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Back to the Future
(The original) Each of us has a vast library of valuable memories of a time when life held no pain. For some, those memories are all that sustain us as we struggle with life in the present. If your storehouse of comforting memories are fading and your friends and loved ones are becoming fewer and fewer, take comfort in the fact that you are still traveling life’s journey and have yet to come home. You see, neither our childhood home nor the sweetest of life’s memories can ever compare to what is being prepared for us on the other side of this life. Take heart, for it is written, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what wondrous things God has waiting for those who love Him!” You may not believe in God or in His son, Jesus Christ, but listen for a moment to the spectacular offer that God has given to us. Gathering His disciples together, Jesus himself said, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father’s home are many mansions; 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 to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” These scriptures might have been the random musings of some human writer or a poet if it were not for the fact that about forty days after Jesus made this statement, He stood again among the many, bidding them all goodbye as they witnessed Him rising before them into the sky, back to His heavenly home. “Well,” you say, “that would be nice, but growing up and living in this war torn miserable world, how can we believe that there really is such a place as this?” God knew that heaven would be difficult to conceptualize in our minds since we have only known what is here on earth. This is why He gave His most prominent disciple, John, a picture of what it will be like. We are able to read this account in the book of Revelation chapter 21 to discover that it is not only possible, but in fact, very real. Here is what John saw. “Now 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. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the house of God is with men, and He will dwell with them and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’ Then He who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ And He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are true and faithful.’ And He said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts (who searches for me’). If you were to die today, do YOU know where you are going? Douglas W. Greenfield |