Paradise

Today, you will be with me in Paradise.

Today: no waiting around until the end of the age, no soul sleep, today you will enter Paradise. Today.

You: You will be you in heaven. Not a strange caricature of you but really you. Not some floating fuzzy thing but you. Really you. All that makes you a great person, a funny, thoughtful, delightful person to be around. The you that very few people know because sin keeps getting in the way. You, if you had been raised in a different home, you if you had made better choices, you, if you had not met that evil person, you, with all your potential for greatness. You will be with me.

You with Me: The source of all love and light and joy. With me.

In Paradise. There are two places that go by the name Paradise in the Bible. There is the Garden of Eden and there is Heaven. And the first is the shadow of the second.

The Garden of Eden is called Paradise. I have been often been asked in my ministry to locate the Garden of Eden. Where was it? The Bible says in Genesis 2 that there were four rivers that flowed through this Paradise – the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates. We have only retained the names of the last two into modern times – the Tigris and the Euphrates. What about the other two rivers? Bible scholars are making an educated guess when they suggest that the other rivers are the Nile and the Indus. So, what are we talking about when we say Garden of Eden? That great swath of land from Central Africa around the Fertile Crescent through the Holy Land and all the way to the heartland of India.

The Garden of Eden was immense. This was not some little English Garden. This is a huge land mass. The Bible says that it was filled with riches. With gold. It was filled with wonderful fauna and flora. Historians tell us that three of the four great ancient civilizations were found right in this area: The Egyptian, the Mesopotamian, and the Indus.

The Garden of Eden was a fabulous place but it was only a shadow of things to come. The Bible says in Hebrews 5 that all these wonderful things in the Old Testament are a shadow of the heavenly. 400 years before Christ Plato talked the same way. If there is something great in this life it is but a shadow of the real world.

Once in a while I have fun taking a picture of the shadow of Muriel and myself walking down the street. You can tell we are people. You can tell one is taller than the other. You can sort of tell that one is a man and the other is a woman. But the colour is gray or black and it is two dimensional. It’s not really us.

That is the way it is of so many things we now enjoy. As C. S. Lewis said: we live in the Shadowlands. So many things we enjoy here on earth are but a shadow of things to come.

What is it that gives you great joy in life? Travel? Pets? Sex? Food? Music? Art? Time spent with Friends and Family?

If you think these things are great now wait until you get to Paradise. The Paradise Jesus spoke about from the Cross. Let me close by picking out just two and show you how much more wonderful they will be in heaven.