2: YOUR VISION OF HEAVEN

OUTLINE | TRANSCRIPT | SLIDES | AUDIO

SUM: This class session aims to correct misconceptions about heaven, encourage believers to actively contemplate and anticipate the afterlife, and prepare for a deeper exploration of the “present heaven.” The discussion is grounded in scripture, enriched by imagination, and illustrated with personal and literary examples, emphasizing heaven as a place of physical beauty, meaningful work, joyful relationships, and ultimate fulfillment. 

Overview

This text is a partial transcript of a Christian adult education class focused on the topic of heaven—what it is, common misconceptions, biblical perspectives, and the importance of imagining and anticipating the afterlife. The session includes technical setup banter, a prayer, humor, teaching, real-life examples, literary references, and a preview of future discussions about the “present heaven” or “paradise.”

Content Type

• Type: Religious Education Class / Bible Study Session

Session Structure and Key Points

Opening and Technical Setup

• The class begins with casual conversation and technical troubleshooting (e.g., connecting a computer to a TV).

• The instructor mentions sinus issues and thanks the group for attending.

Opening Prayer

• Praises God for His love, referencing Good Friday and Easter.

• Thanks God that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus, not by perfect law-keeping.

• Prays for specific church members facing health challenges (Mindy, Glenn, Jim Talbert, Sally Palmer, Susan, Linda, Mona, Joanna).

• Asks for blessings on the class and its discussion of heaven.

Humor and Icebreakers

• Shares amusing “church bulletin bloopers” (e.g., “Get involved in drugs before your children do”).

• Lightens the mood before transitioning to the main topic.

Misconceptions About Heaven

• Many Christians imagine heaven as an “unending church service” or eternal hymn-singing, which feels unappealing.

• References John Eldredge’s book “The Journey of Desire” and Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” to illustrate how such views can make heaven seem unattractive, especially to those who desire meaningful activity and relationships.

Biblical and Theological Points

• The joy set before Jesus enabled Him to endure the cross; similarly, a clear hope for heaven helps believers endure life’s hardships.

• Ecclesiastes is cited to support that humans have an innate anticipation for “something good on the other side.”

• God did not create humans to desire a “ghostly, non-physical” existence; instead, the biblical vision is of a resurrected life with physical bodies and meaningful experiences.

Positive Vision of Heaven

• Heaven is described as a restored, physical earth—akin to a recreated Garden of Eden.

• People will have resurrected bodies, recognizable to one another.

• The environment will include gardens, rivers, mountains, waterfalls, beaches, and enjoyable company (e.g., family reunions, shared meals, reminiscing).

• The experience will be filled with adventure, pleasure, beauty, and meaningful work (not drudgery).

Vivid Examples

• The instructor shares personal stories of enjoying natural beauty (e.g., Mount Sneffels in Colorado, Yosemite waterfalls, Uncompahgre River) to illustrate the kind of joy and awe heaven will provide.

• Describes the pleasure of sitting by rivers, enjoying fruit, and walking with friends who are healthy and whole.

The Role of Imagination and Scripture

• Like Marco Polo describing China to Italians, believers must use both scriptural clues and imagination to envision heaven.

• Heaven is analogized as a garden (e.g., Butchart Gardens), a city (clean and beautiful), and a kingdom.

• These are not merely metaphors but provide real hints about heaven’s physicality.

Addressing “Silencers” (Skeptics About Speculating on Heaven)

• Some argue Christians should not speculate about heaven due to scriptural statements like “no eye has seen…” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

• The instructor counters that the following verse says God has revealed these things through the Holy Spirit.

• Other biblical figures (John, Isaiah, Ezekiel) were commanded to describe their visions of heaven.

• Paul commands believers to “set your minds on things above” (Colossians 3), indicating that active, ongoing contemplation of heaven is both commanded and beneficial.

Practical Implications

• Thinking about heaven motivates Christians to live with hope, share their faith, and endure difficulties.

