Six Things That Will Surprise You About Heaven - Part A

Among those who are born-again Christians who trust that you have to believe in Jesus Christ in order to get into heaven, even among them there are urban myths about heaven. For instance, when you die you turn into an angel, or your relatives who have died before you become your guardian angels while you're left on the earth, or you'll be sitting on a cloud playing a harp for millions of years. We've covered that.

You're bored out of your mind. Another one is that you don't go to heaven first. You first have to go to a place to burn off all of your sins, and after a period of time then you are released to get into heaven. I've enjoyed watching the growth and the ministry of my friend Levi Lusko. This month's Connect with Skip Resource, Take Back Your Life, the new book by Levi Lusko.

Here's Levi to tell you about it. It's all around this idea of taking back your life. It's a 40-day interactive journey to thinking right so you can live right, and it's going to be really powerful and special, I think, for people to have this. Not only is it in hardcover, which just makes me happy because I've never had a book released in hardcover, but it has a ribbon so you'll be able to keep track of your progress through these 40 days. It would be an incredible gift to someone who is looking to grow in their faith, or for any of us who want to maybe kind of do an oil change for your heart, a checkup on your wellness, on where you're at.

It will deal with internal difficulties and help you deal better with external circumstances that are challenging as we explore how we can get to the very best version of ourselves that we are meant to be. Get the book, Take Back Your Life, with a donation of $35 to connect with Skip. Call 1-800-922-1888 or online at connectwithskip.com. This hardcover book by Levi Lusko will help you take back your life. It's a 40-day interactive journey to thinking right so you can live right. 1-800-922-1888.

Now, we're in Revelation chapter 21 as Skip Heitzig gets into today's message. You probably by now know what an urban legend is. An urban legend is a modern story. It's folklore.

Parts of it may be true, but much of it is completely false or partially false because it's been retold so many times. And these come in the form, all sorts of different forms. Some of them are photographs.

For instance, this picture which we're going to show is the picture of, look at that, how would you like to be that guy? This huge shark jumping out of the water to get this British naval officer in its training exercises. That's false. That never happened. It circulated on the internet with the words, this is real, dude, check it out. It's not real.

That is an urban legend. Or like this next picture. You look at this, that's a moose up on a power pole. Pretty good moose, huh, to climb that thing? 50 feet in the air.

Now that happens to be true actually. What happened is they were laying the power cables. They do it on the ground. The moose got the antlers stuck in the power cables.

These huge machines lift up the cables for miles and that moose was partially raptured in the process until they had to get it down. And besides pictures, there are stories that are urban myths, false information, false claims that go out often by email. For instance, I came across one recently, the claim that an egg can be cooked by placing it in between two active cell phones. That's a myth. Can't happen, has never happened. It's an urban legend.

Videos or no videos. The idea is that if microwave radiation emitted by cell phones can cook an egg, imagine what it can do to your brain. It's a myth, urban legend. Another one is that Bill Gates is giving money away.

Trust me, that's a myth. The story says that internet users will be given cash if they forward messages to test Microsoft's email tracking system. Listen, Bill Gates isn't going to give money randomly to people who forward email messages to people. In fact, his response to this whole fiasco is this.

This is more annoying than spam. Now if people, here's my point, if people have misconceptions about life on earth, imagine what kind of misconceptions they have about life in heaven. Urban legends about heaven.

And we've seen a few of those. It's actually estimated that 40% of the people in one poll believe that heaven is a real place, while 47% believe that heaven is simply a state of being. Of those who believe in heaven, 25% say that those who are good get into heaven. 10% say everyone gets into heaven. And we've even discovered that among those who are born-again Christians who trust that you have to believe in Jesus Christ in order to get into heaven, even among them there are urban myths about heaven. For instance, when you die you turn into an angel, or your relatives who have died before you become your guardian angels while you're left on the earth, or you'll be sitting on a cloud playing a harp for millions of years.

We've covered that. You'll be bored out of your mind. Another one is that you don't go to heaven first. You first have to go to a place to burn off all of your sins, and after a period of time then you are released to get into heaven. All of these are legends, and all of these are the product of our imagination. It's all made up. That's why if you want to get the scoop on heaven, you have to turn, I have to turn to God's revelation about heaven. Not our imagination, God's revelation. Because in the Bible, over 500 times the word heaven appears. Over 700 times when you add the plural of the usage of heaven. And today, I want you to look with me at eight verses in Revelation 21, at a message that I'm calling six things that will surprise you about heaven.

Maybe I should restate that. Six things that may surprise you about heaven. We've already seen a few surprises. One surprise perhaps that some of you have encountered so far is that heaven is not a one stop shopping experience. That there are different phases and different stages to your eternal dwelling. If you were to die today, your spirit would immediately go into the presence of God. You'd be there in his presence.

