If heaven seems like a place you've heard of, but never really understood. You're in the right place. Today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah and guest Sheila Walsh discuss his new book, The Promise of Heaven. and explore what the Bible has to say about our eternal home.
It might just surprise you. With a special encore presentation of her interview with Dr. Jeremiah, Here's Sheila Walsh. Let me ask you something. Have you ever had a quiet moment, maybe in the middle of a busy day, or just lying awake at night, when you've wondered?
Is this really All there is. Maybe life feels full, but something still feels missing. Maybe you've experienced loss or change or just the ache of growing older. and you found yourself longing for something more. That longing?
It's not by chance. and it's not an accident. It is eternity calling. You see, the Bible doesn't end in confusion or fear. It ends with an incredible vision.
Breathticking vision. of the promise of heaven.
Now most of us believe in heaven, but even so, it often feels distant. Abstract. Like something we've heard about but never fully understood.
Well, in just a moment, Dr. David Jeremiah will explain that the Bible has Far more to say about heaven than most of us realize. Not only where we're going. for who will see? What we'll do.
and why a clear view of heaven changes how you and I live here. Today.
So with that in mind, please help me welcome Pastor. Author, teacher. and my very dear friend. Dr. David Jeremiah.
It is so lovely to be back here in one of your favorite places on the planet, New York City. You've spent so much of your ministry. putting eternity in context, pointing each one of us towards eternity. Why is it now? that heaven seems even more of an urgent message.
Well, you know, all of us look around and try to find meaning in the things that we experience every day. And let's be honest, the things we're experiencing every day Aren't so hot. We were just talking before we started with all the things that have happened just in one week. And ask yourself this question. Are they positive?
Do they make you feel better about yourself? Are you more confident because of what's happened? No, I think that the reason we have this hunger in our heart, as the Bible says, God has placed eternity in our hearts. Which means there's a space in our heart That only works if you put eternity there. And eternity is what we're talking about.
We're talking about heaven.
So I could give a lot of examples that I've read over the years of people who ascended the mountain of their accomplishment only to get to the top and say, is that all there is? Because we were never created to be fully satisfied in this world. God created us for heaven, and until heaven is a part of our life, we will never be at home.
So many people are either obsessed with the thought of eternity or terrified. By the thought of eternity. Why do you think people are afraid? What do you think they're afraid of?
Well, let me just say: if you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you don't fear him. Amen. Amen. If you don't know him, if you don't know him, you should be afraid. Because the alternative to heaven is another whole book and you don't want to hear the story because it's not a good one.
One of the things that you write about, you talk about in this new project that is so beautiful to me is sometimes we think of heaven as the end of the story. You say no-no. It's just the beginning.
Well, actually, if you think this should be compared to heaven. You just need to go back to school because this is just a small brief. preparation for where we're going to be forever and ever and ever. And the beginning of heaven is the beginning of life, the beginning of living, the beginning of joy and happiness and all the things that we long for here. And the Bible says that longing is in our heart and We don't begin to experience it until we get to heaven.
You know, when I was thinking about all you years of teaching the never-changing Word of God. in an ever-changing world. Was there anything in this study that was a surprise to you or new to you? I don't think you can ever know as much as you'd like to know about heaven. I think the one thing I found out writing this book was.
how much I didn't know about heaven. You know, I I know a lot, but The Bible says that the secrets belong to the Lord, and some of the things about heaven that we want to know, and I'm I'm going to talk about some of those. We can't know because they haven't been revealed. We can make an educated guess, but we can't know. And one of the things I told you when I wrote this book.
was I determined I was not ever going to quote anybody who'd been to heaven and back. And I was not going to talk about things that I couldn't talk about with authority based upon the scripture because my guess is as good as yours when it comes to that. Yeah. Why is it important that heaven's not just a Comfort to us, just knowing that's where we're going. How should that energize how we all live today?
Well, you know, if you know where you're going and you know what you're headed for, the goal that you have in your heart just gives you energy. And that's true in life, but it's also true when it comes to heaven. When you know. what God has prepared for those who love Him. It It makes you want to live every day and honor him and be a good representative of his.
And, you know, my goal has always been to go to heaven and take as many people with me as I can. Amen. Me too.
So, this is kind of a three-parter in a way. You say, when you talk about heaven being a place. A person. and a promise. place.
Little outline comes from John 14, 1 through 6, where we read, In my father's house are many mansions, and if it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself. that where I am, there you may be also.
So, that promise begins with the fact that heaven is a real place. It's not a figment of our imagination. a lofty place someplace in the never-never land. It is a real place because real people are going to this real place. And if you're going to a real place as a real person, Those two fit together.