• C. S. Lewis is quoted: Christians most effective in this world are those who think most about the next.

• The instructor gives examples of how this perspective can change daily attitudes (e.g., not worrying about minor setbacks).

Preview: The “Present Heaven” or Paradise

• There is a distinction between the eternal heaven (future, resurrected earth) and the “present heaven” or paradise (where believers go immediately after death).

• Uses an analogy: moving from a slum in Miami to a layover in Dallas before reaching a mansion in Santa Barbara, illustrating the intermediate state.

• Raises questions for future discussion: What is paradise like? Do people there have bodies? Can they see earth? Where is it located?

Closing and Next Steps

• The class will explore the nature of “paradise” in the next session, using both scripture and imagination.

• Ends with brief comments about music, enjoyment, and health, then casual conversation resumes.

Notable Quotes and References

• John Eldredge, “The Journey of Desire”: Critique of the “eternal church service” view of heaven.

• Mark Twain, “Huckleberry Finn”: Illustrates skepticism about heaven as described by some Christians.

• C. S. Lewis: “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought most of the next.”

• Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, Colossians 3:1-2, references to Revelation, Isaiah, Ezekiel.

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TRANSCRIPT

Well, I've got 2 min after nine. If y'all would like to start. We'll go ahead and get started. We'll see. This has been the week of the year when my sinuses kind of take over, so see if my throat holds up for this whole class. Thank you for coming out, It's good to see. Good to see all of you. Let's let's begin our class with the pregnant. Okay, Heavenly Father, we want to begin our prayer with.

Last, among the many things that make you awesome and make you worth worth, worthy of our praises, is your great love, and we remember that through the event last week of Good Friday and then Easter, what an amazing thing you did for us to ensure our future, but now we're talking about another indication of your great love for us, and that is that that you have provided a place for us to go afterwards.

That and that, fortunately, for everybody in this room, and for me in particular, this does not depend upon upon our ability to keep your law in detail, but it depends upon your grace, and depends upon our belief in Your Son Jesus Christ as sacrificial death.

We pray that you'll be with us today as we discuss heaven, that this class will go well, that my throat will hold up for this. I pray, Father, that you would be with Mindy, continue to help her to get better and better. Please be with Glenn, with Jim Talbert, Sally Palmer, and others that are have this great battle going on against Parkinson's. We pray for Susan, that her neck issue will get resolved.

And and Linda, that her breathing issue could get resolved. So many others in our church, Father, that need your intervention. We just really continue to pray for Mona and for Joanna, that their recovery will continue, and the way it's been going.

Bless us to Your service, Lord, and bless our time together this morning, in Jesus' name. We pray, Amen, amen, amen. Well, you see, I've got we'd start out today with some church bulletin bloopers.

Mr. Bradford was elected and has accepted the office of head deacon. We could not find a better man. Which can be read in a lot of different ways. It's drug awareness week, Get involved in drugs before your children do. I was sharing with Glenn up here, one of my favorites was. Weight Watchers will meet this evening at 07:00 p.m.. Please use the large double doors at the back.

All right, so we're in our second, we're in our second class here on Heaven.

And you know, when we talk about what happened last, in the last week, the week of Easter, we talk about what happened on Good Friday. Still look at. I don't think it's here, okay, What happened on Good Friday. It's kind of interesting when you go through the scriptures, the scriptures don't really give us a whole lot of details about you're trying, about what, what the crucifixion was like, what that track was like up the hill, and what it was like to hang on the.

Absolutely the people who tried to recreate that from non-biblical sources indicate just how, how just unbelievably awful it was, and so one of the questions is how in the world did Jesus do that without saying King's Act, I'm really not the king. Let's let's stop this, and the answer is provided for us in the Scripture. It is for the joy set before him, the cross, endured the cross, that He did not just look.

