What You Need to Know About Heaven

The following is an excerpt from What You Need to Know About Heaven.

Let’s imagine the impossible. Let’s say a person is born, lives a full life, and dies without violating any of God’s commands. Let’s say the person never utters a falsehood, never harbors a millisecond of ill will toward another person, and never gives God less than 100 percent devotion. Let’s say the person’s every thought, attitude, word, and deed honor God. 

In the context of eternal life, such a sparkling résumé would still fall immeasurably short of the standard required for atoning for sin and restoring the relationship with God. Even if no sin were committed, the person would still have an inherited sinful nature to answer for. No one born of man and woman could offer the perfect sacrifice that God requires for the atonement of sin. 

A person conceived by the Holy Spirit and delivered by a virgin, on the other hand, would have no inherited sinful nature. If that person could manage the impossible—live a sinless life with absolutely no offenses against God—he would be a fitting candidate to bring about atonement. 

Of course, this perfect candidate would have to agree to endure unprecedented agony—the kind of torture and death that would be unimaginable to anyone else. This innocent, blameless specimen of perfection would be subjected to the totality of God’s holy wrath and judgment for the sins of the world. The suffering and pain we deserve would instead be heaped on him. He who knew no sin would, in effect, become sin in God’s eyes—and be punished accordingly. 

Only One could satisfy those demands. But in order to do that, he had to leave his idyllic existence in heaven for a life of rejection, ridicule, and betrayal on our sin-ravaged planet. He had to give up his autonomy and become a helpless baby. He had to lay aside his perfections and make himself vulnerable to pain, sickness, and exhaustion. He had to submit to physical limitations, such as hunger and thirst. He had to squeeze his infinite presence into a container of flesh roughly five-and-a-half-feet tall. 

Only Jesus could have bridged the gap between God and humanity. Only Jesus did. 

The above article appears in What You Need to Know About Heaven, which is on sale where magazines are sold within the United States and Canada.

God's Promises

Genesis 26:5 "I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed"

Imagine how overwhelmed Abraham must have been when God laid these promises on him. The sheer grandness of them caused Abraham to fall to the ground. Of course, God kept these promises. God multiplied Abraham’s descendants beyond what he could imagine. Kings did come from Abraham—most importantly, the King of kings, Jesus Himself.

God has also made promises to us throughout His Word. Sometimes these promises can seem too grand to be true: eternal life in a perfect place with streets of gold? How could this be? But God does not lie. God keeps His promises. If God kept His promises to Abraham, we can be confident He will keep His promises to us. If we find ourselves doubting, all we have to do is return to God’s Word to find the truth: that He has been faithful to His Word, over and over, throughout time, no matter how impossible His promises may seem.

The above devotion is taken from an upcoming project to be published by Barbour Publishing. It will appear in the KJV PROPHECY STUDY BIBLE.