Decision

There are some, we will start at the top! Promotions aren’t announced or received; did you pray? Thank God for what you expected was coming? You earned it…fueling hard wor, effort, trials and success (or so you thought.) I would say “let’s go over the year, months, days…time you were there… But the past is the past – Gone! Next!) What can/should you do? I will state obvious fact – Thank God!
“What?” you say…but… Uh uh! Give thanks in everything. God Loves a thankful spirit! It is then and only then that the floodgates are open! Ready for a deluge of plenty? Start thanking, praising, worshipping God!

God inhabits the praises of His people! Fact!!! You made something, you are proud of it’s beauty, expression, usefulness…is this true? You are made for a purpose, we have talked about this so often, why? Because is is fact! No other individual is the same as you! Even twins, siamese twins…do not both ‘go’ at the same time (unless they share a uterus or colon!) You are individual! Why? You are created for your purpose!

Am I failing at life? Am I succeeding? And why do I exist in the first place?
These questions are huge, we all ask them, and thankfully the Bible helps us with answers in the form of a litmus test.
We are made by God to image him in the world. That’s our purpose. Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
But what exactly does this mean for my life?
Such a simple sentence can put you on a long search in the attempt to wrap your arms around the full implications. It turns out, what it means to be made in God’s image comes with a lot of right answers.
“Historically,” John Piper said in one Ask Pastor John episode, “people have said to be made in God’s image is our morality, our sense of right and wrong. Our rationality, our ability to reason. Our spirituality, our ability to relate to God. Our aesthetic sense — you don’t find too many monkeys creating Mona Lisas. Our judicial sense, the whole legal system, a sense of right and wrong and justice and injustice. And I think, frankly, all of those are true and aspects of what it means to be in God’s image” (episode 153).
And they all help to inform why we stand for the dignity of all human life, including the unborn, the disabled, the terminally sick, and the elderly.
The bottom line is, image bearing has a lot of right definitions because we are unique and complex creatures made by an infinite and gloriously multifaceted God.
But what I find especially interesting is how Pastor John focuses on one meaning that often gets missed, perhaps for its simplicity. But to find this one point, there’s not one place to go, not simply one book chapter on image bearing. How he explains our role as image-bearers is consistent, but it’s also scattered throughout John Piper’s articles, paragraphs in books, statements, interviews, and forewords. I’ll attempt to gather and superglue together the image-bearing picture.
First and fundamentally, to image God means in our most human selves, we are spreaders. In his foreword to Sam Crabtree’s book Practicing Affirmation, Piper writes: “The point of being created in the image of God is that human beings are destined to display God. That’s what images do. And the point of being redeemed by Jesus, and renewed after the image of our Creator, is to recover this destiny”

humanity, but in a marred and broken capacity. Redemption recovers some of the lost luster and amplifies the spread.
Next, in his seminal book Desiring God, Piper goes on to explain: “According to the text [Genesis 1:26–27], creation exists for man. But since God made man like himself, man’s dominion over the world and his filling the world is a display — an imaging forth — of God. God’s aim, therefore, was that man would so act that he would mirror forth God, who has ultimate dominion. Man is given the exalted status of image-bearer, not so he would become arrogant and autonomous (as he tried to do in the Fall), but so he would reflect the glory of his Maker, whose image he bears. God’s purpose in creation, therefore, was to fill the earth with his own glory. This is made clear, for example, in Numbers 14:21, where the Lord says, ‘All the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD,’ and in Isaiah 43:7, where the Lord refers to His people as those ‘whom I created for my glory’”.
Image bearers are glory spreaders. But this still remains rather abstract and can be made more concrete.
Why are we here? This question has both plagued and challenged mankind for generations. Is there an ultimate answer, or is it all about mission statements and self-determination? If we are willing to accept the Bible as truth, then we know the answer to “where did we come from?” According to Scripture, we were created by God. So the next question is…why? After all, He is God, and as such, He certainly doesn’t need us for anything — so why did He create us?
Why Are We Here? What the Bible Says
“Why are we here?” is a question that can best be answered by looking at how the Bible explains it. Beginning in Genesis Chapter 1, we read that after each phase of creation, God “saw that it was good.” According to Scripture, once He completed creating the heavens and the earth, the plant life and all the animals, He created man:
So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them (Genesis 1:27).
This tells us what God did, but still doesn’t explain exactly why He did it. We read on and discover that He spoke well of the male and female and showed His pleasure by entrusting them with His creation:
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,
As part of His blessing, He gave us stewardship over the earth and its other life forms:
and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so (Genesis 1:28-30).
At the end of Genesis Chapter 1, we read how He felt about his completed creation:
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day(Genesis 1:31).
Why Are We Here? The Logical Conclusion
Why are we here? God created us because it pleased Him to do so. This message is consistent throughout the pages of Scripture, and nowhere said more succinctly than by the Apostle John in Revelation 4:11, where he has a vision of Heaven and witnesses the four elders prostrate before the Lord of all Creation, saying:
Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
We are created for His pleasure. From the first page of Scripture to the last, that message is clear. We are created for His pleasure. Further, the Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 1:16: For by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him.

