Heaven & Eternal life: here, there, anywhere and everywhere
Question from a reader: If it’s possible, can you do one on the meaning of ‘eternal life’…
Scripture Reading: Luke 17:21
God is teaching us how to be heaven citizens.
When we talk about eternal life in Heaven, many of us immediately start to imagine clouds and white and golden cities. However, we know that the Kingdom of Heaven is not in meat and drink, but in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Eternal life is here on earth right now. Eternal life is the life that God wants us to live. That is the whole point of the Bible, instructions, preachings, revelations, visions.
Before we start, I want people to understand something about this ‘concept’.
God started the story from the end. All that we are striving for is to get back to the Garden of Eden. Figuratively.
Our journey started from the end. We had daily fellowship with God, with no need for earthly possessions or vainglory. We didn’t need clothes, meaning that we didn’t even get affected by the weather, which means we were always healthy! We didn’t need to till the soil. (This is not to say that man would not have worked if not for the fall. Recall that man was given the assignment to tend the Garden. Also, remember that man was given the task to name all the animals. God never intended us to be jobless).
However, all these things changed the moment humankind turned away from instruction. We turned and did things our way, and it ruined the life of dominion that we were living. The tree of knowledge didn’t have to be in the Garden. Amongst other things, it was in the Garden to symbolise choice. We had the choice to rebel wholeheartedly and do what is wrong. If God never gave us the option to choose or choose not to, then he’d just be deceiving himself if he said that humankind has the ultimate freedom to will and do whatever they like. The tree of knowledge could well have been a stick or a blade of grass. The point of the story there is to show us that God allowed us to choose to obey him. Guess who blew it?
Anyway, it is safe to say that we were pretty much living Heaven on earth prior to the fall.
But what is Heaven?
Heaven is supposed to be the destination of every believing Christian and is also where we will spend the bulk of our eternal lives as believers. So what is Heaven?
People think that Heaven is peaceful only because there is no trouble or challenge there. People think it’s just different because there’s something in the water they are drinking! However, we know from scripture that Lucifer became satan even before the earth was created while he was in Heaven. His entire character arc, from being an angel of the light to become an angel of darkness, occurred before the physical worlds were created. He fell from Heaven. He and some other angels rebelled against God and were cast out.
We often forget that Heaven is only the place where God lives. It’s not the place where God is “from”. God created Heaven just the same way he created the earth. So, what we understand by that is it is only a different venue. In the vastness (or lack thereof!) of nothingness, God created the heavens and the earth. Nothing was here before God. So, it’s not like God chose Heaven for the crude oil or something 😂.
So, what we know from this is, Heaven is peaceful because the people in Heaven are peaceful. Heaven is good because the host of Heaven is made up of goodness. Heaven is light because it is full of people that walk in the light. My father sometimes says, “a heaven is a place where everybody is thinking right”. Satan’s head was not correct, and that was why he couldn’t remain there! He was a top official in the host of Heaven, so he was susceptible to pride, and he fell for it.
The pride of life is what caught Lucifer, who wasn’t an earthly being. He also is a spirit. People forget that.
So, we see that Heaven isn’t just someplace that magically makes everybody just act right! In fact, what makes you a good candidate for Heaven is the fact that you are a follower of goodness. How did you become a follower of goodness? By getting saved. You were in the darkness, just like the rest of the world, until you got saved and translated into the Kingdom of God through your faith. Now, sin and the devil have no dominion over you. Death has no dominion over you. You are now an overcomer through faith.
In fact, that is all Jesus came for. To restore us back to where we started in the Garden. Jesus came to teach us to be citizens of Heaven. To show us the only way back to that life.
Jesus Christ essentially came to let us know that we don’t have to die to see (and experience) eternal life. Jesus Christ, even as flesh, lived like a heavenly being. He was never reported to be sick. He was never reported lacking. He was never reported acting unrighteously. He had total dominion over the power of darkness. He knew when he was to die and was raised when he said he would be raised. He Himself said, “I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again”.
What Jesus came to show us is that it doesn’t matter the venue. Access Bank is Access Bank. You don’t have to wait to get to the Island and look for the main branch just to make deposits and check your account balance.
That is the beauty of our reality in God. Whatever is bound on earth is bound in Heaven. So it wouldn’t make a difference where you are. If you are a heavenly citizen walking in perfect fellowship with God, it wouldn’t matter if the devil attacks you in Ikeja Lagos or in the Jezero Crater on Mars. You are an overcomer without jurisdiction.
