<3

There is somebody up there for everyone. -Miss HB Quek (religious status on facebook)

Without a doubt, heaven is real to all Christians. Jesus mentioned the existence of heaven many times. He promised paradise to a sinner who was crucified together with him. Heaven is also a place promised for us as long as we finish our race on earth. So called the afterlife, heaven assures us that there is a life after death.

As a child, I remember wanting to know more about heaven. The first person who told me that heaven exist was not my mother. I grew up as one of those kids who never get to see my mom during the day, and slept by night before she comes home.  Thus I was really close to this babysitter who was sacked by my mother because I was too close to her. She was a muslim. I remember following each and every step while she performs her “solat” rituals. She had to do that like three or four times a day while I was just a curious little kid. After she prayed and if I didn’t have any more lessons (all indo kids attends all kinds of classes when they were young, they called it ‘les’), she would draw me heaven and hell on a white board. She would tell me how wonderful heaven was and how scary hell was, with fire and all sort of scary monsters. She used to tell me that if I was a good kid, and if I obey her and never breathe a lie, I will surely go to heaven. If I was to be a naughty kid, hell is the place for me where I’ll keep burning but I will not die.

Using the heaven and hell theory, she terrorizes me a lot. She’ll say stuffs like..if you don’t come down now, you’ll go to hell. One fine day, I came up with my own theory. Being a kid who’s afraid of nothing but death, I thought how bad could hell be? I will be burning but I will not die.

But hey, not dying is better than dying after all right? – that is in the opinion of a shit kid.

Besides praying every night before I went to sleep, and before every examination, I didn’t really pay much attention to the details of the bible when I was younger.  I make it a point to avoid reading revelations as much as I can. John not only described his visions in too much details, he also make things a little bit more complicated for me to understand. Like how there were beast with several horns and heads, I’m not really sure if he’s describing them metaphorically.

Again, I’ll never know. Not until when it really happens.

All I believe in is that all these will come to past. God will come, and satan is bound to doom. Then there will be a new heaven and a new earth. Heaven is a wonderful place where all the good people shall go, and yes, the ‘saved’ ones shall be there. As described in Revelation 21, heaven is a beautiful place with no grief, no sorrows or tears. We will all be with God forever. That is as much as we know about heaven from the bible. However, afterlife is not all peachy and flowery. When there’s heaven, there will be hell for the unsaved and rebels. They will be thrown to the ‘lake of fire’ along with satan and his fallen angels. This is the part where it is important for me to carry my faith all the way. I do not fully comprehend how a merciful and almighty God who humbled himself to become a human just like us could bear to throw his children into this scary lake of fire.

Being a terrorist when I was a child, trust me, I’ve done things that would make me kill my daughter if she was to do the same thing. The furthest my dad would go was to slap me. True enough, some people deserve to die. They should burn in hell with satan and the rest of the fallen angels. How about those who were merely ignorant? He created all of us, including the prince of lies. He loves us all, of course including those who spat and mock him at the calvary. This is always something I can never be able to explain it to the non christians that I really care for. Is it because of his mercy that he allowed this world to continue being broken? Why hadn’t he eliminated the source of evil from the very start?

Once I told my dad that God might be way too merciful to eliminate the devil, cos after all, he is the maker of all things. He is the alpha and the omega, beginning and the end. He merely banished Adam and Eve when he implemented death as a consequence of disobedience. Hell might not be the only place for ‘unsaved’ people after all. Be prepared to be surprise! You might meet my anal, Taoist, boring, freaky, fierce, forever menopausal primary school Chinese teacher in heaven! My dad rebuked me at this. He thinks that if what I say could be a possibility, then shouldn’t we co-exist and live in harmony with the devil since we are both banished into this barren land? Why are we, christians, spending our lives fighting against satan and defending against all other religion?

