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and what we will be has not yet been made known.  But we know that when he

appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

 

The first thing that we will say about heaven is that we will be with Christ, and our glorified bodies will be like His.  This brings us to the miracle of the Incarnation which is not so much that the divine stooped so low as to become human, but that the human has now been brought so high as to be made divine.

 

St. Paul writes in 1 Cor. 15:49: “And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.”

 

The second point that we know ties closely with this.  We will be delivered from the earthly body and its lower nature that is corrupted with sin and draws us into so many evils and sufferings.  Again from 1 Cor.: “The body that is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

 

Thirdly, heaven will be a place entirely separated from the society of wicked and evil-disposed persons.  No more injury to the one righteous in Christ and who is led to live to the glory of Christ.  Revelations proclaims this truth without any qualification:

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars--their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.”

And Again:

“Nothing impure will ever enter it, not will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

 

Fourthly, everything upon this earth is inconstant and forever changing--nothing is capable of completely and constantly satisfying our expectations and desires.  But in the world to come, it will be different.  The joy of the saints will continue without interruption or change, without fear or termination, and we will never tire of our experiences.

 

Heaven as a place is sometimes called the third heaven.  For heaven in the Hebrew could mean the place of atmosphere where the birds fly.  Heaven could also designate the spans with all the stars.  But the heaven that Christ has prepared for the human race is beyond all this, hence “a third heaven,” even far greater than the entire physical universe.

 

Heaven is paradise.  The winged cherubim no longer holds out the departed soul,

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