Are God and Heaven Real?
August 29, 2022
What is your current belief of God? Does God exist? Are you an atheist? Are you agnostic? Are you a theist? If you're an atheist and you believe that nothing exists beyond this life and you're wrong, what are the best and worst outcomes? Have you looked into Pascal's Wager? Forget that Blaise Pascal was a Christian for a moment. This wager supports the belief in God(s) who can sentence rewards or punishments for as long as eternity. Suppose that God is loving and merciful and doesn't sentence eternal damnation. It's still possible that the sentence for punishment exceeds our lifespan spent on earth. Hence, it's more rational lead our lives in a manner that is "straight and narrow." Such a life would be in alignment with the Creator's call to righteousness.
If we merely believe that an entity or object doesn't exist, is our belief justified? Does the entity or object in question simply not exist based on our belief?
Unforunately, God's existence and heaven's existence are independent of our beliefs. God exists whether we believe in Him or not and heaven exists whether we believe in it or not.
Thomas Aquinas is the author of The Five Ways in philosophy of religion. In the cosmological argument for divine existence consists of the first three of five arguments: God is the prime mover, the first cause of all efficient causes, and the necessary being.
Check out Don Piper's 90 Minutes in Heaven. Though the book only briefly discusses his experience in heaven, it's still a powerful testimony because Don Piper was pronounced dead for 90 minutes.
Check out Heaven is for Real on book, streaming, or DVD. Anyone parent who can remember their child's imagination at the age of four would agree that Colton Burpo couldn't fabricate his experience in heaven. In the interview above, Colton described that heaven felt like home to him. I personally believe that all of us would feel exactly the same way, if we were given the opportunity to experience heaven--that it would feel like home.
Realizing that God and heaven exist allows us to fully recognize that the entirety of our lives is "borrowed time." We've been given a chance at life. Why we're here and how we're to spend our time building the kingdom of heaven is a quest for each of us to answer at the individual level. The purpose as to why may be unclear at this point, but as we take the time to find meaning and purpose we inch closer to determining how we can spend our limited time here to help build the kingdom of heaven.