Moses, maybe?

So, what would you like to do?

If you were given the choice of anything you’d like to do in heaven, other than the highly-desirable “spend time with Jesus,” that is? (Everyone would choose that, I suspect, and there’s every opportunity to do just that. Worship, learn from, love on, gaze at, adore the one whose life and death enables us to be there.)

I don’t post as many articles these days as I once did, not because I quit being interested, but because there was just so much that was – maybe mind-boggling, maybe boring, maybe unbelievable – to readers.

But this is a question I’d like to ask you: What would YOU like to do?

Eternity is a long, long time, but it’s useful time. Fritter away some of it, floating around on a cloud? Sure, if that’s what you want to do. Why not?

While you’re at it, rest, meditate, worship, relax, sight-see, explore, all on a cloud. Or chat with someone, catch up on happenings elsewhere, visit people, places and things – lots to do, lots of time to do them. Really.

Then there’s learning, teaching, reading, writing, working in a laboratory (science, space, medical, many different kinds), inventing, experimenting, trying out new things, new kinds of activities and work.

Team work, individual work, and play – enjoyable fellowship and activities with friends new and old, relatives you knew and some you only knew of, before.

One thing I’d like to do is sit down and talk with Moses. Discover his unique personality, his likes and dislikes, his interests. Maybe not the kinds of information other folks would want to know…

I’d ask him, What was life like as a boy? A young man? A fugitive? How did he wind up working for that foreign priest? Marrying the priest’s daughter?

Did he always know about Jehovah God? What was the worship like, working for that Midianite priest? How did he feel about going back to Egypt?

His wife, I’d like to interview her too – what was it like, growing up as one of seven girls in her household? Marrying a foreigner? How did she feel about Moses returning to Egypt? I can think of dozens of questions for her.

Moses, I’d ask, how is life here in heaven, compared to what life was like for you back on earth? Adapting to the different cultures across generations here, how is that? Not just across generations, across thousands of years, but across continents? What is that like?

You see, Moses doesn’t just exist in heaven, he’s very busy interacting with people from every age, teaching, mentoring, explaining, describing. Being interrupted by nosy newcomers.

I think that’s what I would like to do. Meet some people. Listening and learning from them, asking questions and trying to get an understanding of the answers – leading to even more questions. I bet that would take quite a while. But then, eternity is certainly long enough.

Maybe I would pick Moses to start with, but later on maybe Abraham? Or Sara? Adam? Or Luke?

After that, I think I’d like to explore all the learning labs in heaven. Those are so fascinating to me. Libraries, museums, archives, concert halls, universities, workshops, holographic laboratories, anything and everything you’d ever want to know, with the Lord right there to help you, whisper in your ear – “Psst, come look at this!”

Of course I’d also investigate what jobs there might be to do. Do one for a time, then another. Invent a musical instrument. “Discover” a new material, or a new medicine. Science. Explore outer space. Nuclear physics. Art. Transmit data across space, across dimensions.

But first – go talk to Moses.

Daddy’s House

Thinking about heaven again the other night, I asked the Lord to show me something about himself in heaven. Throne room, habitation, something. Where in heaven do you stay most of the time, I wondered? And in what form?

I was remembering my own and other people’s accounts of majestic throne rooms, powerful angels and worship music.

Office, the Lord said. That’s more like my official office, not official residence.

He then showed me an ordinary looking house with the front door standing open, and invited me to go inside. There was an ordinary living room, with sofas and chairs and end tables. Welcome to my house, he said, and I realized that he looked sort of ordinary too. Sort of…

Father? I asked him, wanting to be sure it was really him. This doesn’t look like any palace, or castle, or throne room for a sovereign king, I said. It looks too — ordinary.

He just nodded, smiled and said, Um hm. Not what you visualized, is it?

No, it sure isn’t, I replied. I continued to glance around as he invited me to sit down across from him.

He didn’t say anything else for a moment, just leaned back and let me get comfortable, feel the warmth of the place, the welcoming, comforting, cosiness of it.

If you were visiting your grandparents, how would you approach it? he asked me. Would you knock on the front door, ring a doorbell and wait for someone to come to the door?

I thought about that.

No, I said, I’d just open the door and walk on in, maybe call out Anybody home? If I didn’t see Mimi I’d walk on through to the kitchen looking for her. She’d probably ask if I wanted something to eat, tell me there was a cake or pie, biscuits or something in the cupboard and to go rummage for myself.

