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Dr. Ed Young: Revelation, I was in seminary,
I took a class on Revelation for an entire year.
The first day of class, our professor Dr. McDowell
said, "If anyone puts on S on Revelation,
you're gonna flunk the course."
It's Revelation, the last book of the Bible.
The Apostle John, the last apostle among the 12 to be
alive, an elderly man in a cave on the island of Patmos praying,
seeking God, and in that amazing moment,
the Lord opened up the heavens for John and gave him a view
of paradise that no one had experienced before or since.
And you read the Book of Revelation it says,
"I saw, I heard, I saw, I heard."
And John was trying to write it all down and he was trying
to describe that which was indescribable,
the glory, the majesty, the beauty,
the magnificence of heaven.
It's interesting as you study the Book of Revelation,
there is a rhythm there.
I call it the rhythm of revelation.
Chapter 1, you have a view from heaven.
Chapter 2 and 3, you have a view of earth.
Chapter 3 and 4, you go back to heaven.
Chapter 5 and 6, you come down to the earth.
And there is heaven, earth, heaven,
earth, heaven, earth, all the way through
the Book of Revelation, not necessarily marked
by the chapters themselves.
What's that all about?
Here from heaven, here from earth,
here from earth, here from heaven, here from earth.
I thought about it a long time.
I think it's an answer to the Lord's prayer,
the model prayer.
"Thy kingdom come, thy there be done on earth
as it is in heaven."
So here at the climax of the Bible,
we see heaven and earth, heaven and earth,
and we see how the Lord's prayer is beginning
to come together in paradise.
What a book is the Book of Revelation?
It opens for us heaven.
By the way, for a long time maybe you were like me that I
thought, you know, we don't know a great deal about heaven.
I wish God would tell us more about heaven.
But when you open your Bible and look at your concordance
and begin to study words that are used for heaven,
and paradise, and eternity, you realize the book
from the Old Testament to the New Testament,
you could make a case it's all about heaven in one sense.
Over 500 times in some translation,
the word "heaven" is mentioned.
So, we read and understand when the kingdom of God
and the kingdom of heaven are usually synonymous
in the understanding of the Bible.
You see, heaven is opened up in a way that most of us
have never understood or have never realized.
Presence with God and it is a new thing.
Here's the question, we get to heaven,
will it be familiar to us?
Will it be strange and unfamiliar to us?
We like the word "new."
We like new things.
We like new shoes when we get them broken in.
We like new clothes. We like new cars.
We like new houses. We like new friends.
We like new relationships. We like new trips.
We like new foods. We're into new, make things new.
And here we see that in heaven, all things will be new
but yet they'll be familiar.
And G.K. Chesterton, talking about being homesick
while you're still at home.
There's a parable about a sea lion that lived in a desert
and a whole family of sea lions lived in desert,
the desert, generation after generation,
after generation until finally they had just little memory
of the sea.
They didn't know how they got in the desert.
They'd been there for generations and they looked
around and looked and said, "You know,
I've got some equipment here that isn't really useful in the
desert but you asked a sea lion, "Where is your home?"
It's the desert.
But you take those sea lions and put them in the ocean,
ooh boy they'd say, "You know, I thought I was on there
but man I'm really equipped living in the ocean."
Ladies and gentlemen, that's the way it is in heaven.
We think, "Boy, I'm at home here on this earth.
I'd sure like to live forever on this earth."
Once we get to heaven, we're like the sea lion
who thought desert was their home when really,
their home was in the depths, and the coolness,
and the beauty of the ocean.
That's the way it's going to be.
That's exactly how it's going to be.
I read a theologian, he did a beautiful thing
and I'm gonna share it with you.
He said, this is what he sort of think heaven is
and this is what the Bible says about heaven.
Look on your screen.
What we assume about heaven it's a non-earth.
What the Bible says about heaven, it's a new earth.
We assume that it's unfamiliar and other worldly.
The truth is heaven is familiar and earthy.
By the way, we were created out of what?
Dirt.
We are earthy people, therefore we are connected to this earth
and we'll always be connected to this earth.
We think it's foreign, home and all the comforts,
home with all the innovations of an infinity,
infinitely created God.
You know, assume that heaven is leaving
favorite things behind, right?
Not true.
It's retaining the good, finding the best ahead.
We have the idea there's no time and space in heaven.
We're going to see there's time in heaven
but that's in a little while.
We understand there's time in space.
We think heaven is static, it is dynamic.
All right, look at what we assume about heaven.
Neither the old is like Eden or the new and earthy,
just what's strange and unknown.