At what's going on today, but what's going to happen in eternity, and it was eternity that helped him to plug through, go through the really difficult times, and of course, that's exactly the same thing is true for us, is that one of the ways that we get through really difficult times, one of the ways we should get through life is because, looking at that joy set before us, and I think part of the problem here, and we're going to make in this class, is one of the reasons that we don't, you may not be.

Experi that joy is because of we, we don't have a good idea of what's coming next, and so John Eldredge, in his book The Journey of Desire, wrote this. Nearly every Christian I've spoken with has some idea that heaven is an unending church service. It was amusing to me to suggest this last week, and watch all his faces, by the way, Oh God, really.

And we, we have settled an image of the never-ending singalong in the sky, one great hymn after another, forever and ever, Amen. And our hearts sink, That's just what I saw happening out there when I suggested this to you. That's it, that's the good news.

And then we sigh and feel guilty that we're not more spiritual. We lose heart, and we turn once more to the present. Life can do so, we think, we we. If you don't have a good idea of what the future is going to be like, then all of our focus is going to.

Be now, and that's not, there's no joy associated with that. In the great book Huckleberry Finn.

Huck has this conversation with Miss Watson, who took a very dim view of his fun-loving spirit, and this is, This is how the conversation went. She went and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever. I didn't think much of it. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawy would go there, and she said not, by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.

And so, nothing she said about heaven appealed to Huck. And nor should it appeal to us, well, it would have attracted him. Was an attractive place, if we could go and do something meaningful, and be around pleasurable people to be around.

You want to be around, He wanted to be around Tom Sawyer. And really, that's what's in your heart, that was planted in your heart, according to the Book of Ecclesiastes, that's been planted in your heart.

You you have some anticipation, if there's something good on the other side of this, This is not it. We don't. This become extinguished, okay, and then nothing.

Happens beyond that, but what we need to do is develop a better idea of what this place is going to be like. You know, you, you, y'all don't like to eat gravel, you don't eat gravel, and one of the reasons you don't eat gravel is because God did not make you to eat gravel, to have an appetite for gravel, and God did not create in you an appetite for a non-physical.

Ghostly existence in the clouds, playing a heart that's not tasted you, that's not appetizing to you, and that's exactly why that is not what God has created for you, He's created something else for us, because it will turn it out, you don't have an appetite for this disembodied experience in a non-physical heaven. So what we do want is, we do want a resurrected life, we want there to be something on the other side of death. We want to be raised, we want to be in a resurrected.

Body, I'd like to be able to pick out bears, Done, and Mr. Range, up here, well, I'd like to be able to pick you all out. Then you're going to be able to pick these. We're going to pick, be able to pick each other out. In heaven, because we're going to have bodies that are, that are like that. We're going to be with the resurrected Christ now.

I'm going to argue here that most vers, all of us have no appreciation for what that's going to be like. Okay, we don't really fully understand how great that's going to be. Okay. It is going to be one of the great aspects of having to be able to see him, to see God converse with him, to walk with them. We're going to be on a resurrected earth. The the argument that we're going to be making through this is that what is going to happen is that essentially, the Garden of Eden is going to be.

Recreated have. There's going to be a resurrected down here on earth. One of the things that Satan did, Satan won in the Garden of Eden. He took a perfectly idyllic, wonderful place, and he messed it up, and God's not going to let him win on any level. He's not going to win on that either. We're going to end up back down here on a resurrected earth, there's all kinds of implications of that. As it turns out, we're going to have gardens and rivers and mountains and waterfalls and beaches. We're going.

To. We're going to be with enjoyable people that we love. I'm going to get to see my mom and dad again, and my little brother and my sister, my two sisters. I'm going to get to see them again, and eat with them, and have meals with them, and talk with them, talk with my sister about how she finally told me to punch Butch Holcomb in the mouth, Okay, Butch kept bullying me and bullying me and bullying me, and she finally grabbed me by the neck, neck and said, Look, this. Hit him one time in the nose, and he will not bother.

