Heaven and Hell

We have been doing a series called "This we believe." on Sunday evenings at the Corps. On Sunday night we got to doctrine 11 which states:

"We believe in the immortality of the soul, in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgement at the edn of the world; in the eternal happiness of the wicked and in the endless punishment of the wicked."

My hopes for this evening were that we would rejoice in the hope of eternal life that Jesus has won for us, that in these uncertain times we hold on to the truth that "evil shall perish and righteouness will reign, that those who had recently lost loved ones in Christ would be reassured again that their loved ones were at rest and that the wind of the Spirit might continue to stir up our passion to reach the lost.

I don't know how far those aims were achieved but I had an interesting follow up to it yesterday.

Alan's father is 83 and has been in hospital since early July. The family are in the process of sorting out what his future care needs are and where he will lived following his discharge from hospital. He is not a Christian and leans more toward astrology than to any faith in a living God and it has not always been easy to cope with his viewpoint and attitudes to life.

Yesterday, whilst Alan was talking to the staff about his progress he asked me if there was any hope of him going to heaven!

What followed was a rare opportunity for me to tell him that God loved him, that he was special and that the best way to be sure about heaven was to have a relationship with God. He has always struggled with God loving him because of so much tragedy in his early life but I shared with him the verse from Scripture, "All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."

I only had a few moments to share all this because his mind now wanders and soon we were off on a ramble about something else but I can only pray that I spoke to his spirit and that somehow he will discover God is real and cares.

God bless

Carol