Day 72 - "What if Heaven's a Hoax?"

"What if heaven's a hoax," he genuinely asked. How would you respond to that? Are you equipped to respond to that sincere inquiry? If you're not, I urge you to heed the counsel of the Apostle Peter and Jesus' half-brother, Jude, and get equipped now. Someone's eternal destiny could depend on it, like Bobby, the guard at the Southern Hills Country Club guard gate.

A friend from Bible Study Fellowship invited to lunch today at Southern Hills. It was a special treat with a special guy. On my way out of the club, I stopped at the guard shack at the gate to talk to the guard. I pulled up to the window, looked in, and smiled. The guard got up out of his seat and walked over. I have something for you, I said, and handed him an Obama Million Dollar bill. I jokingly asked him if he had received his "stimulus" money yet. He laughed and looked the bill over. I told him that a new trillion dollar bill is coming out because the millions are no longer enough. We joked around a bit. And he started to warm up to me.

I think he appreciated that someone would actually take the time to stop and engage him in some friendly conversation, rather than just waving to people who pass on through. I then told him that it was a gospel tract and had the million dollar question on the back. I asked him if he knew what his eternal destiny would be if he were to die today.

That's when he popped the genuine question. Seemed sincere anyway. He said he thought he believed he was going to heaven but had heard some things that caused him to wonder whether heaven's just a hoax. I felt ready to take the question head on, but he kept going and started to answer his own question, as if thinking out load. He said that after thousands of years it's clear that man is too man messed up to get things right on our own, implying that the doctrine of original sin and the fall of man were clearly evident to the reasonable person from a mere glimpse of history. Seeing where he was going with it, I agreed with him that what we see around us is completely consistent with the teachings of the Bible, which is one great reason why we can trust what the Bible says and believe without doubt that heaven is no hoax but an indescribable gift of God to those who will choose Him and His Son above all else. There's more evidence than that, I added, touching briefly upon the MAPS acronym that summarizes the various types of irrefutable evidence supporting the reliability of the Bible as supernatural:

M - Manuscript Evidence - more for the bible than any other book of antiquity.
A - Archeological Evidence - the more they find, the more it supports the reliability of the bible
P - Predictive Prophesy - this sets the bible apart as indisputably divine in origin
S - Scriptural synergy - supernatural harmony of 66 books written by 40+ authors over
1500 years

Then there's the powerful evidence of the resurrection itself, standing unrebuffed by any credible counter-evidence or argument whatsoever. The mountain of clear and convincing evidence rises higher and higher, towering insurmountable over feeble efforts to suppress the obvious truth.

Bobby agreed. I gave him a link to a website where he could learn more about those things and get better equipped himself: www.equip.org.

As I started to leave, I urged Bobby to read the back of the tract in order to confirm for himself whether he had taken the essential steps proclaimed by Jesus in order to know for sure that he had been born again with reservations securely set in heaven. He said he would and we exchanged parting good-bye's and good to meet you's. That was a really encouraging encounter. I could see that it meant something to Bobby, and that meant a lot to me. There's nothing more rewarding than that. I believe I'll see Bobby again some day in heaven if not sooner!