Heavenly visionary, earthly missionary 

It is very relevant to study Heaven. It gives one eternal perspective and it is where every missionary call has ever come from - looking upwards to the Throne of Heaven ...

         As Saul (Paul) neared Damascus on his journey,

         suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.

          He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him,

         “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

        “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

        “I am Jesus,... Now get up and go into the city,

          and you will be told what you must do.”

                                                                       Acts 9:3-5

The problem today with most people who claim to know Christ, is not that they are too heavenly minded or too spiritual, but rather, they are so sensory minded that they have virtually lost the vision and heavenly call of the risen Christ.  They have become spiritually impaired as far as the Kingdom of God is concerned.  When a believer is over preoccupied with the things of this world they simply miss hearing God's still small voice of guidance and lose out on accomplishing much for the Lord. Their eternal reward is minimized.

Heaven's Great Commission

Paul was a very “relevant” soul-winner and yet he had many visions of Paradise and Heaven. (II Cor. 12) The great awakener and revivalist, John Wesley said that his heart could not prepared for a revival unless he constantly kept one eye on Heaven and one eye on earth, lest the devil get the better of him.  It was the great soul winner D.L. Moody who said that having an understanding of Heaven would directly bring results in missionary and soul-winning efforts of the Church worldwide.

The prophet Isaiah was no religious flake either - true heavenly vision will lead to an earthly CALL every time ...

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.

 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face,

with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:

  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
  The whole earth is full of His glory!”

  And the posts of the door were shaken

  by the voice of him who cried out,

  and the house was filled with smoke.

  So I said:

 “Woe is me, for I am undone!
  Because I am a man of unclean lips,
  And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
  For my eyes have seen the King,
  The Lord of hosts.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me,

  having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar.

  And he touched my mouth with it, and said:

 “Behold, this has touched your lips;
  Your iniquity is taken away,
  And your sin purged.”

 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:

 “Whom shall I send,
  And who will go for Us?”

  Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

  And He said, “Go, and tell this people:

                          Isaiah 6:2-9

Being connected to Heaven directly bears upon the defeat of satan and evil in this hour.  Both the Apostle Paul and John Wesley understood that all true spiritual authority and power flow from the heavenly regions. 

Jesus said to us that our lives should be continually connected through prayer to the heavenly realms. In the Lord's Prayer He prayed for us that ...“Thy will be done on earth even as it is in Heaven.”  So in order to do God’s work on earth, Jesus expects each of us as believers to understand, comprehend and operate in the heavenly realm.  Many believers need to "phone home" via their prayer life and seek the Lord for heavenly direction.

The greatest missionary call of all was spoken by Jesus as He was being taken up into Heaven!

    But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;

    and you shall be my witnesses (martyrs) in Jerusalem,

    and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

    Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched,

    He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.

    And while they looked steadfastly toward Heaven as He went up,

    behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said,

   “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into Heaven?

   This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into Heaven,

    will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into Heaven.

                                                            Acts 1:8-10

Without a heavenly vision, dreams, calls and anointings are lost.  People will suffer as a result of spiritual blindness. The world today needs Christians who have seen and heard from HEAVEN!

                                                Without a vision, the people perish ...

                                                                                  Proverbs 29:18

GO & TELL

Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.”

And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains

and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind;

and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 

 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire;

and after the fire a still small voice.

So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle

and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave.

Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

And he said, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts;

because the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant,

torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword.

I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.” 

Then the Lord said to him: “Go, return on your way to the Wilderness of Damascus ...

                                                                                          1 Kings 19: 11-15

Heaven is above

You see, HEAVEN is ABOVE.  It is where all true, earthly callings for His glory orginate. Prayerless, vision-less Christians are actually irrelevant to truly being used in God's Kingdom on earth.  Even in practical ways they will not be empowered to heal the sick, help the poor and the needy because they lack a real time vision of Heaven and a heavenly unction to energize and "constrain" them to reach others.

Besides, until believers on earth become connected and unified with the King of Heaven and with the laws of Paradise, there will never be the great Reformation which so many pray for.  The fact is, there can only be a national revival when the moral laws of church, government, science, medicine, education, business and theology become unified with the eternal and holy moral laws of Paradise. 

Treasures from Heaven  

Why do we want to pray and worship and be spiritually in tune with Heaven? Because the Lord wants to download empowering gifts and anointings into our lives that will not only bless us but make us a blessing to the nations. (Gen. 12:1-3)

God gives us treasures from Heaven according to James the disciple ...

            Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights,

            who does not change like shifting shadows.

                                                                                                                       James 1:17-18

James had a key to the portal of Heaven. He gives us that key in the following passage.

                             Draw near to God and He will draw near to you ...

                                                                                             James 4:8

How do we as believers draw near to Him? Through faith-filled praise, worship and prayer and the careful study of the scriptures. Then the thunders of God's authority and the lightnings of His breakthroughs will strike from Heaven as the gentle rains of His blessings, peace and prosperity will grant us cyrstal clear guidance. He will guide us with His eyes. - His still small voice will gently lead us in the way we should go.

                    The Father loves to give his children gifts - but we must be willing to receive His grace 

                    and worship Him so that we can be in His Presence to recieve from Him.