Maybe I’m now ready to answer this question. What would you done if you’re put into the same room with another person who’s out there to hurt you all, who lies to you so that he get his way, who’s spreading lies about people you really care for, who lie and tell your friends that you are too worthless to be living on earth. Everyone else in the room is deceived by him, but you saw the light. You know the truths. You know that what he said wasn’t true. Don’t you want to fight against him and all these lies? Especially after you know that you are in authority to dismiss all these lies from your life, what would you have rather done?

As christians, we believe that the other Gods are the work of satan and his crew of fallen angels. Since men are deceived by these bunch of spiritual organization, most men are led to believe that there is somebody up there for everyone. Should these people be condemned? Say if all the God, Jesus and satan thing are all true, and these people rock up in heaven not knowing that they were true..should they be thrown to eternal flames?

I’m again reminded that God works hand in hand with illogical ideas. Despite that, we all knew that His plan is always to prosper you and to guide you; he has never intended to harm you. I’m led to believe that this will apply to the world’s biggest villains like SH and OBL.

I went to this Korean restaurant recently. The owner of the shop is a woman who had been saved for 2 years. I  identified her as a Christian because she had a picture of her pastor framed on the wall. When she realised that all of us were Christians as well, she started taking out books that were filled with miraculous healings. With every miracle shown on that Korean magazine, she referenced it to her pastor. It came across to me that she was too overly obsessed with her pastor. She told me that her church pastor was a very very brilliant man. The first name that occurred to me for a famous Korean pastor was Yonggi Cho. She defended her pastor’s name almost immediately saying that Yonggi choo is great but her pastor is even greater.

Later, I found out that she doesn’t attend church in Australia. The restaurant closes on Sunday because they have to “attend” their church service via life-stream all the way from Korea. Being a 2 years old Christian, she doesn’t believe that she have the authority in her to cast out sickness the way her pastor could. There’s a lot of things that we were unable to convince her, it seems like she only take direct advice from whom she believe to be the anointed one. She is very much convinced that God will listen to her prayers, but her prayers would be more effective if the Jaerock guy is to intercede for her.

Somehow, I believe that meeting this woman was not at all coincidental.

My friend asked her how she knew that God was the one and only true God out of all the other religion in this world. She is by far the first person who could answer this question more convincing than anyone else could. First, she started off giving her testimony and said that God is the only God who could heal COMPLETELY. Other religions may perform supernatural healing, however, God as the maker of all living creatures; he is able to heal completely, without scars or residue. Secondly, she was also involved in some kind of fortune telling in the past, and they were able to read her past. Again, these were supernatural reading sourced from some realm unknown to us, but these fortune telling were only able to predict her future from her past that she had already knew. Only God, the master plan of everything is able to prophecy about your future.

We left her restaurant not only with a filled stomach and a book she gave us, written by that Jaerock guy. The book talks about the inner details of heaven, which was the revelation that pastor dude got from God. It all seems overly fictitious with description of entertainments in heaven, food you would be eating and even your transformed body. It reminded me of another book I’ve read about 4 years ago, by another Korean writer called Thomas Choo. How do we know if all these description of the heaven is to be true? It’s nice to imagine the new Jerusalem with golf course, spa, Jacuzzi and even a tennis court and many more, but do we really need all these to assure us that heaven is indeed a wonderful place? What else can be the purpose of revealing heaven to us?  With some research, i knew that both writers did not seem to relate to each other. But they do have a common goal, which is to deliver the urgency and spread the news to the world that hell is as real as heaven, and the end time is near so we must spread the news. But if Paul was brought to heaven and was specifically told not to reveal what he saw, then what gives the authority for these two people to reveal the mysteries of heaven? Clouds automobile seem quite mary poppins right?

I for one, will not judge them. In case everything that that was written in the published book is going to be true, I shall not be condemned of insulting it. Both books are really interesting. Reading them as though they are another Harry Potter series does not seem so bad right? So yes, we prayed for discernment, after all it was warned beforehand against false prophets and all kinds of weird nonsense. This is what I gathered to conclude this really long post:

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so in love, knowing that I’m put here for the defence of the gospel. The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I’m in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. Philippians 1:15-18