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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Going to Heaven, #6
Unto whom [the Prophets of Israel] it was revealed, that not unto themselves [the Old Testament Israelites], but unto us [the Jewish Peter and the Gentile converts whom he was addressing] they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. (I Peter 1:12).
The prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Joel and so forth are addressed to Christians, not to the physical Jews, except for the passages that clearly deal with the physical land and people of Israel. If this is the case we can look for our land of promise, our rest, our "heaven," in the writings of the Prophets.
The Book of Isaiah, for example, contains many visions, many utterances that describe the goal of the Christian redemption. Isaiah was not speaking to his contemporaries but to the elect of our day. His own people were blind to his message (Isaiah 6:9,10).
The coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth is the subject of the Hebrew Prophets. It is that Kingdom into which we Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles by natural birth, have been born spiritually.
The end result of salvation is not an aimless wandering in a spiritual paradise not described in the Scriptures, a paradise of which we gain glimpses only through the testimonies of dying saints. Rather, our heaven, our rest, the goal of our pilgrimage, is set forth boldly by the Hebrew Prophets.
If you desire to know where the Holy Spirit is leading you, read Isaiah; read Ezekiel; read Zechariah.
God has not concealed our destiny from us. He has portrayed our goal in the Scriptures. The rest, the inheritance into which we have to fight our way, is set forth in the sixtieth chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and again in the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of the Book of Revelation.
The Christian "land of promise" is the Kingdom of God in the earth, just as the Hebrew land of promise was the Kingdom of Israel in the area now known as the Middle East.
The Kingdom of God is God in Christ in the saints ruling and blessing the nations of the earth.
We believe there is a gloriously beautiful and wonderful spiritual Paradise. It is inhabited by God, Christ, the holy angels, and the spirits of the righteous dead. It is this area, the temporary resting place of the saints, that we refer to as Heaven.
The spiritual Paradise, Heaven, is not a part of the physical universe. One could not get into a space ship and then journey through space until he reached the spiritual Paradise. Some assume and teach this but it is not a true understanding.
The term paradise is used but three times in the New Testament and not at all in the Old Testament. It does not appear that the Prophets or the Apostles proclaimed that going to the place termed "Paradise" is the goal of the Christian salvation.
To be continued.