of the angels? Will we be able to "hear" the thought processes of each player in the drama? However it may work, we are assured that we will have unhindered access to all the records of heaven, and when our 1,000 years of reviewing the records are finished, we will say, "Just and true are Your ways, O King of the saints!"
And we’ve been promised that sin "will not rise up the second time." That one thousand years of video-watching will serve as God's insurance against any live reruns of the tragic experiment of sin.
Another attraction of heaven: Isaiah 54:13 talks about lifelong learning. Some of us are realizing we aren’t going to live long enough to learn everything we’d like to know about! In heaven, there’ll be time. And there’ll be teachers!
What about "Living Conditions" in heaven? The Bible describes some things that won’t be in heaven. For example:
No sickness (Isaiah 33:24)
No hunger (Revelation 7:16)
No divorce (Matthew 19:3-6); families will stick together.
No marrying and giving in marriage (Matthew 22:30). This concerns many people, especially young people.
Remember, Jesus didn’t say there won’t be families. Apparently, sexual reproduction was a temporary gift in Eden: God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. What would have happened when the earth was filled? The reproductive aspect of marriage would have come to an end and we would have been like the angels in that respect, which is what Jesus says it will be like in the new earth.
Don’t misunderstand me: sexual intimacy in marriage is a wonderful gift from God. I’ll go further than that: sexual intimacy in marriage is one of the God-given blessings that makes marriage work well! We need to thank God for it, and celebrate it within the sacred circle of marriage. So yes, it’s true that Jesus said in Matthew 22 that there won’t be any weddings in heaven. But don’t forget that before he said that in Matthew 22, he had already said in Matthew 19 that there won’t be any divorces! I want to be there, how about you?
Finally, in Revelation 21:4 it says, "and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away."
Now as we wrap up, let’s go to Revelation 22. What is the greatest attraction of heaven for you? We haven’t even talked about playing with the lions or riding the giraffes-that’s in Bible too (Isaiah 11 and 65). We haven’t talked about space travel, or about what a great thing it will be to have personal friendships with some of the great heroes of faith who lived centuries before we did. What is the greatest attraction of heaven?
A musical group called Christian Edition used to sing a song years ago that’s become one of my favorites.
"They say that heaven’s pretty, and living here is too.
But if they said that I would have to choose between the two,
I’d go home . . . going home . . ."
So which is home -- heaven, or here? The song ends this way: "Going home . . . where I belong."
Where do you belong? Up there? Or down here? And how do you know where you belong? The way you know where you belong is by knowing whom you’re most closely related to.
Now look at Rev. 22:3, "And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him." And what does it say in verse 4? "They shall see His face." Does that turn you on? Does that choke you up? Can you get excited about seeing the face of Jesus? I’ve spent fifty-some years now choosing to believe that God is love, that "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." I’m thankful for the Bible. God has been good to me. The evidence that this story I've been sharing the last nine months is a true story is strong evidence, persuasive evidence. I hope it’s been persuasive to you as we’ve taken this journey together. But my brother, my sister, I want to see His face!
As I conclude this series this morning, I want to speak to someone here who may not quite understand why seeing Jesus’ face would be the most attractive feature of Celestial Realty, Inc. Please turn with me to Revelation 7. We’re looking at the last section of the worksheet: "Eligibility." Note verse 13, "Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, ‘Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?’ In other words, "How did they get here?"
Now note verse 14: "And I said to him, ‘Sir, you know.’ So he said to me, ‘These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
Are you sin-stained this morning? Is there some grubby, smelly stuff clinging to your life sort of like a grimy old coat -- offensive stuff in your life that wouldn’t fit well in heaven? You need to dive deep into the story of the cross. Soak it up. The promise is that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son will cleanse you from all sin! He’ll give you the white robe that makes you eligible for heaven. And when that happens, your heart will be crying out, "I can’t wait to see His face!"
As we close, we’re going to sing #206, "Face to Face." We’re only going to sing two verses. As we sing the first verse, I want to give an invitation to anyone here who is not sure that you are ready to see Jesus face to face. If you know you aren’t ready, but want to be ready - would you step out and meet me here at the altar?
First verse:
| Face to face with Christ my Savior, Face to face, what
will it be, When with rapture I behold Him, Jesus Christ, who died for me? Face to face shall I behold Him, Far beyond the starry sky; Face to face in all His glory I shall see Him by and by! |
Now on this last verse, I want to invite us all to step out and recommit ourselves to seeing the face of Jesus - seeing beyond virtual reality, someday soon. Let’s press together here at the altar for closing prayer as we sing the last verse.
Last verse:
|
Face to face! oh, blissful moment!
Face to face -- to see and know; |
*************
Handout Used With This Sermon
Beyond the h s Job 22:12
A fabulous c home Revelation 21
A home in the c Isaiah 65:21
Spine-tingling m and w Rev 15:2, 3
V viewing? Revelation 20:4; 1 Corinthians 13:12
Lifelong l Isaiah 54:13
The face of J Revelation 22:4
No s Isaiah 33:24
No h Revelation 7:16
No d Matthew 19:3-6
No d , no p Revelation 21:4
Revelation 20-22; Isaiah 35, 65, 66; 1 Corinthians 15; Early Writings 13-20, 288-295; Story of Redemption 413-430; Great Controversy 674-678; Education 300-309
Came out of g t ; white robes, washed in the b of the L . Revelation 7:13, 14