He nodded in agreement. Would you hesitate to do all that? If it was your grandparents’ house?

No, I’d feel I was welcome to treat the place like it was my own home, and that’s what I would do.

Yes. And that’s how you should treat my house here, too, the Lord said. You’re welcome any time, the door is open, just come on in and make yourself at home.

He continued, if your granddaddy was sitting in his rocking chair, how would you approach him?

I didn’t even have to think about it. I’d go sit on his lap, give him a hug and kiss his cheek or something. He’d hug me back, maybe dig in his pocket for a quarter or a dime and hand it to me with a twinkle in his eye.

Well, that’s just how you should approach me, the Lord said. This is my house and it’s your house, come in and get comfortable, feel just as welcome here as you felt there.

Wow, this sure is a different way to look at heaven, I thought. A wonderfully different way. I could almost feel his strong arm circling my shoulder, his hand patting my arm like granddaddy used to do, as I drifted off to sleep.

Weapons

This is a post from 2010… as I re-read it today, I realized it needed a little background. For several years after Tim died, I had detailed discussions with the Lord in my prayer time about heaven. What it’s like. Where it is. What goes on there. I wrote the following after one such prayer session.

Joshua was a warrior. He spent many years with Moses, serving first as his aide de camp and eventually named as his successor.

Although serving in several roles, Joshua was primarily a soldier.  And more than a soldier, a warrior.

During their days in the desert in what today is Jordan, Joshua was training men for the battle ahead. He had to hand-pick the best, teach them how to fight and how to use their weapons. He was well aware that as soon as Israel crossed the Jordan River, they would be in enemy territory.

“About forty thousand armed for battle crossed over before the Lord to the plains of Jericho for war.” (Joshua 4:13 NIV) Joshua’s first major target was to be Jericho, a fiercely guarded walled city.

“Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” (Josh. 5:13-14 NIV) The Lord’s commander; captain of the Lord’s hosts, it says in the King James version.

He was there to give Joshua first an intelligence briefing, then his battle orders. (Those instructions may sound a little strange to us, marching around walls, but that’s what they were: battle orders.)

Who was he? An angel? Michael or one of his subordinates? Perhaps Jesus himself? We’re not told. But we are told that war, warriors and warfare were part of his mission on earth.

I was thinking about all this one evening and the fact that the scriptures describe another battle looming in Israel and probably other places in the middle east, in the not too distant future. Who will be trained well enough to fight and win in that war, I wondered? Most of the believers I know certainly aren’t.

The Lord began to answer that question by showing me an activity going on in heaven. Combat training. Arm to arm combat. Physical, mental, emotional – and spiritual – training. Weapons. Armor.

I thought at first I was dead wrong about what I saw. That simply could not be heaven, it had to be some sort of hallucination, a mistake. But it wasn’t. The Holy Spirit took me to several scriptures about the battles ahead, and explained in some detail what I was seeing.

Many believers will still be here on earth when that war needs to be fought. Untrained, ill-equipped believers who don’t know one end of a rifle from the other. They won’t know how to defend themselves, much less fight an enemy soldier. Like the children of Israel facing the Jordan River, most of them aren’t warriors.

But they aren’t called to be.

Out of a million or more, only forty thousand were called to be. They were chosen, trained, equipped and ready. And in the coming warfare, God’s warriors will be ready. They will be returning to earth with Jesus, fully trained and equipped. (See Revelation 17:14, 19:19)

Right now they are going through that training period.  I watched some of the training. I saw some of the weapons, both material and spiritual. I have never seen anything on earth exactly like them – not in any of those action and adventure and spy movies I’ve watched for years.

The Holy Spirit explained how some of them worked and how some are already working here on earth. Not technically weapons, some are designed to gather information, such as three-dimensional cameras that can see around solid objects. Invisibility cloaks for people and machines. I actually saw a news video about that one several months ago, being tested here on earth.

Not everyone in heaven is assigned to be trained as a fighter. Some are assigned to be designers of weapons, inventors or engineers or scientists. Or writers, composers, artists or musicians. But warriors will certainly be needed, and so some are chosen and taught how to be.

I am understanding more and more what heaven is like, and what it’s for. Worship. Work. And training for warfare.