You'd behold his throne. You would await your bodily resurrection that happens at the rapture of the church. At that point you receive a resurrected body. After that at some point you will come back to this earth with Jesus Christ at his second coming and for a thousand years rule and reign with him in the millennial kingdom. And then after that comes the eternal state, the eternal dwelling place of all of God's people. Well that's what we're dealing with here in chapter 21. Chapter 21 the rapture has passed, the tribulation has passed, the second coming has passed, the millennium has passed and now we enter to that final eternal phase called the new heaven and the new earth. Now some of you will remember Star Trek.

In fact I'm looking at a few people who are hardcore Trekkies maybe. So you already know where I'm going with this. But how does every episode or how did it open up? Space the... Yeah and it's not. Heaven, the new heaven and the new earth is the final frontier. This is eternity after the millennial kingdom. So let's go to chapter 21 and here's the first surprise that some of you may get regarding heaven. Number one it's going to require destruction. Verse one, and I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.

So keep in mind where we're at. After 1000 years reigning with Jesus Christ on an earth that has been made over, that's the millennium, after all that is done then the entire universe will be destroyed. Everything in the created order as we know it will be gone. Go back to chapter 20. Look at verse 11. This is now after the millennium.

Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat on it. From whose face the earth and the heaven fled away and there was found no place for them. The earth gets uncreated, de-created, totally obliterated. And there's a lot of references throughout the Bible about this.

For example in Hebrews chapter 1 it uses a very colorful description. God will fold them up like a cloak to discard them and things will be changed. In Matthew 24 Jesus said heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away. In other words this present universe will have an end. It's sort of interesting up until this last century the prevailing cosmology among many in the scientific community was called the steady state theory. That basically said the universe is eternal. Never had a beginning, never had an end.

It just continues. Then we made discoveries. For instance the sun. The radiation from our sun is produced by the loss of mass. The sun loses 4,200,000 tons of mass every second.

What does that mean? Eventually there's not going to be any mass left. Eventually it's going to wear out, run out, run down. If it had an end then it must have had a beginning and so it is with all of the universe and this earth is designed to be temporary. It was made, it will end. And it will end when God wants it to end and it will end at the end of the thousand year reign of Christ.

So one of the questions is what holds it all together? Well Paul answers it in Colossians chapter 1. He says look Jesus Christ is the creator of everything in heaven and on earth visible and invisible.

He goes on to say this, Colossians 1 17. He, Jesus, is before all things. He's eternal and in him, in Jesus, all things that are created in heaven and earth, all things consist. The word consist means they're held tightly together. They cohere because in Christ everything is held together.

So Jesus Christ took the chaos, the unformed mass and made it into a cosmos, ordered systems that we now enjoy and he holds it all together. We know that matter is made up of rapidly moving particles with opposite charges. However, listen to Dr. Lee Chestnut who wrote a little piece called The Atom Speaks where he says, consider the dilemma of the nuclear physicist when he finally looks in utter amazement at the pattern he has now drawn of the oxygen nucleus. For here are eight positively charged protons closely associated together within the confines of this tiny nucleus.

With them are eight neutrons, a total of 16 particles, eight positively charged and eight with no charge. Earlier physicists had discovered that like charges of electricity and like magnetic poles repel each other. And unlike charges or magnetic poles attract each other. And the entire history of electrical phenomena and electrical equipment had been built upon these principles known as Coulomb's law of electrostatic force and the law of magnetism.

So what was wrong? What holds the nucleus together? Why doesn't it fly apart and therefore why do not all atoms fly apart? Well the short answer Paul would say is I know that Jesus Christ created it and he holds it all together.

It consists in him. Question, what if he lets go? Answer, he will. And when he does, everything will collapse. Everything will be destroyed. Everything will be destroyed.

Now some of you might ask, wait a minute. Didn't God promise Noah that he would never again destroy the earth? Nope, he never promised that. Read the fine print. God said he would never again destroy the earth with a flood.

That's the fine print. Never again with a flood. But he will destroy it with fire. So turn with me from Revelation 21. Go back to 2 Peter 3. Just turn left.

Go a few blocks. You'll see 2 Peter 3. Boy I wish we had time to really talk about the relationship of 2 Peter 3 and Revelation 20 and 21.

We just don't. I want to show you a few verses however. Verse 7, 2 Peter 3. But the heavens and the earth which now exist are kept in store by the same word reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. So we just got through saying in the first part of the chapter, the earth was destroyed by water, now fire. Verse 10. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness? Boy that's a great question, isn't it? Hey if everything material is going to burn up, what kind of a person ought you to be?