And Jesus said, I go to prepare Not a dream. I go to prepare a place for you. Heaven is a place. Yeah. And heaven is a.
person. If you want to go to heaven, you have to go through Jesus. John 14 says at the end of that very passage, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through me. Absolutely, absolutely.
And finally, you say that heaven is a promise. What do you mean by that? It is a promise from God that if we will put our trust in Him, He will take us where He's gone to prepare a place for us. He's promising that. That's not just If you get lucky, you'll get there.
No, it's a place. It's a person. And the plan is Put your trust in Jesus Christ. One of the fascinating things you write about is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. What does that tell us about what happens to us when we die?
Well, there's a part of this whole story that's not known very often because. Most of the time, when you read something that you have a hard time grasping, you're like the person in the Great Samaritan story you pass by on the other side. and you just leave it alone. But you can't leave this alone because the Bible teaches that In the Old Testament, when people died, they went to an intermediate place. If they were believers, they went to paradise.
If they were unbelievers, they went to Hades. and that this intermediate place stayed the way it was until the resurrection. By the time you get to 2 Corinthians, where Paul goes to heaven, he's in the third heaven and he says he's in paradise. And by the way, When Jesus forgave the s The the man at the cross. He said, today you will be with me, not in heaven.
Today you will be with me in paradise. because the resurrection hadn't happened yet and it was about to happen.
Now paradise is in heaven. People who are unbelievers, they still go to Hades, and one day the Bible says Hades will be turned into hell, and forever and ever they're. punishment will be in place. For those in our audience who have lost someone who loved Jesus. What is the comfort of knowing that paradise is with Jesus?
When we lose somebody who dies, we have all these little phrases we use about where they are, they passed on. or they went to the to the big sky or whatever. But for Christians We got to be with Jesus. That's what happens. I have a whole chapter in this book called With Jesus because.
The New Testament is filled with terminology about being with Jesus. Men and women, when we get to heaven, all of these other things and the beauty of the celestial city and all of it will be impressive to us. But nothing will be so impressive that it will take our eyes off Jesus. and what he has done for us. And you know what's interesting, before I forget it.
A lot of people don't know that when we get to heaven, Jesus will be there in His humanity. He is in heaven in his humanity, in his scars. And the wounds that he has, because of what he did for us and his love for us, will be on display throughout all eternity. I love that the only wounds in heaven will be the wounds of Christ. That's right.
All our scars will be gone. Wow. When I was a teenager growing up in Scotland, I said to my mum one day, If you'd happen to die before me, bury me with a lot of books. Because I don't know what I'm going to do up there. A lot of people wonder, what we're going to do for eternity.
Well, you know what, that's... The old story, I don't want to go to heaven because it's going to be so boring.
Well, I've written a whole chapter about that because it really irritates me that people would ever go there. First of all, it won't be boring because God isn't boring. No. And Jesus isn't boring. And here's the most amazing thing.
By the time you get there, you won't be boring either. Because they're going to have a makeover and God's going to make you more exciting than you are now. I know that's a hard thing for you to Imagine, but it's true, and then, of course. What goes on in heaven and the opportunity for us to serve the Lord. That's one of the key phrases in the book of Revelation.
We'll be serving Him. And we'll get to do things.
Somebody said you'll be able to finish some projects you never could finish because you didn't have time. Wow. And you will do it with excellence and perfection because you will have. No barriers. You'll be able to work every day, and it will be such a joy to.
to be involved in serving and worshiping the Lord. Can you imagine? How glorious that's going to be. You talk about the Bema seat of Christ, and some people think that's a place of punishment, but you say, no, no, it's not a courtroom, it's a celebration. No, the Bible says if you're in Christ Jesus, there is therefore now no condemnation, there's no judgment.
If you're a Christian and you've been forgiven for your sin, you will never face your sin again. But the Bible says that when we get to heaven, we're going to all give an account for our lives. We'll come before the what they call the judgment seat of Christ or the Bima seat. And the Bible says we will be judged on the basis of our works as Christians. Have we honestly and deliberately and determinedly served Jesus Christ?
And you know, I guess that always puts a little bit of fear in all of our hearts because sometimes I wonder. I'll be honest with you, have I ever done anything totally out of a pure motivation to serve the Lord? Have you ever wondered that? But the Lord will help us sort that all out. And the Bible says, We'll stand before him and he will judge each one of us.
According to our works, and we'll be eligible for five different crowns. Wow. Every one of us here is eligible for one of these crowns. How do we Serve faithfully. and keep it pure.
You know, it's not like, well, I'll do this so that I'll get a crown in heaven. How do we keep our hearts pure?
Well, I don't think any Christian that I've ever met serves Jesus Christ just so they can get a crown. Or, like I said in one of the places in the book, after you did something great for God, you say, boy, you'll only be big time, God, for that one, you know. No. You know, it's not that way. No.