If we accept that all this is true, and that any other answer is both illogical and devoid of hope, then the next question to ask is – what do we do about it? Or more to the point, what do you and I do about it?

As stated, God is ALL, God did not need man, He created Man to be an extension of Himself over all on Earth: The fish of the sea, birds of the air and all creatures. No other creation is like Man! We have minds, thoughts, emotions, actions…in Whose image?

Earth was created as a physical mirror image of Heaven.
According to a 2013 Harris poll, 68 percent of Americans believe in heaven. People who believe in heaven are actually happier, according to a new study. But there are naysayers when it comes to the afterlife. The amount of people who believe in heaven is actually down from the 85 percent from a decade ago, according to Fox News. And some, like Stephen Hawking, have called heaven a fairy tale.
Still, scientists have shown their support for an afterlife, too. And books have been written that look into how there is definitive proof of a heaven.
But, again, what would it look like?
We can read books and gather clues hidden in the Bible. But, to discover the truth behind heaven’s mysteries, we should listen to the people who have actually planted their feet at Heaven’s gate.
Whether Heaven is real or not is something people will challenge until the end of time. There is nothing I could say that could really convince you to believe one way or the other.
We can read books and gather clues hidden in the Bible. But, to discover the truth behind heaven’s mysteries, we should listen to the people who have actually planted their feet at heaven’s gate.
•
Four people have shared their personal and incredibly moving experiences in heaven and answered the question we have all been asking: Is there a heaven?
Dr. Eben Alexander
“Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds,” Harvard academic neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander wrote on Newsweek. “Higher than the clouds – immeasurably higher – flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines behind them.”
To describe the beings as birds or angles didn’t do justice to what he saw.
Alexander shared that the winged beings seem to be producing a sound that was so joyous. “The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet,” he shared.
Surrounded by millions of butterflies, he was given three messages from a woman.
1. “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
2. “You have nothing to fear.”
3. “There is nothing you can do wrong.”
After receiving these messages, he eventually awoke from his coma caused by a rare bacterial meningitis. These messages inspire him to this day.
Don Piper
An almost fatal crash led Don Piper to the head of heaven’s gate. Piper shared his experience in heaven on “The O’reilly Factor.”
Piper saw his deceased family members when he was in heaven. But they were not in human body form. He shared, “They were all fully recognizable as themselves, so yes, they were tangible. I could see them. And they were all perfect. But when I saw them they were all ageless.”

He continues, “There really are a lot of magnificent structures inside the gate. And at the pinnacle of a great hill beyond them is a bright light. I have the distinct feeling that that is where God – and I was headed in that direction when suddenly I was returned to earth.”
Piper knows he had a remarkable experience and says he can’t wait to return back to heaven one day.
Crystal McVea
“I remember just closing my eyes in that bed and I opened them and I was standing in the most beautiful tunnel of light I could ever describe,” Crystal McVea recalled in an interview with TheBlaze.
McVea was lying on a hospital bead, dying. But the difference she felt as she realized she was transported to heaven was noticeably profound. The negative feelings she once had were gone, and she said that it was as if all of the knowledge in the world was instantly downloaded into her brain.
As she turned to her right, she realized God was beside her. Although she had spent most of her life questioning his existence due to her many setbacks she had experienced on earth, she instantly fell before him in worship.
“I was very aware that I was in front of the presence of the one true God. I’m a Christian. I believe it was the presence of the father, and the son and the Holy Spirit.”
McVea expressed her feelings about heaven as radiant and glowing with light. She also shared that God gave her a choice to return to earth if she so desired.
“In that instance … God showed me my four children and he told me I could go back and be their mother or I could stay there,” she exclaimed. “For the first time in my life I chose God … I chose to stay with him. I’m so glad that he allowed me to remember that.”
As they moved toward heaven’s gate, God allowed her to see a picture of herself as a child. While she looked at it, she felt she was looking at it through God’s eyes. She felt God’s love indicating to her that, even during times of sexual abuse and other trials, he had always been there for her.