And that is why we take our faith seriously. We are learning to be heavenly citizens. In Heaven, everything works by faith. The Bible did not say that it is possible to please God without faith when you are in Heaven. The Bible tells us, without faith, it is impossible to please God. Period. We know that we cannot live in hate in Heaven because faith worketh by love.
One of the main reasons we are where we are as a society is that we do not love others as we love ourselves. That is reason number one. Loving others as we love ourselves takes away the problem of greed, lying, cheating, stealing, murder, hatred and prejudice, and almost any other atrocious sin. Even if the world may not be perfect with us loving each other as we love ourselves, evidently, it would be a lot better than it is right now. In fact, the picture of this earth’s state of affairs would be a lot closer to Heaven.
So what this means is that a big percentage of the reason we are suffering is that we are not doing that commandment, which means that the people in Heaven are obeying that commandment!
That is why we are told that people who hate their brother are not of God. God is not just teaching us how things can work on earth through His Word. He is teaching us how things work in general!
Let me give you two biblical examples:
Look at Job. Job was a giver to the poor and was a believer in God. Now, the devil being an unbelieving spirit that he is, came to tell God that he didn’t believe that Job was faithful to God for the right reasons. According to the devil, Job was only good because of all that he had. “If he didn’t have what he had”, the devil said, “he will turn against you”.
The devil thought that Job was who he was because of all that he had. But, God knew that Job had all that he had because of who he was. So God was ten steps ahead. He didn’t set Job up for failure, though, for Job said himself that the things he feared had come upon him. And we know from the Bible that a man’s fear ensnares him. So, God didn’t automatically become ‘unfaithful’ to Job. Satan just received the license to exploit a vulnerability that was already there.
Another example is the people of Israel (1 Corinthians 10:5–11). If you can recall, God protected the Israelites from seeing war because he knew that if they were to see it, they would turn away. However, the same Israelites still ended up perishing in the wilderness because they didn’t stop their fearfulness and murmuring.
Why didn’t He continue shielding them from bad things? Because their poor thinking, weak spine, unbelief, and murmurings kept bringing evil tidings their way! That’s just how the world works, and God is showing us that through his Word every day.
All these things happened as examples for us. God wants us to see through the story of the Israelites that regardless of whether or not he promises something to you, your wrong thinking can hinder you from living out the reality of the promises. He shielded them once, but they uncovered themselves to all manners of vulnerabilities when they continued walking in unbelief.
When I was younger, I was described as a sensitive child. I would get angry when corrected. I would give up easily whenever faced with difficulty and make up excuses for it. This was a weakness. Because of this, I was often shielded by family members from situations that could breed adverse effects because they knew my character was poor. However, my mother would often tell me, “in the real world, people will exploit your weaknesses. You have to grow beyond this.” This is the truth. God may want to shield us like He did the Israelites, but He wants us to ultimately become like Him because that is the only way that we can stop putting ourselves into situations that breed negative outcomes.
God wants you to think like him. Because if you can think like him, you will act like him, talk like him, and live like him. He wants to change us from the inside out.
That is why Jesus gave us the cheat code of Mathew 6:33. Because that is simply how the world operates optimally.
That is how Heaven operates.
The host of Heaven is too busy living in righteousness, peace, and joy that they couldn’t ever lack any good thing. That is why Heaven is different. That is why Heaven is the best place to enjoy our eternal lives.
However, we should continue to grow in our walk with God in order to experience the world as he did when He walked among men. I once wrote, “If I only like to do what is right, then I can do whatever I like”. That is the story of God. For instance, God has free will just like the rest of us, yet it is impossible for Him to sin. Jesus was a freeman just like us all, yet he did only what pleased the father.
Things must change in us. A lot of that change must happen in the way we think, the things we prioritise, the things we do. We are different.
That is why the Israelites died in the desert. That is why Lucifer couldn’t stay in Heaven. That is why Job was a wealthy man and eventually overcame his struggles. God is teaching us what it entails to live victoriously. To live like Jesus, to be people of eternal life, to live above and beyond the limitations of this finite, bounded, natural realm. And if we succeed in learning what God is teaching, we automatically become human beings living supernatural lives. We experience eternal life, even while we are still on this earth, and when we die, it is merely a continuation of our victorious story.