Certainly not materialistic, right? You should have an eternal focus since everything in this world will have an end. Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be dissolved being on fire and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we according to his promise look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

So whereas the first earth was destroyed by water during Noah's time and the millennial earth will then be destroyed by fire, that's the recreated original earth, it will be destroyed never to come back again. So that may surprise some in heaven that it will require destruction. Number two, this might surprise you, heaven at this point will take on a whole new fresh design.

It's not a renovation, it's not a recreation, it's brand new. Verse one, and I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away also there was no more sea. Then I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. So we got new heaven, a new earth, now we got new Jerusalem. Now look at verse five, it's a summary statement of all this. Then he who sat on the throne said, behold, or check it out, I make all things new.

And he said to me, right, for these words are true and faithful. So you get the scope of things, the entire universe as we know it will be obliterated and at that point God makes something brand new, totally different. The word for new, by the way, is kynos in Greek, not naos. Naos would mean new chronologically, kynos means it's totally different than the other one. Totally different, a new kind, a fresh, new, totally brand new design.

Not land improvement, not renovation, completely new materials, new atmosphere. I heard about a scientist who was very arrogant and he looked up to the sky and he said, okay, God, I know that you made life, but you must feel very outdated by now. Because we have made so many advancements and we can like run the universe without you. We really don't need you anymore.

We can do everything you can do. So God spoke to him and said, I challenge you to a contest. Scientists said, done. God reaches down, takes a handful of dirt, blows on it, an exotic bird is created, flies away, magnificent. So a scientist closes his eyes, takes in a deep breath, realizing, okay, I've mastered all the principles of soil manipulation and biological cloning, here goes, reaches down, gets a handful of dirt, God goes, not so fast, get your own dirt.

You can manipulate what I've made, but I've made it. It's my stuff and all of God's original stuff will be de-created and in its place will come something new and totally different. New, all things new. We love new things. Kids love new toys. We grow up, we still like new toys, new homes, new cars, new clothes, but the problem is everything we get now that's new becomes un-new very quickly, right?

Because we live in this universe that has the law of entropy and things lose their luster, lose their shine, break down, decay. There was a period in my early Christian walk, I'll never forget it, it was a couple months. It seemed that every single thing that I got that was new got scratched or dinged or broken. I was like on a losing streak. I bought a new camera I'd saved up for. First day home, out of the car, I get up, it falls on the driveway and dings the prison. Still worked, damaged goods. Get a new surfboard a week later, first time I paddled out, another surfboard hit it, hole right in the middle of it.

Couple weeks later, get a new guitar, scratched the first week. It's like God was saying, see? That's the future of this earth. It's all going to burn.

It's all going to wear out. This is a fresh design. Isaiah 66 verse 22, the Lord says, I will make new heavens and a new earth which will last forever. By the way, this may surprise some, the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem, it's real. It's physical.

It has size, texture, color, dimension. It's not wispy, ethereal, spiritual. Where you run around in a disembodied spirit, you'll have a body, a physical body with new capabilities in a real, physical world called the new heaven and the new earth. A third surprise is that it's not going to have an ocean and you won't care. Again, verse one, new heaven, new earth, the first heaven and the first earth had passed away also. There was no more sea.

Now I got a friendly little note after last week's service. Do you remember last week we were talking about the millennial earth and I said I get dibs on Maui, right? So Snow Cane says, sorry to say, Skip, that you can wish for Maui. I thought she was going to say, but I got dibs on it. But she said, sorry to say, you can wish for Maui, but the new earth will have no islands because there will be no sea. Revelation 21, one.

Well, in all kindness, she made a mistake. Last week I wasn't talking about the new earth. I was talking about the millennial earth and in the millennial earth there will be a sea and there will be Maui and I still get dibs on Maui. So we're not talking about the millennial earth today.

We were last week. Now we're talking about, that's all gone. Now we're talking about a whole new earth and a whole new heaven. And the new one, it says, there will be no sea. Boy, I have read this for years and I've always read it as like, gosh, Lord, this is harsh.

This is so disappointing. And if I was going to make a new earth, I'd say something like, and there will be no more cities. There will be no more deserts or rocks, but lots and lots of ocean and beach.

That's what I'd say. God says there will be no sea. It's interesting, by the way, the Bible seems to be silent on the features of the eternal state, what it's really going to be like, except in negatives. For instance, in verse 23, in the city of Jerusalem, New Jerusalem, there's no sun, there's no moon, and by implication, no stars. In verse one, we just read there's no sea.

That's Skip Heitzig with a message from his series, From the Edge of Eternity. Now, here's Skip to share how you can help keep this broadcast going strong, connecting more people like you to God's truth. Our desire is to see listeners like you connect to God's Word on a deeper level and be transformed by its truths. But there are expenses associated with running a radio ministry like this one. Any gift you give, whether at one time or monthly, means you continue to receive these Bible-based teachings.

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