Is Heaven Really Open Today?

Call it “funeral eschatology.” Christian preachers who don’t believe that Jesus has “returned” (or better yet has “come”) and received his first disciples into heaven (John 14:1-3), assure the family and friends at a Christian funeral that the dearly departed believer is better off than those there assembled because he/she is in heaven with Jesus, right now. But while comforting, it’s biblically inconsistent.

 

Many educated Christians rightly recognize a no-one-in-heaven-yet dilemma in the classroom (see John 3:13; 13:33, 36). Yet they conveniently choose to ignore it at the funeral home. Which is it? Do believers today immediately go to heaven upon physical death? Or, do they still have to wait in Hades or somewhere else until Jesus finishes preparing the place and “returns” to receive them?

 

Seriously, are we so blind to see or ashamed to admit the implications of nonoccurrence? If this final step has yet to occur, as all futurist schemes claim, we are faced with some big problems:

 

1. 1st-century believers watched, waited, and eagerly expected in vain (1 Pet. 1:5-9; 2:12; Heb. 9:28; 10:25; Luke 21:28; Phil. 3:20; Gal. 5:5; Rom. 13:11-13; 1 Cor. 1:7; Titus. 2:11-13).
2. Their salvation and ours is still incomplete. If no final sign or proof of atonement has been manifested from heaven, we cannot know if Jesus’ sacrifice has yet been accepted by God.
3. We can’t know for sure if our sins are fully forgiven, if we are totally reconciled to God, if we are back in his Presence (where no one had been since Adam), or were we to die tonight, if we would immediately go to heaven (see again John 3:13; 13:33, 36; 14:1-3).

 

Yes, this is where salvation and end-time prophecy (soteriology and eschatology) are inseparably intertwined. But if this “salvation that is [was] ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5) hasn’t occurred in almost 2,000 years, all we can be sure of is that we have the promise of salvation. But if that’s all we have, how is the New Covenant any better than the Old in this important regard? If the New doesn’t supply what the Old could not provide, where are we? How much salvation do we presently have? How much of Christ’s mission to “put away sin” is accomplished? Or, are we still in limbo (an intermediate state) and not yet in God’s Presence?

Please note that any doctrine which says that Jesus has not come on the clouds and fulfilled salvation promises to Israel is actually saying that we don’t have full redemption (1 Pet. 1:9-13; Acts 3:24; 26:6-8; Eph. 4:4). There’s no way around it.

The good news is that postponement traditions are wrong. There was no 19-centuries-and-counting delay (Hab. 2:3; Heb. 10:37). What Christ outlined in John 14:1-3 was fulfilled in his end-of-the-age parousia coming. To extend this fulfillment to a yet-future timeframe is to leave a vacuum and do irreparable harm to God’s redemptive plan. If Christ is still preparing that place and has not “returned” (come), as is popularly taught, then no saint is yet in heaven and John 3:13; 13:33, 36 are still in effect! On the other hand, maintaining that if the Lord came in the fall of Jerusalem we no longer have hope of the coming of Christ is also a big mistake.

Admittedly, believing that Jesus came “on the clouds” in age-ending judgment in the generation He named and is fully present and coming in our midst today is heretical (“a belief different from the accepted belief”). It is also biblical! The historical and scriptural evidence is demanding.

Sad to say, many churches and Christians may not be willing to admit they’ve been wrong all these years about our faith’s “once-for-all-delivered” and totally fulfilled foundation (see Jude 3). It’s too embarrassing for them.

For more, see my book, The Perfect Ending for the World.

But what do you think?