A distracted driver crosses a line.  A doctor speaks a dreaded diagnosis.  A baby is born.  A random conversation with a stranger opens new doors.  An unlooked-for person appears in the frame of your life and brings decades of love and companionship.  In the blink of an eye, life can change radically.  We will all have ‘moments’ that indelibly alter the course of our lives, that derail or reroute the life we expected. 

Certainly, for the follower of Jesus, the defining moment is when the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit savingiy renews our will and draws us to Jesus.  The Bible speaks of this moment as a birth, a resurrection and new creation.  In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

But our life in Christ is always looking forward to another defining moment that lies perhaps beyond our earthly life and death.  A moment that throughout Scripture is offered as comfort and solace to God’s people of all ages.  The moment when the fullness of all God’s redemptive plan is finally accomplished and all things are made new.  What moment is this?  It is the moment we speak of every time we come to the Lord’s Table and hear the words, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

The return of Christ is the “blessed hope” of all believers.  Christ’s return will bring with it the renewal of all things; the resurrection of the dead, the judgement and the new heavens and the new earth.  It is the blink of an eye in which all things are made new. 

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15,

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

And again in 1 Thessalonians 4,

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye Christ will return.  It is the decisive moment for which all creation groans.  The Bible instructs believers to watch, wait and live expectantly, longing for Christ’s return.  Our mantra is to be maranatha or ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’   Is that your mantra?  Can you say with the Spirit and the Bride, ‘Come!’  Or is your cry, “not yet!”

How eager are you for the return of Christ?  How convinced are you that the day of His return will be the very best day, not a day of disaster?   Will the defining moment of your life be the “blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us?”

Join us as we examine 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and consider what it teaches about the return of Christ. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship. Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.

Gloomy, stark, uncomfortable.  Sometimes crowded. But almost always somber.  Time dragged on.  Minutes seemed like hours.  On top of the discomfort of the chairs and the dreariness of décor was piled the anxiety and uncertainty about what awaited me beyond the waiting room.

Dr. Remey’s office was painted in the dark earth tones of the early Seventies.  Even the pictures of circus animals on the walls were dark and foreboding.  It was not a place that sparked my childhood joy.  Especially since it would inevitably lead to a pasty, wooden tongue depressor and a shot in my arm.  

Few relish the thought of spending time in the waiting room.  And so, when we consider what theologians call the Intermediate State, the place where the souls of the dead await the return of Christ and the Resurrection, we must guard against thinking upon that existence as we think of the gloom of a waiting room.  For the believer in Christ death, awaiting the resurrection is not a shady, dreary half existence as the ancient Greeks believed.  Nor is it soul-sleep, annihilation, reincarnation or a second merit-based probationary period of purgatory.

While scripture speaks more fully of eternal life in the renovated New Heavens and Earth which follows the Resurrection and the Judgement, it does give us sufficient clarity about the present heaven to give us courage to face death and long for the life that immediately follows our death as we await the Resurrection. 

The present heaven is no mere waiting room for free-range souls, it is a place of conscious life, of perfect holiness and happiness, fellowship with Christ and with all those who have gone before and of restful, productive life.

Yet despite the sweetness of life in the present heaven, it is not our final home.  For the believer, the return of Christ and the resurrection and judgement ushers in even more glorious life in Immanuel’s land.  And so, the present heaven is still a place of longing and unwavering faith.  As the Westminster Confession describes it,

The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies;

Paul, writing to encourage the Corinthians, gives us some important insights into the blessings of the present heaven.

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…  So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. – 2 Corinthians 5:1, 8-9

What is the intermediate state, or the present heaven and hell?  Where are they?  What will believers and unbelievers experience?  When does this intermediate state end?  While Scripture does not answer all our questions, it does address these.

Join us as we examine 2 Corinthians 5:1-9 and what the Bible teaches about life immediately after death as we await the return of Christ and the resurrection. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Advances in medicine have given us many life sustaining treatments.  Many of the diseases and conditions that meant certain death a century ago are now routinely treated and imminently recoverable.  But along with these developments have also come ethical complications.  We now have medical technology that can sustain heartbeats and breath, when a patient might otherwise have died.  The sick and their families often must make hard decisions about advanced directives and “do not resuscitate orders.”  Or whether to seek live saving curative care versus comfort care.

With these capabilities have come questions about what it means to be dead.  It used to be straightforward.  If your heart stopped beating and you stopped breathing for two minutes, you were declared dead.  But with the ability to continue these artificially, health care providers have looked for other definitions such as the “cessation of all vital functions of the body including the heartbeat, brain activity (including the brain stem), and breathing.” 

But apart from the medical definition, man has always had deeper questions and concerns about death.  Man is quite aware of his soulfulness and recognizes instinctively that to be human is to exist in a unity of body and soul.  We can observe the physical dimensions of death in our earthly bodies, but is physical death the end of my existence?  If not, what is after death?  Can I prepare for death?  If so how?  Will I face annihilation or reincarnation?  How can I know what it will mean to be dead? 

Those who have experienced “near death experiences” speak of light and peace.  Ancient civilizations speculated on various ideas of the afterlife.  Atheists and materialists hold to a void of nothingness after death. And different Christian denominations hold a variety of views about what we experience after death.   But only the Bible gives us clarity about what death is and what it is not, what we will be and what we will experience.  And most importantly how we can prepare for what God has already prepared for believers.

Over the next few weeks, we will be considering what the Bible says about Heaven.  This discussion necessarily starts with what the Bible says about death.  Our catechisms note that Scripture teaches that death is not the end of life, but the beginning of unending life.

Q. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?
A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves until the resurrection.– Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q 37

Q. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die? A. Our death is not a payment for our sins (Ps. 49:7), but only a dying to sins and an entering into eternal life (John 5:24; Phil. 1:21–23; 1 Thess. 5:9–10).-Heidelberg Catechism Q 42.

Eternal life, heaven, is the sweet promise for the believer in Jesus Christ. It sustains us in affliction.  Comforts us in grief.  Assures us as years fly by.  As our hymn declares,

On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land,
Where my possessions lie.

But what will that fair and happy land be like?  Join us as we begin our survey of what Scripture teaches about heaven with an examination of death, what it is, what it is not, what we will experience and what we will be. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

No Psalm is quoted more in the NT than Psalm 110. Jesus challenged scribes with it to reveal his identity. With it the author of Hebrews proves the supremacy of Jesus. And the Spirit uses it to clarify the person and work of Christ for believers today.

Join us as Dr. James Brixey leads us to examine Psalm and consider the comfort in the promise of Christ’s coming.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

God’s name is more than just what we call Him. The names of God in Scripture reflect who He is and what He does.  The Biblical names of God reveal His attributes and teach us how we are to praise Him and what we are to expect of Him.  Our confession reminds us that His name is any way in which He makes Himself known to us.

The Lord’s Prayer reminds us that an important way in which we know God is by the name, “Father.” Join us as Rev. Bill Holiman leads us to examine 1 Corinthians 8:1-6 and consider God’s name as the Father.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.