AN EXPERIENCE OF HEAVEN

“If heaven is our country, what can the earth be but a place of exile?  If departure from the world is entrance into life, what is the world but a sepulcher, and what is residence in it but immersion in death?  If to be freed from the body is to gain full possession of freedom, what is the body but a prison?  If it is the very summit of happiness to enjoy the presence of God, is it not miserable to want it?  But ‘whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord’ (2 Cor 5:6)” John Calvin (ref#113, p467).

“And if the distant, sporadic glimpses of the glorified Christ are so ravishing, what will be the ecstatic and overpowering effect of the full unclouded vision, when we shall see Him face to face” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, June 24^th).

“Thus when the earthly is compared with the heavenly life, it may undoubtedly be despised and trampled under foot.  We ought never, indeed, to regard it with hatred, except insofar as it keeps us subject to sin; and even this hatred ought not to be directed against life itself.  At all events, we must stand so affected toward it in regard to weariness or hatred as, while longing for its termination, to be ready at the Lord’s will to continue in it, keeping far from everything like murmuring and impatience.  For it is as if the Lord had assigned us a post, which we must maintain till he recalls us” John Calvin (ref#113, p467).

John Burke, in his book, Imagine Heaven, quoted George Ritchie who encountered a near-death experience.  See below:

“I have no idea what the next life will be like.  Whatever I saw was only—from the doorway, so to speak.  But it was enough to convince me totally of two things from that moment on.  One, that our conscience does not cease with physical death—that it becomes in fact keener and more aware than ever.  And two, that how we spend our time on earth, the kind of relationships we build is vastly, infinitely more important than we can know” George Ritchie (ref#297, p24).