Heaven's Letters

Chapter Four: An Academic in Heaven.

Chapter Four: An Academic in Heaven.

Most honoured colleagues;

It appears that I have some distinction of being permitted to communicate to you from beyond the grave. It is not commonly known among my august body of fellow professionals that as a child I gave my heart to Christ. Alas, as I grew I became increasingly interested in science. Christianity did not interest me scientifically and so I dismissed it out of hand. Oh, what a fool I was! Yet we will come to this later. Yes I, as we all did, attended church parade and later church services as a matter of course. It was part and parcel of our daily routine in the good old days just after the Second World War. So much has changed since then... Of course, socially, as well as within the realms of business it was quite acceptable to attend church services, in fact to one's advantage if one could be seen to or tell another that one was "a good church goer". As an academic I did not take this side of my life seriously; it was my work that preoccupied my mind, my faculties, my every waking moment. Yet I find myself in such curious circumstances that I am at a loss to be able to describe them to you.

 I will tell you, however, this much. I was wrong! Most terribly wrong! Let me explain or at least try to. No sooner had I been ushered into His presence, this I am not permitted to explain (yet I was the most completely awe struck that I have been in my entire life, um as well as death), but immediately afterwards an Angel of great beauty and awesome power took me by the hand, as if I were a child and led me to what I can only describe as the most gigantic library in the whole Universe. In fact, I would go so far as to state that this library is bigger than the known Universe!

The books, well gentlemen, what can I say, but these are not books as we know them. Imagine, if you will, row upon row of books, upon row upon row of shelves. There appears to be no limit to how far down or up these rows go. The bookshelves stretch as far as the eye can see and obviously much, much further in all directions. Secondly, the books themselves are not fabricated with anything as crude as paper or plastic, not even precious metals of gold or silver or platinum. No gentlemen, these books are made of a strange sort of light, a radiant florescent blue and white light. Instead of you reading the book the book appears to read you or should I put it, read itself into you. Not only this, but the library appears to know one's thoughts, desires, questions, inclinations and so on and so forth. All I have to do is have a question raise itself in my mind and the very book that I require to answer this question alights itself from its place, flies down and lands upon my open hand.

 I have been a confirmed bachelor all my life, but gentlemen I would wish to have children to pass on such wonders to, believe me I do! I am learning so much, such a great deal that I have rapidly come to the conclusion that we as professional, dedicated scientists have been examining our known Universe as it were from the inside of a tennis ball. Gentlemen, prepare yourselves for a shock and believe me fellow honoured colleagues I would be the last to be the one to have to communicate this to you, nevertheless I must! God and His creation, Heaven and so on and so forth are so vast, so expansive, so immensely complicated, well designed, that I now comprehend why as earth bound dwellers we only use a mere 10% of the capacity of our brains (and some even less...). It is because, my fellow scientists, we need the other 90% in order to come to grips with this vast library of knowledge once we have been permitted the privileged of access. We know so little, we are like mere babies, not even children, babies. Our arrogance is only surpassed by our ignorance and sheer stupidity as a race of men. I must beg your apologies honoured colleagues for making such a statement, yet I cannot, now escape the facts, which have been so laid out before me.

 I smile when I think of the phrase, "I'm in Heaven" with regard to my present situation. Yes, I am physically in Heaven, as well as being in my kind of academic Heaven, as I discover that firstly Christianity far from being an intellectual 'dead dog', so to speak, is in point of fact, so complex, so intricately designed, so masterful, with such genius; the Hebrew, the Greek, wonderful languages. The hidden codes, messages, lineages and so on lying beneath the text and the system with which the book of Revelation is a complete mass of 7's and division of 7', 14', 28's etc. is truly astounding. Oh what a fool I've been, how blind, how dumb, how stupid?

 But I digress. My point is this, my fellow colleagues, but for a childhood acceptance of Jesus as my Lord and Saviour I would not be here, enjoying all this. God takes a man, woman, child at their word, for He also keeps His word and so I find myself in Heaven and am very thankful indeed for it. Yet, my heart goes out to you, and because of this one of the Angels informed me that I was allowed to tell you some of the truth. So, Gentlemen, Heaven is real and so is Hell. I wish with all my heart that you could join me here on this voyage of the ultimate discovery, to find out those things that we NEVER dreamed of, or could even dream of. God and His Kingdom has truly satisfied my intellect, my curiosity, my search; yet at the same time I want to know more and there is so much more to know. Before I leave you I want to give you just one example. There are 24 Elders who are continually throwing their crowns before God and saying, "worthy, worthy etc. etc." I wondered to myself, "How boring that must be, to only throw your crowns down, shout the same phrase over and over again, just to pick up your crown before throwing it down again?" Then Jesus stood by my side. For a time and then half a time He said nothing and then He uttered one word, "Observe!"

So I did.

Each time the 24 Elders replaced their crowns God permitted them to see another view, another facet, another side, another character, and on and on and on and on about Himself. Each time it was new, brand new, like a new morning, like a new born baby, like another snowflake, like a new sunset or sundown; every time He changed and the 24 elders learnt a new thing about their God. It was breath-taking I assure you.

Gentlemen, it is my dearest wish that you join me here, here in Heaven to learn what I have learned and to continue to learn, to be amazed forever and to simply admit that looking at the inside of a tennis ball is futile, it is far better to be shown the outside world(s), Universes, spirit world and so much more, oh so much more than we could have ever imagined. If you don't know what to do, ask a Christian who does, they are only a sign post to Him.

Your devoted colleague....