If Christ did not want to dismiss the Jews without food in the desert for fear that they would collapse on the way, it was to teach us that it is dangerous to try to get to heaven without the Bread of Heaven.
There cannot be heaven without Christ. He is the sum total of bliss; the fountain from which heaven flows, the element of which heaven is composed. Christ is heaven and heaven is Christ.
Did we believe a final Reckoning and Judgment; or did we think enough of what we do believe, we would allow more Love in Religion than we do; since Religion it self is nothing else but Love to God and Man. Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. Love is above all; and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another.
If I were to go to heaven, and find that Christ was not there, I would leave immediately; for heaven without Christ would be hell to me.
O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without Thee, it would be hell; and if I could be in hell, and have Thee still, it would be heaven to me, for Thou are all the heaven I want.
Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love.
Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.
It would be hard to imagine Heaven without children. It wouldn't be Heaven! It would be a pretty boring place without children. What are we going to do, all get to be old people and then stagnate and that's the end of it? Once all those that are already born grow up, the place would really lack life without new generations of children! If there were no children, it would be a dead society.
I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.
In Christ alone God’s rich provision of salvation for sinners is treasured up: by Christ alone God’s abundant mercies come down from heaven to earth. Christ’s blood alone can cleanse us; Christ’s righteousness alone can cleanse us; Christ’s merit alone can give us a title to heaven. Jews and Gentiles, learned and unlearned, kings and poor men--all alike must either be saved by the Lord Jesus, or lost forever.
A man may go to heaven without health, without riches, without honors, without learning, without friends; but he can never go there without Christ.
To be prayerless is to be without God, without Christ, without grace, without hope, and without heaven.
God brought me to Himself at about the age of 4. My parents were devout believers and my Dad was in Bible College at the time. I remember hearing the gospel in Sunday School and I talked to my Mom about it one night before bed. It was clear to me that I was a sinner and I was not going to heaven if I died without accepting Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross for me. I was brought to Christ out of fear of going to hell. I didn't want to go there if I died and there was only one other choice in my mind as a 4 year old. I wanted to go to heaven. It was and is that simple.
Happy the man to whom heaven has given a morsel of bread without laying him under the obligation of thanking any other for it than heaven itself.
We should remember that people can go to Heaven without knowing much of
the Word of God, but they cannot go to Heaven without knowing Jesus Christ
as Savior.
Truly, it is a blessing and not a blasphemy when I teach that "above all things there stands the heaven of chance, the heaven of innocence, the heaven of accident, the heaven of wantonness".