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Amazing Facts

Heaven

Joe Crews

Heaven Part 1

Heaven Part 2

Heaven Part 3

The government welfare program is meeting unexpected opposition.

Hundreds of complaints have been made against the administration of welfare funds.

The program is faltering in many areas, but another plan soon to go into operation will completely eliminate all poverty, and it won't cost the government a single penny.

I'll be back in a moment with the amazing facts.

Music Hello, this is Joe Cruz and the Amazing Facts Broadcast, facts which affect you.

You know, friends, it has been determined that the words heaven, mother, and home have the strongest emotional appeal in the English language, and of course we can understand why.

Our own heart strings have been tugged by those terms over and over again.

Rarely, if ever, do we meet an individual who has no desire to go to heaven, And the only reason anyone feels that way is that he does not really have any true understanding of what heaven is like.

It's not a vague, immaterial dream world.

It's a real place that will be inhabited by real people with real bodies.

The final reward of the righteous will be on this earth, renewed and restored to absolute perfection just as it was in the Garden of Eden.

Conditions in this sinless world of the future will be idealistically happy.

Now perhaps the most common misconception that people have about heaven is this oft-repeated question, will we know each other there?

Now listen, all defects will be left behind when we go there.

In Isaiah 35, verses 5 and 6, we have this beautiful promise, Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Then shall the lame man, lepers in heart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.

For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

Oh yes, 1 of the joys will be to hear voices on every side saying, I can see again, I can hear, and I am strong.

You see, friends, all the infirmities of old age will disappear forever and ever, and we will see only the bloom of eternal youth.

Every mind will be keen and alert, and we shall know even as we are known, the Bible says.

We will recognize each other perfectly there.

We will be able to spend an eternity in the presence of our loved ones, knowing them and appreciating them as we never have been able to do in this world.

I know over in India I saw the poor people there crawling around sometimes like animals with crippled bodies, twisted in mind, leprous, blind, but in that city of God, friends, we will see nothing like that.

The Bible says they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

It would take a long time to see just the holy city itself, and then to be able to see the entire new earth.

Ah, we'll spend years and years as we reckon time, and then to go out and visit those unnumbered worlds and God's great universe.

We'll never be able to finish that throughout all eternity.

We can go wherever we like, stay as long as we please, and go as quick as a flash.

Is anything more wonderful to contemplate than that?

Now, maybe you are interested in people as I am.

Have you ever thought of the joy of getting acquainted with folks you have read about in the Bible.

I have 1 book in my library which tries to explain on a natural basis how Noah got all those animals into the ark.

Well, I can't quite understand the man who tries to explain it, but I would like to sit down with Noah someday and talk to him about that, wouldn't you?

And that's what we will be doing some day.

We will be able to ask him about it and find out just how he did get those animals in and how they stayed there for 5 long months.

And then I have thought about Abraham so often and that terrible day when he took his own son, his only son, at the order of God to kill him there on top of Mount Moriah.

Oh, what a tremendous experience that must have been for Abraham.

I have tried to imagine what that father felt as he toiled up the side of that mountain knowing that with his own hand he had to kill that beloved son.

Someday I am going to ask Abraham about that experience and he is going to explain to me just what it meant when he was about to do that deed.

Wouldn't you like to ask him about the lion's den?

You know Daniel was about 80 years old when he was put into that lion's den.

Sometimes we see him pictured as a young man standing down among the lions or kneeling there in prayer, but he was really 80 years old at that time.

I'd like to ask him about that experience.

I visited Babylon and looked down into the pit where those lions were.

At least they told me that was the right place.

I'll find out someday for sure because I'll ask Daniel about it.

What an interesting conversation that will be.

Then I'd like to talk with the centurion who stood by and saw Jesus crucified, the 1 who said, truly this was the Son of God.

I'd like to know more about the details of that terrible day, wouldn't you, friends?

And you mothers, wouldn't you like to talk with Mary?

Why, 30 years of Jesus' life we know nothing about.

Wouldn't you like to ask Mary about Jesus as a child and a youth?

It will be a thrilling thing for every mother, I am sure.

I wish I could speak the language of heaven so that we could see the true picture today, but we will never understand it as it really is, not until we get there.

In 1 Corinthians 2, 9 we are told as much.

Paul writes there, I hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered in the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

Now friends, to me that is a promise without parallel.

There is nothing like it in all the Bible.

When it says that I have never seen anything, that's great enough because I have seen some wonderful, wonderful things in this world.

I have visited many countries and have seen things that I felt to be absolutely unsurpassed.

I have seen the beautiful mountains of Switzerland and the lovely tulip gardens of Holland, but heaven will be immeasurably better than anything I have ever seen.

And then it even says that we have never heard anything like it.

Now I have heard about things that I have never seen.

Some of my friends went up into the Vale of Kashmir over the great passes of the Himalaya Mountains.

I wanted to go, but I never got a vacation that was convenient, and I never did get back there, but they tell me it is just like heaven in those beautiful valleys.

I had some more friends in Pakistan who went out into the Shangri-La country of Hunza and they told me about those placid lakes and beautiful mountains.

But listen, the Bible says we have never heard about anything that will give us even the faintest idea of what heaven is really like.

And then it goes on to say that we have never even imagined the true beauty of it.

It hasn't even entered into the heart of man.

Now listen, I have a fertile imagination and I can imagine things that are just out of this world.

But still the Bible says that it won't even begin to approach the beauty and glory of heaven.

And 1 of the most pleasing aspects of all is that that city of God is going to be a clean city.

Let's look at Revelation 21, 27, And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Less than not a single thing will be there to defile it or corrupt it.

I was born in North Carolina and grew up there, and I lived close to a large city there with its rancid smell of tobacco.

Every time we went into town we had to endure that terrible odor of stale tobacco.

I had to work in the filthy stuff until I went away to college, and I said I would never again live in a place where I had to endure that smell.

But then we were called to India as missionaries, and we rented a home there on a certain street in Bangalore, India.

Now there was a big red brick wall right across the street from the house that we rented, and on the second day I found out what was behind that wall.

It was a tobacco factory, and I had to smell that stuff for about 2 more years while living on that street in India.

But listen, friends, some of these days we are going to live in the New Jerusalem, and there will be no more smell of tobacco or anything else that defileth, not through all eternity.

No tobacco butts on the street, No 1 who uses it even will be there, because nothing that defiles can go into that city.

Defiling the body, defiling the air, defiling the streets, all of that will be unknown in God's great Sky City.

Some time ago I talked with a man who was dying of lung cancer and he was still puffing on that poisonous weed.

He loved smoking more than he loved life.

You know, some people do love smoking more than they actually love life, and they even love it more than eternal life.

Now it is hard for me to understand and believe that a person's willing to cut 10 or 20 years off his life, even here in this old sin-cursed world.

But to think of a person who's willing to cut a million years or more in God's perfect paradise, Oh, I really can't understand that.

No, friends, nothing will go in that city that defiles.

Recently I visited a dear lady in a general hospital ward, and she said, you know, I long to get out of this place.

You would be amazed at the filth of language I have to listen to in this ward.

She said, the obscene talk and laughter that goes on here is terrible, and I'll be so glad to get out.

Oh, friends, heaven will be a place where there is no crudity, No cursing, no smoking, no drinking.

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Series

Heaven

Heaven Part 3

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Parent Series

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