You ever again. She was absolutely right, but there's one of those little things you're going to get to talk about and enjoy reminiscing about. Now we want to be taken untold adventures, all kinds of fun things to do, all kinds of fun places to visit and see. That's something that you can eat, that's about gravel, that's good stuff, and that's one of the things we're going to be fleshing out as we go along here, and so one of the reasons, I think the primary reason, most of us has a very vague idea of what.

Heaven is like is, because that's exactly what Satan wants us to do. Satan wants us to believe that it's going to be someplace in the clouds. We're playing harps, and it's a never ending church service, Because see, he just loves his area, and the reason for that is. He doesn't need to convince us that heaven doesn't exist, all he has to convince of us is that it's someplace born, that it's going to be an unearthly existence. It's going to be like eating.

Gravel, That's all he has to do, it is he could do that. It's going to rob us of the joy, Christ said, Because the joy set before me, he endured the cross. He's going to rob us of that joy. We're going to set our minds on this life, not that one. We're going to be thinking in terms of eternity, making our decisions, we're going to be thinking in terms of how it's going to impact this life. And the other thing is, we're not going to be motivated to share our faith with other people, I mean, what, what? Why? Share the good news with people that.

People, eternity in a boring, ghostly place, that we're not even looking for it, why would we do that? So this is one of the things that Satan does. This is one of His tools is to try to get us off of thinking about heaven, or if we do think about it, think about it as some. Under the church service, All right. So what we're going to have to do here is we're going to, we're going to be going to the scriptures and see what the scriptures have to say about heaven, but let's also going to require us to use our imaginations too, I mentioned this as we were.

Fin up last time, when Marco Polo made his trip from Italy to Emperor Cuba Culi, the Emperor of China's name Khan. Okay, when he goes to visit China, and he comes back to Italy, and he's trying to explain to the people Italy what this place is like.

And now, the people in Italy had some reference points, because China had people, Italy had people, China has buildings, Italy had buildings, China had. Trees and mountains and stuff like that.

China has trees and mountains, so they had some kind of reference point, but when when Marco Polo started talking to them about it, they had to take those reference points and use it with their imagination to try to see what China was like.

Didn't have cell phones right, didn't have pictures, they had to see it with their imagination, and so that's one of the things we're going to have to do here is use our imagination. I should put this scriptures, plus imagination to get a good handle on.

What heaven is going to be like, so what do the scriptures do? Scriptures? The scriptures describe heaven as a one, analogies that you is, it's a, it's a garden. Now you're thinking, Well, I've been in the backyard. No, no, no, no. This is what you need to think about. This is Bouchart's Garden in Victoria. Good is Columbia, Peggy, and I got to visit this place about 15 years ago. This is what you're going to see, this.

Is place where the minute you walk in, you start smiling, you can't help it, you start, your shoulders, go back. This is fine, and one of the things that's going to make it fine for my wife is somebody's going to have to keep that up.

Somebody's going to get to work in the flower vets and prepare it and keep it in good shape, okay. One of the things that she's going to like so you know about gardens, and you know how that pretty they can be.

We know it's a city now, a lot of our visions of a city are kind of, can be very ugly, because they've got crime, they got smog, they've got litter, but this is going to be a place where.

That what's going on. My first time to visit Salt Lake City, I could not believe how clean the place was. There was not a piece of litter anywhere. Now once you got outside, in the desert, it was pretty bad, but inside the city was a really, very clean. This can be very clean, can be very beautiful. It's going to be kind of like a city, that's kind of. One of the aspects of it. There's going to is going to be a kingdom. Described as a kingdom, you have pretty good ideas about what a kingdom is.

Like, are these just analogies, and we shouldn't take? You can always take analogies too far, right? Especially if you're studying the parables, You got to be really careful about carrying these analyzes too far. And we're, we're not going to do that. But there's no reason to spiritualize all these things, they really, they really are, they really aren't telling us anything about what heaven is going to be like.

