As we anticipate the age to come and entering into glory, we can look forward to heaven’s main event: being with Jesus.
To be sure, having perfect health, being reunited with believing loved ones, and experiencing untold blessings—these are grand hopes. But they don’t even begin to compare to heaven’s number one attraction: basking in the presence of Christ the King!
Jesus comforts his disciples, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). He’ll come for us so we can be with him!
Jesus said to the repentant thief on the cross, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). With me.
As Paul ponders life and death, he’s torn: “I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Phil. 1:23). Nothing tops being with Jesus!
A key aspect of hell is that God’s enemies “… will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess. 1:9). Banished.
Why did Jesus die? “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God,…” (1 Peter 3:18). It was all about making a way for us to be with God.
We get a glimpse of paradise in Revelation 7:15, “They are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.” Presence is the whole idea of future glory: being with Jesus.
In Revelation 21:3 John reports, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’” With-With-With! So, is that your hope, your yearning, as you look ahead beyond the grave?