Why, even a reprobate fallen devil still knows to go to Heaven's throne from time to time to attempt to get what he wants from God. Obviously the King does nothing Lucifer requests unless it is for God's predetermined purposes.   [Job 1:6-7; Job 2:1-7; Ps. 100:6; Zech. 3:1-2] Why then are so many believers then so remiss in their private worship lives and prayer times? Why do so many live on earth with hearing God's vpoce from Heaven?

A journey extraordinaire

Not withstanding some of the recent hoaxes and false claims about their "heavenly tour" all which were false reports by certain authors and publishers as a marketing ploy to sell books. The scriptures are very clear that the Glory realm exists. Sure, from time to time there are dubious testimonies of supposed visitations to Heaven (what the mainstream media has recently dubbed "Heavenly Tourism.") 

But there have also been many geniune NDE's (near death experiences) and many Christian who have actually left their bodiess and ascended to the hieghts of Paradise. There are many examples where believers have been proven clinically dead and then were brought back to life by modern medicine. What they described as Paradise remarkably resembles what the Bible says about Heaven.

Of course critics of the supernatural should not scoff too much.  In Bible accounts,  from the time of Jacob (Gen 28), to Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1ff), Ezekiel (Ezekiel1), Zechariah, to the Gospels and the Apostle Paul (i.e. his vivid Third Heaven experience  [2Cor.12:1f]) -- to John's book of Revelation --  all these biblical passages recount the personal visitations of sincere believers to Heaven while still living on earth.

Chariots of Angels 

                                                                    Enoch, Elijah (and possibly Moses) were all actually translated into Heaven - the former not ever tasting                                                                       death. The Prophet Elijah was actually picked up by a heavenly chariot of fire and taken there!

                                                                    Naysayers and scoffers should not be so smug just because they can point to a few hypocrites or                                                                                   talebearers here and there. Nor is there any basis to attribute such accounts to UFO s or a superior alien                                                                       beings.                                                                     

                                                                     Hell is for Mockers 

                                                                    For the LORD of Heaven's Armies, has plainly spoken .. so scoff no more, or your punishment will be                                                                             even greater ... But these people scoff at things they do not understand ...Bold and arrogant, they are                                                                           not afraid to heap abuse and mock celestial beings ...

                                                                                                                                                                            Isaiah 28:22/Jude 1:10/2 Peter 2:10

The basic questions of life

There are basic questions that everyone asks themselves from time to time ...

                       Where did I come from?

                       Why am I here?

                       Where am I going?

If people were honest, most everyone will admit that they wonder what will happen

to them when they die. They think about it more than they can remember.

If they were totally transparent they would admit that they think about Heaven

and the afterlife a lot.  If they ask themselves important questions like “Where is Heaven?

How do I get there? Does Heaven truly exist?  The Bible is the only Book of truth in the world

that gives us a clear answer to all these questions and more. 

Heaven is a PLACE

Some Cal Tech and MIT quantum mechanic theorists and astro physicists, have recently proposed that they have proven that there could be a actual reality like Heaven. That this it exists in another dimension and one day possibly will become accessible through a tecnologically advanced starship that can endure the gravitational pressures and heat of a black hole or worm hole, and that can also travel at a speeds faster than light through such a portal. Astronomers now tell us thatlocated near the nebulae of the constellation Orion there exixts  such a black hole which they claim connects our entire Milky Way Galaxy to another dimension. (Job 9:9)

Christians are presently called to overcome evil and death through total Christlikeness and to heavenize this old planet preparing the Bride for the Coming of Christ. The Bible says that the earth is eternal and in the coming aion (age) will be refurbished by the LORD at the time of the "restitution of all things" when a He returns.  Whether all this happens pre or post millenial has adherents from many branches of Christianity.

                Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing

                 may come from the presence of the Lord;  and that He may send Jesus, 

                whom heaven must receive until the restitution (restoration) of all things

                about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time ...

                                                                                                                                                        Acts 3:19-21

BLUE-GREEN MAMMOUTH PLANET

But could Heaven (as John Milton supposed) be a large and beautiful, habitable planet much like our own?  Some genuine missioanries have testified they have seen it as a blue-green planet 80x larger than earth ? 

Or is it simply a beautiful and idyllic place of sublime, celestial reality located in another alternative universe or dimension?

Or is the heavenly realm  located at some distant location in our very own universe? 

No matter. The Bible does not specifically answer these kind of questions. But it does give us some clues regarding the fact that it is certainly a realm of reality and bliss “above” and beyond anything imaginable.

               But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,

               the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

                                                                                                           1 Corinthians 2:9

One thing for certain, when a believer dies, angels will come and carry them to Paradise.

                                  Finally the beggar died and was carried by the angels to be with Abraham in the PLACE of the righteous ...

                                                                                                                                                                                   Luke 16:22 (TLB)

Maybe this is why Bible says we are blest when we contemplate the accounts of Heaven. The Book of Revelation has the most detail of its appearance ...

                                        Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this book, ….                                                                            

                                                                                   Revelation 1:3 

God’s place

  “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”

   At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in Heaven with someone sitting on it.

   And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby.

   A rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne. surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones,

   and seated on them were twenty-four elders.They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.

   From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder.

   In front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.

   Also in front of the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.

   In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures

                                                                                  Revelation 4:2-7

Heaven is God's residence. It's where He lives.

     Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,

     In the city of our God, His holy mountain.

     Beautiful in elevation,

     the joy of the whole earth,

     Is Mount Zion in the far north,

     The city of the great King.

     God is in her palaces,

                                               Psalm 48:2-3