Some are likely very factual statements. This is what heaven's going to be like, it's going to be garden, it's going to be cities, there's going to be a kingdom.

If we think heaven is a non-physical cloud bank, then they're not going to be waterfalls, and there's not going to be babbling brooks, brooks, and there's not going to be beaches, there's going to be cities, and there's not going to be real bodies around now. So what do the scriptures telling us? Scriptures tell us that heaven is a tangible place.

And if heaven is a place here on this resurrected earth, as I suggested to you before, with us and our resurrected bodies, then look around. And you can kind of get some clothes, just like Marco Polo, I saw this there, and well, he said, Well, we got something sort of like that here, Okay, look at some clues you have. You will have here. You have waterfalls and mountain beaches, and real bodies.

This is Mount Snuffles and the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, right outside the place called Uray, my first. Summer, out of high school, Can't believe my mama actually let this happen. My cousin and I got into a Jalopi and we drove from Odessa, Texas, to Ure, back to originally, Colorado, right side of Ure, and we worked on oil wells, okay, building wrecks up there.

And if you know what a rig looks like, up at the very top, there's a little square piece there that's called Crow's Nest. There's one guy that operates up in that area that, when you're doing it, we call a trip, when you're changing the drill.

Bit, and it's only when you're making a trip that you're just actively working real, real hard all the time. The rest of the time, you're kind of, there's a lot of free time available, and if you're on the graveyard ship, you really had a lot of time to label. And so what I would do is I would climb up into the crow's nest, and I would just look at that mountain. There's something about something that beautiful, and on those nights, when there was a full moon hanging over that mountain.

You could just sit there and look for an hour, almost on end, because there's something about it that is beautiful, and so you're thinking about what heaven is going to be like. Heaven's going to have plenty amount of snuffles around for you to look at and gaze, and just enjoy. Waterfalls can be waterfalls. This is the water, the waterfalls of Yosemite National Park, and one of the bus stops that let you out in front of the waterfall. The bus, the bus driver doesn't say you have five.

Minutes, that's not what happens. Nobody wants to spend 5 min. Look at a waterfall. You've been there, yeah, matter of fact, you were probably there when it was being formed. I'm just kidding, anyway. Anyway.

Very close run, but there's something about it that is calming and is pleasant, right. Well, there's going to be this kind of stuff we'd enjoy regularly. Some of you haven't been there, Well, guess what you're going to be, you're going to be seeing stuff like this all the time.

It's going to be something that's going to be available to you. And so God gave us glimpses of heaven, the fire from imaginations, and kindled a desire to be there, but we, we're going to have to use our imaginations.

That's going to be really important to. All. Now there are group of people out there what I label the Silencers, and these are people, believe it or not, who believe, who, who think we should not talk about heaven at all, all right, and we have their sermons that say we can't know what heaven is like, so don't even speculate, just don't even deal with this area.

We don't know what, we cannot know what heaven is like, so we dump cold water on everything that God has said and revealed about what heaven is going to be like, and one of the passages they refer.

To Paul wrote in his first letter to the church at Corinth, this is one very familiar, all of you, all of you have seen it, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him, you, you can't, your mind can't conceive it. So you should be quiet about it, okay, Leaving out verse ten, which says, But God has revealed it to us through His Holy Spirit. That's a very important sentence to add on here, right, because everybody in this room.

And the Holy Spirit, you read, the book read Chapter eight of Romans. Holy spirit's very busy for you, but very busy for you. The Holy spirit's praying to God for you, for stuff you didn't even know you needed to be praying about. The Holy spirit's going to be your one of the witnesses on judgment Day, saying, You know, job belongs in here, he's one of ours. Yes, take him in, but the other thing the Holy Spirit does is, the Holy Spirit helps your imagination see what heaven's gonna.

