One thing new believers have in common with those who have
been Christians a long time is wondering what heaven will
be like. While the Lord has given us some wonderful clues,
He has not revealed His entire plan to us. In fact, as the
Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:9, heaven will consist
of:
"Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard,
and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God
has prepared for those who love Him."
One question frequently asked is "Will I see my loved
ones in heaven?" The answer to this question is an unequivocal
yes, if the loved one who has died knew Jesus Christ as his
or her personal Savior here on Earth in this part of life.
Jesus gave us insight into this when He spoke of the historical
account of the rich man and Lazarus (see Luke 16:20). We know
this story is historical because Jesus never used proper names
in His parables. Lazarus, though he had been a beggar and
ill all of his life, had trusted God and was therefore allowed
into paradise or Abraham's Bosom. The rich man had ignored
God and Lazarus during his life, so he was confined to a place
called torments where the damned are sent to await their final
judgment when they will be sent to the lake of fire. The rich
man was in agony but he still retained memory of his earthly
siblings and asked Abraham (who he could see in heaven but
could not approach because of some gulf, perhaps like an unseen
force field that separated them, but which still allowed them
to see and speak to each other) to send Lazarus back from
the dead to warn his brothers about the torment that awaited
them. This shows that even in hell we do not lose our memories
of our earthly family. The rich man also recognized Lazarus
whom he had known back on earth.
We are given a promise in Philippians 3:20-21 where we are
told "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we
eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under
His ontrol, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will
be like His glorious body." This means that
we can expect to have the same thing happen to our physical
bodies that Jesus had happen to His. Both should contain similar
properties. If His body was raised with the same facial and
distinguishable features He had before His death, we can likewise
expect to be "like His glorious body" recognizable
as ourselves so we could continue to know and fellowship with
our loved ones. This would only make sense as God is the ultimate
Defender of truly loving relationships that are based in His
precious promises.
The Gospels teach that the resurrected Jesus was recognized
by the disciples on many occasions and even allowed them to
touch His body. This enabled them to give sensory verification
to the fact it was truly Jesus and not a ghost or someone
else. Over 500 people saw Him after He was raised from the
dead. These were contemporaries of Jesus who would have been
in a position to have seen Him before with their own eyes
and could tell if He was the same person they had known previous
to the crucifixion. Many of these eyewitnesses would later
give their lives for the sake of bearing witness to the fact
that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. If we are going
to be like Him in the resurrection we can also expect to be
recognized by those who love us.
We must remember that it was God Who created the RNA and
DNA Helix codes that gives all human beings a distinctive
set of chromosomes so that none of us ven have the same fingerprints!
Each of these genetic combinations can be reduced to a mathematical
formula that is certainly stored in the memory of the God
Who created them in the first place. The curse of death and
disease will be removed when He resurrects those that belong
to Him. In this process the identity of His loved ones will
most certainly be preserved since He made sure that each one
was totally unique and identifiable to begin with!
In chapter 14 of John's Gospel, Jesus promised:
"Let not your heart be troubled; believe in
God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling
places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go
to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that
where I am there you may be also."
Likewise, Paul states in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18:
"But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren,
about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do
the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died
and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who
have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the
word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until
the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen
asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with
a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet
of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who
are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them
in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall
always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with
these words."
The testimony of Paul, and of Jesus, our Lord is clear. We
will be joyfully reunited with our loved ones in eternity
if they died believing in the Gospel. We will be reunited
with them in heaven at our death, or on the way to Heaven
if we see the translation or rapture of the saints. We will
all be present at the resurrection of the dead where we receive
a glorified physical body such as Jesus now has. With those
bodies we will never grow tired or become ill. We will be
enabled to enjoy the new heavens and the new earth the Bible
tells us God will create. Never let anyone else tell you otherwise
as some will attempt to deprive you of this, our great hope.
We can be certain of our destiny because it is based on the
sure promises of our God Who cannot lie! As believers we live
"in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot
lie, promised before the world began!" (Titus
1:2)
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