Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.
Do we claim to believe in God? He's a missionary God. You tell me you're committed to Christ. He's a missionary Christ. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? He's a missionary Spirit. Do you belong to the church? It's a missionary society. And do you hope to go to heaven when you die? It's a heaven into which the fruits of world mission have been and will be gathered.
Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.
Trees are Earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
I am convinced that there is no great distance between heaven and earth, that the distance lies in our finite minds. When the Beloved visits us in the night, He turns our chambers into the vestibules of His palace halls. Earth rises to heaven when heaven comes down to earth.
I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell; and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.
The missionary question is not, 'Where are there unbelievers?' and then send a missionary there. There are unbelievers everywhere! The missionary question is, 'Where are there people's who don't have any Christians in them or don't have a church strong enough to do the neighbor evangelism that we can do if we just want to do it?' That's the missionary question.
A missionary should never permit himself to see a movie or (read) cheap literature, or hear music that tends to interfere with or which dampens the spirit of missionary work. There is ample evidence that rock music is offensive to the Spirit and affects adversely the spirituality of the missionaries and thus the success of the proselyting work.
There is no other way the world is going to see the supreme glory of Christ today, except that we break free from the Disneyland of America and begin to live lifestyles of missionary sacrifice that looks to the world like our treasure is in heaven and not on the earth.
While we look forward to a new heaven, let's first consider the new earth, for the new earth will indeed be like heaven on earth. We will live on a restored earth.
Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
The holy heaven yearns to wound the earth, and yearning layeth hold on the earth to join in wedlock; the rain, fallen from the amorous heaven, impregnates the earth, and it bringeth forth for mankind the food of flocks and herds and Demeter's gifts; and from that moist marriage-rite the woods put on their bloom.
And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth,
From earth to heaven.
Great little One! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.