Be. Other jobs is to help creating us the joy set before us, and so we can't see it, but God has given the Holy Spirit to us to help us to imagine it. And the other one that the sciencers use is is Second Letter to Church of Corinth, and Paul writes, And I know that this man, whether in the body or apart in the body, I do not know, but God knows he was caught up into paradise, he.

Heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. See, that word paradise, want to keep that in the back of your head, okay, because that's the word we're going to spend a lot of time on next week, right? But they'll look at this and say, Well, if Paul wasn't permitted to talk about, we shouldn't talk about it either.

Does that mean we shouldn't discuss heaven at all? The sciencers would say, yes, we shouldn't, or does it mean that Paul wasn't permitted to talk about it? Paul was not permitted, so, and the reason we would choose the second one is because there's a bunch of other folks that saw heaven, and they were actually commanded to talk about what they saw. Matter of fact, who's the first person posted your head, John, John, exactly right. When John wrote the Book of Revelation, he.

He, chapter 2020 01:22, on all these descriptions of what he saw up there. He wasn't told to keep quiet about it, he was told to write about it. Isaiah and Ezekiel wrote about what they saw there. If God didn't intend for us to understand heaven, why did He tell us about it at all, Why did He give us any hints at all? So I think the Silencers small group, but something you might have heard of from time to time when you study the book about Heaven, as.

A matter of fact, I think the sciences are wrong for another reason, and that is, you and I actually commanded commanded to think about heaven when Paul wrote the Church at Colossa.

Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated, the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. This word sets your set, your the tail means diligent, active, single-minded investigation. It's the same word that's used that the Son of God, the Son of Man, came to seek and save the lost, when you read those parables.

who lost her coin, and she's seeking, remember how hard she was seeking, the shepherd who had a sheep that was lost, how desperate, how quick, how hard he was seeking, how diligent he was, the merchant that was looking for the pearl, how diligent he was. Well, that same word that is used here, and this word, by the way, is in the present tense, and that means This is not something you do once, this is something you do all the time. This is a.

This is not a one time effort. When you park, you come to what's six glasses on heaven, and that's it. Now we're supposed to be thinking about it all the time. As a matter of fact, this is actually a command, and because it's command, it implies that it's not something you're automatically going to do, and I think everybody in the room knows this is something that you automatically do right. Command also assumes that there's going to be some resistance, the evil one is very.

Act here. The evil one does not want you to think about heaven and what heaven is going to be like. He doesn't want you to have that joy. Next thing you know, you'll be sharing that with other people. Last thing, this ain't gonna take to happen, right. And he said we're command, and the command to think about heaven is always under attack by the evil one. Now. If you're worried that this will make you to heavenly minded, you spend too much time on this, well, C. S. Lewis has an answer for this. Some of you have seen this quote before, if you read.

History, you will find that the Christians that did the most for the present world were those who thought the most of the next, the apostles themselves, who set foot on the conversant Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals, who abolished the slave trade, all left their marks on the earth precisely because their minds were occupied with heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think about the other world that they have become so ineffective in.

This now CS, one of the great. One of the great Christian thinkers ever, in my opinion, he tells us You need to put this at the top. This is something you need to be thinking about. Don't let this be a casual thing you sometimes think about. This needs to be something that's on our minds at all times. My good friend Jim Crane, used to say when we were playing golf and Mr. Two foot putt.

What does it matter in the context of eternity? You know? What does it matter? You know? That's what was the proper way to think? So we're going to do what the scriptures say, and we're going to add our imagination, so we're going to end up seeing that this is a place where there's not going to be any anger people, won't that Do great.

I'll tell you, if you've been around, you've been around angry people a lot, and now attorneys are never around angry people, I'm sure, but and doctors, for sure, are never around angry people, but around angry people a lot.