What's the truth?
It's both old and new.
We'll see there's nothing to do in heaven.
What's that old song, "I just roll around heaven--"
Oh, no, no, no, we think we float on clouds.
No, look what it is.
A God to worship and serve, a universe to rule,
purposeful work to accomplish, friends to enjoy.
We think there's no learning or discovery.
We think we die, we have instant complete knowledge.
No, you won't.
The Bible says we'll have an eternity
of learning and discovery.
We think it's boring. No, it's not.
It is fascinating, the Bible tells us.
We think there's a loss of desire.
No, it's continuous fulfillment of desire.
We think it's the absence of the terrible,
but the presence of little we desire.
The truth is it's the presence of the wonderful everything
we desire and nothing we don't.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me summarize all this very simply,
nobody here is gonna live long enough to fulfill
all your desires, your dreams,
your capacities, your hopes.
You're not gonna be able to see everything,
go everywhere, understand everything,
pursue everything, celebrate everything,
enjoy everything, that's not gonna happen in this life but in
heaven, all of that is going to be fulfilled over and over again
it into infinity, understand that.
Eye have not seen, right, ear has not heard.
It has into the heart of a human being what God has prepared
for those who love him and those who graduate to be
with him in heaven, heaven.
So, we're sea lions out in the desert on this earth,
but in heaven, I'll tell you we will soar in a way
we can't even imagine.
Look what the Bible tells us clearly about the new heaven
and the new earth.
Open your Bibles with me, if you would,
verse number 2, "And I saw the holy city,
new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
made ready as a bride adorned for her husband."
And here we have a new creation, in that new creation,
we have a new capital.
We're talking about heaven, a new capital.
And it is a new city and I love that phrase,
"It's like a bride coming down the aisle adorned
for her husband."
Let me tell ya, there's nothing more beautiful,
more radiant than a bride.
I told someone, I'd never seen a bride that wasn't beautiful,
and a couple of them barely made it but I mean there's something
radiant about a bride coming down the aisle
and this is what you see.
You have the bride coming down the aisle.
It is the New Jerusalem.
It is the new city.
What is a city?
What is a city?
"Well, it's buildings--" No, it's not. It's people.
We could have hurricane wipeout come here
and just flatten everything around here.
We'd still have Katy, Texas, I want you to know that,
because it's made up of people.
It's not building, and stuffs, and roads,
and schools, no, no, it's people.
And so what you have, you have the New Jerusalem coming
as a bride, and who is the bride of Christ?
It's those of us who are in Christ.
It's those who are in Christ.
And we see that clearly in our study.
Right before in the chapter before this chapter,
you have a picture of the great white throne judgment.
And we have there it says all the books are there,
and one book is there it has everybody's biography in it,
birth, life, death, signed, sealed, delivered.
This is me, this is you, this is everybody is there.
And he said, by that large book, there's another book there
called the Book of Life and in this book,
that's where the Lamb Jesus Christ has written the names
down and that--in that book, are the names of those
who will be in heaven.
And so, we want to make sure our name is in that Book of Life
and that is our entree, that is our ticket,
that is our passage into heaven.
So, we see here we have the new capital coming down
out of heaven, a New Jerusalem.
And then also in the next passage,
not only have a new capital, but we have a whole new country
and that is verse 2 through verse 4.
It says what this country's like,
no tears, no sorrow, no shame, that's a whole new world.
That's a new country, isn't it?
Then you have a new constitution that's come to verse 5
all the way to verse 8.
it tells us how heaven will operate.
Want to see how heaven operates, look at Matthew 5:6 and 7
and how heaven operates, who will ascend in this holy place?
That's heaven.
Gotta have clean hands and a pure heart.
I'm not gonna make it, are you?
You got clean hands, pure heart.
It is Christ who cleans our hands.
It is Jesus Christ who purifies our hearts and our motives,
that's how we have the entree to heaven.
So, here it is telling us in heaven we have a new capital
and we know in this particular period of time,
the religious capital was Jerusalem.
The political capital was Rome.
And we look, the economic capital was Babylon
but now we have a new capital, a new spiritual capital,
and this is what he's talking about.
And you have a new country, this is something he tells us about.
And then you have a new Constitution as to how you live
this country and then he elaborates
on that New Jerusalem.
Look at it, it begins down in verse 10.
"And he carried me away by the Spirit
to a great high mountain."
And then verse 12, "It had a great high wall with twelve
gates," and it goes on describes a New Jerusalem.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I could go
through all the dimensions of the New Jerusalem without boring
half of us to death and without amazing the other half.