It's in the background. We know it's there. We want to serve the Lord. But we serve the Lord because we love Him. And we serve him because we want to honor him.
The crowns. And the judgment, that's just a separate place that goes along to Increase the motivation. What do we do with the crowns? The Bible says that We don't walk around heaven with our crowns comparing them to the crowns of other people. My crown is this way, yours is that way.
The Bible says. we will cast our crowns at the feet of Jesus in an act of worship. Right. I love the way you write about worship in heaven, that it's not some quiet thing, it's thunderous, it's glorious. How does an understanding of worship in heaven impact?
How each one of us worships today.
Well, you know what? Worship is a really special theme in the Bible. It's one of my favorite themes. And in the book of Revelation, you see it in its absolute Glorious climax, and there'll be thousands upon thousands gathered together. And one of my favorite things about the worship in heaven is there's a gradual growth in the volume.
There's seven different ways they worship. Every time you read it, there's glory, then there's glory and honor, then there's glory and honor and praise. And you go through, there's seven. It's almost like you can. Feel the volume.
Have you ever been in a church service where the choir sings or the congregation sings and you change keys and you go up to the next key and it gets louder and bigger and louder and bigger? When you get to heaven, you're going to see the crescendo of worship like you have never seen it before. Gives me chills. One of the questions that people wrestle with, and some people have asked, is. Will we be like ourselves?
In heaven? Will our personalities, will my husband still tell bad dad jokes in heaven?
Well, you know, there's pretty good evidence that not only will we be ourselves, but we will be recognizable by each other. Jesus was certainly recognized by his disciples when he came. He was the same Jesus who they had been with. He went to the cross, he was buried, he came out after the resurrection, and his disciples knew him. They tried to hold on to him.
He had a touchable body. They ate with him. That brings a lot of joy to most people to know that you're going to eat when you get to heaven. We're going to be recognizable and we're going to be our best selves. Yeah, beautiful.
You say we'll also there'll be an ongoing study of of God's word. What does that tell us about the kind of relationship that God wants with each one of us for eternity?
Well, I always tell people that when we get to heaven, We'll continue to grow in our knowledge of the Lord. Will spend eternity understanding. In fact, it'll take all of eternity to understand the greatness of God. and the majesty that he brings, and it will be just an incredible experience.
So what about marriage in heaven.
Well, I'll tell you the truth. I'm going to just be a little candid with you all. We did a list of questions and that was number one. But Here's why they care about that because Jesus once said, you do err not knowing the scriptures. that we shall be like the angels, neither marrying nor giving in marriage.
Do you need anything more definite than that? And sometimes people say, well, if I'm not going to be married, I don't want to go to heaven. That's, you just need to be a little more broad in your thinking because the Bible says, and this is. maybe one of the hard things for us to explain no matter how hard we try it. that the magnificence of Almighty God and his relationship with you.
will be so beyond anything you can ever imagine that will make the relationship we have in marriage to be almost nothing. In the chapter that I've written on marriage, I can't quote this because it's a little bit wordy. But C.S. Lewis has a great story about that. to help us understand why We will still have wonderful relationships with our family and our loved ones and our wives.
In some way that will still be somewhat the same. But compared to the relationship we have with Jesus and Almighty God, it will be. Mind is cured. 'Cause I think when when Eve was created, it was because it wasn't good for man to be alone. But in eternity, we will never be alone.
We will never be alone, absolutely. Wonderful. You write beautifully about the fullness of joy, that's not just an absence of sorrow. But a joy perhaps we've never known. What does an understanding of that kind of joy impact?
As today, how we lived today?
Well, you know, Sheila, I need to make a confession here. I'm like a lot of pastors, sometimes we've preached messages in the past. And we wish we could go back and erase them and repreach them now that we know something more than we know. And for years I used to pattern what I had heard in seminary and other places that There's a difference between joy and happiness. That joy is a relationship with Jesus, which it is.
But happiness Oh, it's secondary joy. It depends on the happenings in life. And I believed that until I read a book by Randy Alcorn. And the book is just called Happiness. And in this book, he makes it absolutely clear.
that there is no difference in the Bible between joy and happiness. And all of a sudden, when you see that, you take a deep breath and say, it's all right for me to be happy, you know? Because happiness is one of the evidences of the joy of the Lord in your life. And when we get to heaven, Nobody's going to have a debate over whether this is joy or happiness. They're just going to be so filled with the.
sense of well-being and goodness in their life. That happiness and joy will be two words that will be inadequate to describe it. For someone who's watching right now, or somebody who's here with us, Who's going through a really hard time? How does that future promise of joy. bring comfort to us at the moment.
