Texas megachurch Pastor Ed Young Jr. shared five
things based on the Bible that can help a Christian
understand what heaven is all about. The message
was titled, “What in the Heaven is Going On?”
“Everybody wants to know about heaven, and
everybody wants to go to heaven,” Young, who
leads Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, said
as he began the sermon.
However, most of us think about heaven as a
folklore rather than a fact, he told the congregation,
adding that the enemy wants to keep us in the dark
about heaven.
“The Bible gives us just enough information about
heaven,” Young said. “Heaven is a real place.
Heaven is a place of outrageous and contagious
joy. Heaven is a place where we will be with Jesus.
Heaven is a place where we’ll continue our purpose
forever and ever.”
The pastor added, “If you’re wrong about heaven,
you are really, really, really wrong.”
He quoted Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has also set
eternity in the human heart.” But the choice is ours,
whether we choose heaven or hell, the pastor
underlined.
Young then read Hebrews 11:13, 16, “All these
people were still living by faith when they died.
They did not receive the things promised; they only
saw them and welcomed them from a distance,
admitting that they were foreigners and strangers
on earth. … Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not
ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared
a city for them.”
The heaven is not going to be boring or
predictable, he said. “It’s going to be joyful, joy
unspeakable.”
He then shared five things about heaven.
One, the location of heaven.
Heaven is a real place, a tangible town, he said. “It’s
much closer than you think.” Heaven is not some
far off place, “it’s close.”
The pastor quoted John 14:2, “My Father’s house
has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have
told you that I am going there to prepare a place
for you?”
The word “heaven” is mentioned in the Bible about
582 times in some translations, he told the
congregation, and added, we’ll have new
resurrected bodies in heaven.
Two, the population of heaven.
Heaven is going to be a big place, Young said, and
read Revelation 7:9, “After this I looked, and there
before me was a great multitude that no one could
count, from every nation, tribe, people and
language, standing before the throne and before
the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands”
Worship will be a huge thing in heaven, but
worship is not just singing, the pastor clarified.
“Worship is everything we do, say, touch and feel.
As a believer, you don’t come to Fellowship to
worship; you come worshipping… So everything
we do in heaven will be an act of worship.”
Three, the occupation of heaven.
What will we do in heaven? Whatever we like to do
here on earth, be it writing or creating or building,
we’ll perhaps do the same in perfection in heaven,
Young said, and quoted Genesis 2:15, “The Lord
God took the man and put him in the Garden of
Eden to work it and take care of it.”
God gave work before sin entered the world, the
pastor said. God is a working God. “We are made to
accomplish things, we are made to have goals.”
Young also read John 5:17, “In his defense Jesus
said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this
very day, and I too am working.'”Will people recognize me in heaven? “Yes,” the
pastor answered.
Four, the communication, or the community, or
connectivity, of heaven.
The pastor read 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17, “For the
Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a
loud command, with the voice of the archangel and
with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ
will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and
are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be
with the Lord forever.”
As Matthew chapter 22 says we should love God
holistically and love others as ourselves, that’s what
we’ll be doing in heaven forever and ever, he
explained. “We will be reunited with the loved
ones.”
Five, the situation of heaven.
The situation of heaven is that if we are right on
heaven, “we are very, very, very right,” Pastor
Young said, and quoted John 14:6, “Jesus
answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.'”
We live here but our citizenship is in heaven, the
pastor said. “Heaven is an amazing place… It’s full
of grace.”
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