Man, it's fabulous descriptions but the main thing about it,
it has a wall, a great wall, and we've been hearing
a lot about walls lately.
And it encompasses the holy city and in that wall,
you have twelve gates, three, three,
three, three and it is the twelve tribes of Israel.
In the foundation, it talks about the stones there,
the beautiful, precious stones.
You have a representation with the 12 apostles.
So, you have the Old Testament surrounding the New Testament
under the bottom, that is the foundation,
and then you have this holy city,
which is the New Jerusalem.
By the way, it's plenty big for everybody
if you want to get very literal here.
You can look at this as a metaphor.
You can look at it in a literal way.
I think you'd come out at about the same place.
And so, you have a New Jerusalem coming down from God and that is
people, the bride of Christ, that's all of us who are written
in the Book of Life, coming down from heaven to abide there
forever and forever and forever and then one day after that.
It's called eternity.
It's called eternity.
And then we see we have a new calendar.
Now, you got to think here.
I apologize for this.
Come to church, having to think, what a terrible thing
to do to somebody.
Look at verse 22 of chapter number 21.
"And I saw no temple in it,
for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple."
In other words, the whole thing was a temple,
the whole thing was worship in heaven.
"And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine,
the glory of God has illumined it,
its lamp is the Lamb.
The nations will walk by light, and the kings of the earth
will bring glory.
For in the daytime the gates will never be closed."
It goes on and on.
People have read this passage and other passages,
and I fallen victim to this,
saying there's no time in heaven, T-I-M-E.
I've discovered that there is T-I-M-E in heaven.
You see, we have to understand there are many types of time
but there are two classical types.
There is chronos time and there is kairos time.
Chronos time--stay with me.
I told you you'd have to think, I apologize.
Is human time. It's linear time.
It is a line.
It is a timeline that is human time.
We look at what time it is, that's chronos time.
Also, there is divine kind of time,
that's kairos time and that is God time.
Chronos time, human time, kairos time is God's time.
In human time, we have past, that which has happened,
and we have future, right?
We got that, don't we?
All right, but in God's time, there's only now.
There's no past.
There's no future because human time gives itself to eternity to
God's time and human time is totally changed and transformed.
It's an amazing, amazing story as to how this takes place
and that is the miracle of heaven.
That's the supernatural aspects of heaven.
For example, in human time, chronos time,
how we tell time, there's fear.
What does fear come from?
Fear comes from fear of the future, right?
Isn't that what fear's all about?
It's what's gonna happen, it's fear of the future.
And then in human time, we have regret,
what is our regret?
It's fear of the past, which has already taken place,
what we did, what we shouldn't have done.
But you take human time, fear of the future and fear of the past
and you, when it gets to heaven, human time is absorbed into
eternity, into kairos time, into God's time and there's only now.
What does that mean?
That means we have no fear of the future
because now we're in God's time.
And that means all our mistakes of the past,
all our regrets of the past, all the bad stuff in the past,
all the decisions we made we shouldn't have made,
all the things we did not do, all that is totally taken away
in the forgiveness of eternity.
You say, "Well, that's crazy."
In other words, in God's sight, all the bad garbage stuff
you and I have done as we confessed it to Jesus Christ,
not only has been forgiven and covered by the blood of Jesus
Christ, God has forgotten it and in God's eyes,
it never took place.
That is kairos time.
Now, you say, "Well, I don't know about that."
Well, open your Bible, if you would,
to the Book of Psalms.
There are passages that teach that.
Open to Isaiah 43, open to Jeremiah 31,
open to Hebrews 8 and 10 and you find at least 6 times the Bible
clearly tells us, we come to God in Jesus Christ,
he buries all that stuff in the bottom of the ocean.
He says, "No fishing allowed."
And the truth is, all of that has been totally obliterated
and in God's eye, it never took place.
That is the grace, and the love, and the forgiveness
of heaven in eternity.
But in all of this, there's one thing that stands out.
You say, "Well, what will heaven be like?"
There's one thing about heaven that all of us
will like more than anything else.
Now, all the majesty, the glory, the fulfillment,
we'll be talking about that.
We're talking about having fun in heaven.
I have a whole study coming up.
We'll talk about how heaven is fun.
"Oh, well, I don't know about--" Oh, it is.
Who invented laughter?
Who invented fun? Who invented celebration?
Who gave to doubt, to sing, to move, to celebrate?
God and we'll discover that heaven's gonna be not only
out of this world, it's gonna be magnificent.