You remember growing up, you used to sing this little spiritual, this world is not my home. I'm just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. I think it's really important for us to understand. We're on our way someplace.
We're on a journey. And while the journey might be difficult, The end result is well worth it. When we get to heaven, We're going to realize that the things we experienced on this earth, though many of them were hard and some of them we can't even quite get our arms around because of the difficulty. We won't remember them for long when we get to heaven, I don't think. No, no, I don't think so either.
You talk about the fact that God won't abandon his creation. It's all about renew and restore. What does that tell us about the new heaven and new earth?
Well, you know, when you read those passages like the ones in Peter where he talks about the earth being burned up and And everybody wonders, is God just going to burn up the whole world and it's going to go away? But if you study it carefully, what you find out is those words have a have a meaning not to be destroyed, but to be renovated. God's gonna renovate the earth. He's gonna burn off all of the dross, the things that don't belong, but he's not gonna destroy it. God said when he created the earth, it is good.
He made a good earth, and we messed it up, starting with Adam. He's going to come and totally refurbish it, renovate it, and then The new Jerusalem will set down upon this new heaven and new earth and Heaven will be in place. I love the way you write about the celestial city. But honestly, when we think about cities, I think about what's over our shoulder. We're here in New York City, where it's noisy and busy and people in a hurry.
How will the celestial city be different than Anything we've ever experienced. You know, it's interesting that when the Bible was written, the largest city in the world was Rome and had 450,000 people in it. Wow. There are over a hundred cities in China with over a million people in them. There's something about cities.
I don't know what it is, but God loves cities.
So it's not accidentally that He talks about the city that's coming, the celestial city. When you read about that in the book of Revelation and see all the statistics about it, the size of it, for instance. It's a four square city. If you try to get a picture of it, you start with the east coast and go all the way over halfway across the United States. And it's four square this way, this way, and this way.
It's a layered city.
So there will be different layers in the city. When I try to describe it the way the Bible does, I kind of choke a little bit because You know, teaching is telling somebody something based upon something they already know. And this is unprecedented. You don't know anything. There's nothing like this.
For instance, a pearl the size of a gate.
Somebody said, what kind of oyster is that? But it isn't many pearls, it's one pearl, the Bible says. Every one of the gates will be made out of a single pearl. And then the foundations will be of the most beautiful stones available in diamonds and rubies and And you can study them all and go back into the background of them all. A beautiful river that flows from the throne of God and trees on the side of the river that give you fruit that is healing.
The Bible says it's therapeutic fruit. I don't know what that means. I think it just means it enables you to enjoy heaven more than you were already when you ate this fruit. And here's the good thing, you can eat all you want and you won't gain any weight. Hallelujah.
Amen. Why is the celestial city called the New Jerusalem?
Well, it is modeled after the Jerusalem that is here. One day God is going to renovate that and, of course, increase it. And the new Jerusalem will settle down in the and the place of the old one. You write and talk about Angels in heaven. And I wonder what kind of relationship will we have with angels in heaven?
You know, angels and humans are different. We will have fellowship with them. We will be in heaven with them forever. And they're one of the citizen groups that you find in heaven, along with the saints of the Old Testament and the saints of the New Testament. We will be one up on them because you ever heard that old song, For Angels Ever Knew the Joy That My Salvation Brings?
They're in heaven, they're holy. But they never know the joy of coming to Christ as we have. We are better than the angels when it comes to that. That's beautiful. And if you know the joy of salvation, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Hey, we'll be back with the rest of this interview tomorrow. But before we say our final goodbye today, I want to remind you again that we're running out of time to make available to you the book, The Promise of Heaven. You can get it today or tomorrow when you send a gift to Turning Point. We'll send the book right to your home and you'll have it to study for your own, much more than we've talked about on the air. Just ask for the book when you send your gift and we'll make sure you get it.
Be sure to do that before the time runs out. And don't forget, tomorrow is part two. of the Promise of Heaven interview with Sheila Walsh. I'm so grateful for your presence during this series. Thank you for being a part.
of understanding more about heaven here on Turning Point. For more information on Dr. Jeremiah's series, The Promise of Heaven. Please visit our website where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected. our monthly Turning Points magazine, and our daily email devotional.
Sign up today at DavidJeremiah.org slash radio. That's DavidJeremiah.org slash radio. or call us at 800-947-1993. Ask for your copy of David's encouraging new book, The Promise of Heaven. 31 Reasons to Get Excited About Your Eternal Home.
It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the English Standard, New International and New King James Versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr. Jeremiah's decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website davidjeremiah.org slash radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Join us tomorrow as Sheila Walsh and Dr. Jeremiah continue their conversation on the promise of heaven.
