Post #62: Heaven a Tool for Evangelism

Here is my communication with a high school classmate who recently read Heaven Is Beyond Imagination after our 65^th reunion.

Peggy: I have read every page of the book you gave me at the 65th reunion.  I sure enjoyed reading it and although husband John hasn’t done so yet I hope he will soon.  I sure hope my name is in God’s book and I get to be with you in Heaven!!  I will try real hard to be a good person.  I say my prayers each night and each morning. Hope you enjoyed the reunion.
Again Thanks very much for thinking of me!!
Peggy 

Me: Thanks Peggy. I am glad you enjoyed the book. As to your name being in the Book of Life, all you need to do for that is to admit that you have not kept all of God’s commandments and have not always put Him first. And then recognize while you are not qualified to be in the Book of Life, Jesus took your place and died for you carrying all your sins on himself. You cannot make yourself clean enough for heaven, but Jesus paid your penalty for you and so you are freed from the guilt of all your sins. When you accept Jesus’ gift on your behalf, angels wipe the record of all your sins from your records in God’s archives, so that after that God cannot find anything wrong with you. He sees the Jesus in you instead of the old sinful Peggy that was there. The Holy Spirit in you after that will enable you to be good; your entrance into heaven is completely a gift from Jesus not anything you have earned by your “goodness”. You can’t earn it no matter how good you are. 

So tell me if or when you have thanked Jesus for taking your place, freeing you from all your sins. And then I will look forward to celebrating with you Jesus’ victory in His glorious new world you have read all about.

Peggy: I have thanked Jesus for taking my place and I look forward to seeing you in heaven.  John says he has already done as you said to do when he was in hospital and almost died said he talked to God.  He said “he would tell me all about it one of these days.” I agree he sure has changed and he tries to take care of me and be a better man since that time in the hospital.  Thank you Buster lets stay in touch. He just said “I’m not afraid of dying, use to be but not any more.”  He said he will tell me more what happened soon.
Peggy

Me: Thank you Peggy. That is all very good news. John’s attitude is what happens when we let Jesus be in charge. Jesus will be giving you that attitude also as your relationship with Him grows. After I accepted Jesus 65 years ago, my life started changing. As I read the gospels, they were a lot clearer to me than they had been before. My prayers were talking to someone with whom I had a relationship rather than to an unknown God I believed in. Instead of “doing a good deed daily” as a good Boy Scout, I began treating people with love that came from the new Spirit within me. Heaven begins now, not after we die. Death is just a graduation ceremony in which our relationship with Jesus just becomes total with all the worldly problems removed. Our relationship with Him now just carries over into our new life in the spirit. One of the witnesses in my book saw that his entry in the Book of Life gave the date life began (the day of conception, not the day of birth) and the date he was born again. He asked about the date he died and the angel told him that after being born again we will never die. As followers of Jesus we will never die. If something ends our physical life, we are just released into the fullness of our life forever. Everyone in my book found physical death to be an easy transition, and in fact they felt more alive than they ever did before their physical death. Jesus told us not to fear those who can only kill the body but the one who can cast body and soul into the fire of hell. All these testimonies confirm that we have no fear of death. It will just be a glorious graduation in our life with Jesus.

I think you are ready for John to tell you more of his story. That will be your story too from now on.