Heaven

A Healthy Church: The Word of God

Jeffrey Stivason
Oct 10, 2017
The book of Revelation can be thrilling. Not because of the charts and timelines often concocted to parse out the unknowable date of Christ’s return. No, it’s marvelous because it is filled with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But let me tell you what else it has going for it besides the fact that it...

Luther and Calvin's Quiet Discussions in Heaven

Nick Batzig
May 4, 2017
Those who cherish the Reformation have often sought out what, if any, influence Martin Luther may have had on John Calvin. Did the two Reformers ever meet in person? Was Calvin influenced by the writings or ministry of "the Initiator" of the Reformation? Did he ever rely on the writing of Luther in...

No Little Women: Know What We’ve Got Before She’s Gone

Grant Van Leuven
Feb 3, 2017
Jennifer Marie, my dear wife, died on the fourteenth of September last year. [1] She was thirty-eight. We had barely made it to our eighteenth wedding celebration the month before. Our four young covenant children prepared and served us a special meal that she could eat. We dined together beneath...

A God Thing

David Garner
Nov 15, 2016
Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...

The Vigils We Keep

Pierce Hibbs
Oct 14, 2016
I always see the fresh flowers, hanging by the roadside in the fleeting dark of the morning—mostly red and white roses. They raise and lower their heads with each passing car as if to keep the time for us. The picture, too, they have replaced—a boy no more than sixteen, wearing a yellow and green-...

The Missing Message

Nick Batzig
Sep 28, 2016
While preparing talks for a forthcoming Reformation Conference, I happened across Heiko Oberman's outstanding 1961 Theology Today lecture, " Preaching and the Word in the Reformation ," in which he set down what he believed to have been the three most important aspects of the preaching among the...

Have More Heaven on Earth with Jesus to Prepare to Leave Earth for Jesus

Grant Van Leuven
Sep 15, 2016
Let us meditate on what Jesus said to the thief next to Him on the cross, as recorded in Luke 23:43: “Verily … Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise”. [1] In union with Christ by faith, we will go immediately to a blissful place upon our death. We will leave this world of sin and misery behind us...

Lay up Treasures (i.e. People) in Heaven

Mark Jones
Dec 29, 2015
Soon many will begin re-reading the Bible from cover-to-cover throughout the year. This is a practice I heartily commend. But there's another practice that has been immensely beneficial to me as I've read portions of God's word in recent times. As I read the various commands Christ gave to his...

Chapter 33.2

Scott Oliphint
Sep 4, 2013
ii. The end of God's appointing this day is for the manifestation of the glory of His mercy, in the eternal salvation of the elect; and of His justice, in the damnation of the reprobate, who are wicked and disobedient. For then shall the righteous go into everlasting life, and receive that fullness...

Chapter 32

Jeffrey Jue
Aug 26, 2013
i. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect of holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where...