What’s Your Inheritance?

It’s been commonly said by many that hell is on earth. Actually there is some truth to the saying that hell is on earth, and I would like to expound on it for a moment here. Can we have heaven on earth? Of course we can. When someone is born again, which means to be baptized with the holy Ghost, they are in the kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven, which are the same thing (Jn. 3:3-6; I Cor. 12:13; II Cor. 5:17). The scripture says that those who have been born into the kingdom of God have been made to “sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6). In the same chapter from which that verse is taken we have this one as well: “For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). The same apostle said the exact same thing in just a little different words in another place: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Heb. 10:19). The following scripture really sums it up for us: “For the kingdom of God [heaven] is not meat and drink [natural things]; but righteousness, and peace, and joy IN the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 14:17). The list could go on, but that should suffice to show us that we indeed can have heaven on earth, howbeit only a very small portion, as the apostle Paul clarified: “In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the EARNEST of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Eph. 1:13,14). The Spirit is the earnest, or a down payment as it is translated, on our eternal home in the heavenly realm of the new earth. By God’s Spirit we have experienced “the powers of the [heavenly] world to come” (Heb. 6:5). The essence of experiencing heaven on earth is being made “partakers of his holiness” through being “joined to the Lord” and becoming “one spirit” with him (Heb. 12:10; I Cor. 6:17). That is how the “righteousness, and peace, and joy” comes into the picture, for he alone is the fulfillment of these things. So the way that we can have heaven on earth is to be “joined to the Lord” and to his righteousness, for that will be the substance of the world to come (II Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:27; Heb. 11:1).

Make no mistake that this heavenly experience on earth is only fractional compared to what will be experienced in the fullness of the heavenly inheritance. Those who are faithful will be raised from the dead at the second coming of Jesus, and given an immortal body that will be able to handle the glory, and beauty, and power, and love that will permeate the entirety of the world to come; not to mention the very physical presence of God and his Son. So the heavenly experience that we are privileged to be partakers of in this life through faith in Jesus, will be magnified immeasurably in the life to come; and I have to say that I really like the sound of that. By the exact same token hell can also be experienced on earth, though only to a fraction of an extent. It comes about by the exact OPPOSITE means of how the heavenly experience on earth takes place. All you have to do is live your life in this world DIS-JOINED from the Lord, and the rest falls miserably OUT OF place. Even as we can live our lives with the rest, comfort and peace of God’s blessed Spirit, even in trials and afflictions; so we can live with anxiety, apprehension, fear, turmoil, self-pity, strife; and every other miserably evil work, if we choose to be apart from the spiritual presence of Jesus. It is usually someone who’s been around a little while, and has NOT submitted to the will of God, who makes the statement that hell is on earth. The reason is that they have lived through enough affliction, loss, hardship, adversity, etc; to have amassed a great deal of unrest, anger, spitefulness, and the like, by NOT “casting their cares on him,” and thereby not knowing the redeeming, healing, and delivering reality that “he careth for [them]” (I Pet. 5:7). If people choose to follow after the spirit and mind of this world, there is only death, and that while living: “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Rom. 8:5,6). And, “But she that liveth in [worldly] pleasure is dead while she liveth” (I Tim. 5:6).

Spiritual life and peace are what being joined to the Lord is all about, and death and its fruits are what being APART from him is all about. So in effect everyone who chooses to not live by faith in Jesus in the power of his Spirit, is making a down payment on their eternal home in “the lake of fire which burns with brimstone,” which is the “second death” (Rev. 20:10,14,18). Just as those who by faith in Jesus end up being promoted to the glory world where there will be no sorrow, no pain, no tears, and no hunger or thirst; so those who refuse to “follow the Lamb whitersoever he goeth” will be engulfed in NOTHING BUT those things in the “second death” that they have chosen to inherit (Rev. 21:4; Rev. 7:16,17; Rev. 14:4). The life, the glory, the beauty, and the bliss of ever kind, is altogether in the presence of God and his Son; as the scripture, as well as experience tells us clearly: “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Psm. 16:11). Apart from that presence there is only the opposite of these things, as the scripture also tells us: “It is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mk. 9:43,44). And this; “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Mat. 13:41,42). So either way we go, and there is no place in between, we are preparing ourselves for our eternal inheritance; and we are experiencing a very small portion of it in this life. I just don’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to be blessed with life, peace and joy now; rather than to endure in this cruel world under the harsh and heavy yoke of sin and its defiled, corrupt fruit of death. In any event what we are indeed feeling in our hearts and souls today, is what we are planning to have magnified immeasurably in eternity. So the only question left is, How do you feel about that? Oh yeah, one more thing: Whatever we’re feeling now is subject to us changing it in either direction, but only if we choose. Amen and God bless.