It's gonna be pleasurable.
It's gonna be fun and everything is gonna be fulfilled
we never even dreamed of being fulfilled.
So, let's understand that right up front.
That's clearly what the Bible teaches but there's one thing
that everybody who gets to heaven who has their name
written in the Book will agree on.
We'll like one thing about heaven,
we'll agree on it more than any other single aspect of paradise
because all of our needs will be met.
You'll say, "Maybe that will be what we like about heaven."
And we'll see that illustrated here in chapter 22,
by the way, it talks about in the middle of heaven,
there'll be a river of life.
In the middle of heaven, the tree of life will be on either
side of the river and there'll be the Lamb on the throne.
The river will be coming of life,
the tree of life on either side of that.
In the leaves of tree, there will be healing.
Now, we'll like that about heaven.
I mean, that's going to be magnificent,
falling from the Lamb, life-giving,
river right through the city, trees, the tree of life?
We've had the tree of life before.
Does it ring a bell? Does it sound like Genesis?
"Don't eat of this truth but now you'll eat of every fruit of the
tree of life and there'll be one fruit or every 12 months."
Fruit of the month club right there in heaven.
Read it, read it.
And we have the river, and we have the fruit,
and we have the leaves that are always healing
because this is the ongoing magnificent, and cleansing,
and perfection of heaven.
And by the way, if I had time,
you familiar with this Hierarchy of Needs?
Look at it on your--quickly on your--I can take that particular
section and I will show you how every basic
in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you thought it was secular,
all of those needs are met physiological needs,
our safety, need for love, esteem,
and self-actualization.
Some of us will never get much of any of those but you see in
heaven, there is a picture here of all of that being needed.
And we'll like that about heaven,
to be full, and complete, and whole,
and one, and have joy, and all of that replaced in our life.
Boy, what a fabulous thing that will be,
but that isn't the main thing we'll like.
A little book written in 1871, the title was
"The Happiness of Heaven."
It tells a story of a young lad who was born blind
and his family threw him away in the woods,
but the king was hunting and saw the little baby and picked up
the blind child that was thrown away
and brought that child up as his son.
At the right age, that child became a prince.
At the right age, the child was educated,
and fed, and it was recognized as part of the royal family
until that young child became 20 years of age and a surgeon
came in and performed surgery and for the first time,
he was able to see.
And I can't even describe the words that are there.
They're magnificent words but he said for the first time
he saw who he was as a prince.
For the first time, he saw the splendor of the court
where he'd been brought up.
And for the first time, he saw the thing that he was most
thrilled to see that was his face of the father
who had adopted him who was his king.
Maybe you've guessed, the one thing we'll like.
Put in Facebook, put down "like, like, like, like."
We'd all put this one thing down in our heavenly Facebook.
Look at it, verse 4, Revelation 22
and it says, "They will see his face.
They will see his face."
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll like it, if we think about heaven
but compared to that, everyone will say,
"That is what we like more than all the rest,
to see the face of the living God."
male announcer: What is heaven?
When we think of heaven, we usually think of clouds,
maybe a staircase, a gate,
perhaps a light at the end of a tunnel.
But is heaven a real place?
What will it look like?
What will we do there for eternity?
Throughout God's Word, we're given pieces to the puzzle
of heaven and in the series, Heaven Is,
Dr. Young will put those pieces together to give us our best
understanding of what heaven is really like.
Dr. Young: In heaven, there'll be challenges,
and creativity, and joy, and celebration that'll go on and on
that's beyond anything we can picture or imagine
because we see heaven is real.
It's real.
announcer: To get your copy of this amazing series,
Heaven Is, call the number on your screen or go online
at winningwalk.org.
It's our gift to you for your financial support
of this ministry.
Dr. Young: I remember a Bible study group that consisted
of doctors, and attorneys, and CEOs,
and vice presidents, and presidents of corporations,
entrepreneurial geniuses, and a street sweeper.
In the initial meeting the group leader asked each
to identify himself.
First one said, "I'm a physician."
Another, "I'm an attorney."
"I'm vice president of operations," answered a third.
And finally it was the street sweeper's turn.
There was a little apprehension what he would say.
He said, "I am a son of the King."
He had no identity in the world in which he could boast
but he knew his core identity.
The others were clouted by their earthly,
titles position, but the street sweeper knew he was chosen
by the King of kings to be a son with all the privileges
and honors, man, of that high position.
Remember, as sons and daughters of God,
who you are in Jesus Christ right now today,
there's not a higher position in anybody's kingdom.
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