You know, how wonderful it's going to be not to, not to have to see.That are depressed, people know it's going to be depressed, nobody's going to be angry. Let's just try to imagine what that would be like. You're gonna be with friends walking in beautiful gardens, and you know what, it's going to be easy to walk, because you ha ve strong legs. So you and I are going to be walking around in something equivalent, Blue Heart Gardens in British Columbia, and we're going to turn a corner, and there's going to be Jim Todden, not in a walker, not being helped, not pushing along.

But sitting just upright, just like this, saying Man, we're gonna and say, Jim, what do you think of this place, and he's going to say? Sensational, that's he's going to say, sensational they're going to be. Everybody's going to have strong legs. You're not going to need that pain anymore.

As it turns out, there's going to be fruit trees, big fruit from them, and you're going to take a bite of the fruit, and it's going to startle you, how sweet and how good it tastes. You're going to have friends and family members to sit down and have a feast with. What a good what, how fun is that going to be.

Good to sit down with, with Bob Raines, and say, Do you remember? I don't know how to fix this thing at my. Can you come, He.

Said, although there's usually nothing broken, didn't have nothing, all right, but we're gonna. We're gonna have singalongs with Bob Carpenter, that'll be fun to do. It or Jim Lackey will just suddenly start believing us in the in. The song, be a lot of fun, okay, accompanied by harp. Okay. So we're gonna have this feast of fun things with people, that's gonna be a lot of fun. It's gonna be beautiful mountains and waterfalls, and beaches, babbling brooks. This is Young Capagri River, right outside of.

Ridgewa, Colorado. Now think about this for a minute, I. I had just graduated from high school in Odessa, Texas, Okay. And if you don't know where Odessa is, Yeah, that's worthy. Yeah, this is a terrible place, okay, It's. It's an awful place. There's a lot of oil there. If you like oil, it's really good. But it's a desert area, and so I'm here in this place and Sunday, right outside. My excuse me, I don't happen. About three blocks down from the.

Motel, where all the crew stood stay, was Uncapagua River, and Boyfield, guy from West Texas, just to see green, was big Floyd, and water was really big, but there's something about this stuff too. Quite often, you'll find near these rivers are benches, and the reason they're benches is because there's something about watching a river that's common, that just makes you feel good.

I used to go down to spend an hour just watching the river flow, nothing, you know. And I have trouble sitting in an airplane without reading a book or something, but I can sit there and watch the water flow for an hour, because it was so calming and so pleasant.

This is the kind of stuff you're going to get to see and enjoy all the time. There's going to be many.

That last word is an important word. There's actually going to be work in heaven, but it's going to be work that you enjoy, that is fun. You were not made to be idle, Adam and Eve were not idle in the garden of Eden, they were in charge of managing the garden of Eden. And everybody in this room is going to have a job, okay, you're going to have work, meaningful, work, meaning work that makes you feel good. Many work that you, you're ready to go and have fun with this is.

Going work, not drudgery work, you have to be filling out tax returns. I mean, no tax returns in heaven. I love the IRS people, no IRS, and have, for sure, okay, so meaningful, interesting, fun work, all right. Everything's like a happy dog, let's tail back. Just kind of think about what that's going to be like now.

We're at an interesting place right here, I mentioned to you a while ago that in the. When we were discussing the silencers section, that, there was a quote from Paul where he went to a place called Paradise.

And. Here's what we're going to find when we go through the New Testament, There's actually where, where is Jane, where is Bob Brains, where, where is Richard Fergus, where are these people that have gone for, Where's my first wife, where, where are these people. Right now. What we have spent our time on so far is talking about heaven, with a capital H, and that's what we will call the eternal.

Heaven, but there is that that's going to be, a place on a resurrected earth, in which essentially, God is going to recreate the Garden of Eden here, but in the meantime, where, where are these people that going ahead of us. They're not there yet, because that place is not here on earth yet, they're somewhere else, and they're in this place that the scriptures refer to, it's paradise, or what sometimes is referred to in the New Testament as the present.

Heaven, and so one of the things we want to try to sort out is, what is this place going to be like?

Not going to be like, what is this place like, present tense, because that's where these people that went before us are right now, and there's some very peculiar things about this place that are different from the capital age heaven that we've been talking about to this point, and let me just kind of give you a little of a preview, we're going to spend a lot of time on this next week, we're going. We got like 15 MIN to go, but I don't want to get too far into.

This. So we're talking about where did my mom go, where, where did? Where did Jane go, Where? Where are these people? And so this, it turns out, is an intermediate place.

Let me, let me try to explain this with, suppose that you live in a hovel in a homeless area in Miami, Florida, just awful, terrible place, crime all around you, needles all around is a terrible place, and you get word that you've inherited a multi-billion dollar estate on Santa Barbara, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, and you got a first class ticket.

To, from Miami to to Santa Barbara, but on the way, you're going to stop, you're going to have a layover in Dallas Fort Worth. You're going to apply for Miami, Dallas Fort Worth, and then to California, and while you're in, while you're in Dallas Fort Worth, you have a lot of time left over, so there's some friends of yours and family members, etc, that you're going to stop and enjoy some time with. You're going to, you're gonna like to be around them, it's always very pleasant.

To, it's way better than the homeless place in Miami, all right, way better than that, but it's not your final destination. Final destination. When you, when you got on the plane to Miami, they say, What is your destination? You did not say Dallas Fort Worth, you said My final, My destination is Santa Barbara, California, right? And so what you're going to do is you're going to stop, and that's Fort Worth. You really enjoy being with those folks in Dallas Fort Worth, but it's still in the terminal, but it's not as.

Great, great, as in Santa Barbara, then you're going to go to Santa Barbara. Now my analogy is kind of wrong, because what's really going to happen is this, you're going to get on the plane in Miami, go to Dallas Fort Worth, spend some time there, then you're going to come back to Miami, except miami's totally different now. Miami had no crime, no smog, everything is.

Wonderful, you have a palatial home to live in around great friends, it's going to be really wonderful. That's really what the analogy is here.

But in the meantime, you're going to spend some time at DFW, and that's kind of a poor analogy, because DFW is a horrible place to have to think about spending time, but but you're going to spend some time in this intermediate spot, and so what we want to talk about is what is that spot going to be like. What kind of bodies are we going to have, importantly.

Are we be able to see what's going on? Can Jane see what's going on down here, okay, can Bob see what's going on down here, can can Joe Lackey and Richard Fergus, they, can they see what's going on down here? Okay? I thought having was a place where there's no tears, no crying. Well, if you're if you can see what's going on down here, There's going to be some tears and stuff about that, isn't. You're not gonna be happy about what's going on down here, and so one of the things we want to.

Talk is this place. What is going to be like, we're going to have bodies we recognize. What's it going to? Where is it okay? Where is it? It's not here, Where in the world is it? So what I'm going to do now, I hate to let class out early, but you get teacher of the year if you do that. Oh, if you knew that. But what we're going to do is, we're going to stop here, because I don't get too far into this without, without us having to stop in the middle of something meeting. So what we're going to do is we'll come back here next time we're going to.

Talk what paradise is like, and try to put some flesh on that, I have to use our imaginations again, but we'll see what the scriptures have to say to us, okay, all right, thank you. What. Oh, yeah, music.

Yes. There'll be people playing, because that's what's fun, is it, right? That's gonna be work, but it's fun. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. One, one good reason. Oh, yeah! Well, I'm glad that she's, she's one of my favorite people on the planet. Yeah, she's just a really nice.

And I'm still pretty. And so it just sitting like, I'm just sitting here, listen, and all of a sudden we just feel like, whatever? And I'll go like this. So if I skip it. So I gotta take blood thinners.

And even when I've actually. So I take. Now that I'm talking about. So they're going to be investigated? So I got the, I guess I got the earlier. Good morning! I do. I do, thank you, sir. Who's that Oh, somebod, somebody he keeps hanging out with? Thank you.