Here, I must point out that I in my supposed ‘dream’ was given the exact same choice. I had no recollection of the Motor Vehicle Accident I had been in, none! But, I know what I experienced, as I have shared, I was able to see my children, who made me who I was and still make me who I am. I thank The LORD, I have pride! My oldest is on the Honor roll as is the middle one, the youngest has a hunger for The LORD and so many ways has asked and sought answers to his questions.
Most recently he asked:
How did sin enter the world. Where are Adam and Eve buried? Where is the Garden of Eden? How could Satan become a snake AND talk to Adam and Eve?
Surprisingly, this came from an eleven year old. These questions perplex many, but to ask? I was impressed!

There is a Love and respect of The Father. I thank God that I was sent back and in my way have shared my knowledge of The Lord with them!

Whether Heaven is real or not is something people will challenge until the end of time. There is nothing I could say that could really convince you to believe one way or the other.
We can read books and gather clues hidden in the Bible. But, to discover the truth behind heaven’s mysteries, we should listen to the people who have actually planted their feet at heaven’s gate.
•
Four people have shared their personal and incredibly moving experiences in heaven and answered the question we have all been asking: Is there a heaven?
Dr. Eben Alexander
“Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds,” Harvard academic neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander wrote on Newsweek. “Higher than the clouds – immeasurably higher – flocks of transparent, shimmering beings arced across the sky, leaving long, streamerlike lines behind them.”
To describe the beings as birds or angles didn’t do justice to what he saw.
Alexander shared that the winged beings seem to be producing a sound that was so joyous. “The sound was palpable and almost material, like a rain that you can feel on your skin but doesn’t get you wet,” he shared.
Surrounded by millions of butterflies, he was given three messages from a woman.
4. “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever.”
5. “You have nothing to fear.”
6. “There is nothing you can do wrong.”
After receiving these messages, he eventually awoke from his coma caused by a rare bacterial meningitis. These messages inspire him to this day.
Don Piper
An almost fatal crash led Don Piper to the head of heaven’s gate. Piper shared his experience in heaven on “The O’reilly Factor.”
Piper saw his deceased family members when he was in heaven. But they were not in human body form. He shared, “They were all fully recognizable as themselves, so yes, they were tangible. I could see them. And they were all perfect. But when I saw them they were all ageless.”
• He continues, “There really are a lot of magnificent structures inside the gate. And at the pinnacle of a great hill beyond them is a bright light. I have the distinct feeling that that is where God – and I was headed in that direction when suddenly I was returned to earth.”
Piper knows he had a remarkable experience and says he can’t wait to return back to heaven one day.
Crystal McVea
“I remember just closing my eyes in that bed and I opened them and I was standing in the most beautiful tunnel of light I could ever describe,” Crystal McVea recalled in an interview with TheBlaze.
McVea was lying on a hospital bead, dying. But the difference she felt as she realized she was transported to heaven was noticeably profound. The negative feelings she once had were gone, and she said that it was as if all of the knowledge in the world was instantly downloaded into her brain.
As she turned to her right, she realized God was beside her. Although she had spent most of her life questioning his existence due to her many setbacks she had experienced on earth, she instantly fell before him in worship.
“I was very aware that I was in front of the presence of the one true God. I’m a Christian. I believe it was the presence of the father, and the son and the Holy Spirit.”
McVea expressed her feelings about heaven as radiant and glowing with light. She also shared that God gave her a choice to return to earth if she so desired.
“In that instance … God showed me my four children and he told me I could go back and be their mother or I could stay there,” she exclaimed. “For the first time in my life I chose God … I chose to stay with him. I’m so glad that he allowed me to remember that.”
As they moved toward heaven’s gate, God allowed her to see a picture of herself as a child. While she looked at it, she felt she was looking at it through God’s eyes. She felt God’s love indicating to her that, even during times of sexual abuse and other trials, he had always been there for her.
After this healing experience of feeling God’s love, McVea wanted to return briefly to earth tell her mother she was OK. She then opened her eyes and found herself back in the hospital with her family again. Although she wanted to return to the afterlife afterward, she stayed on earth to share her story.
Hilary
According to a story on CBN, Hilary’s truck flipped over four times into an abandoned field when she cried out to God as she hung upside down from her seatbelt, “You’ve got to help us! Please send your angels!”
After several people stopped to help her, she was placed into an ambulance where her spirit left her body.
She said that as her spirit rose from her body, an angel took her hand and she saw with her own eyes a gold mansion that was gleaming with vibrant colors.
She also saw her dad’s best friend, Merle Kilgore, who had passed away the year before from lung cancer. Then she saw her dad’s godparents Johnny and June Carter Cash: “Johnny was playing the guitar and June was playing the harpsichord. The music was gorgeous,” Hilary shared.
Even though no one was responding to her, Hilary said, “There was no sense of frustration or sense of loss. It felt amazing – so much joy.”
Hilary said, “I want people to know there is a heaven and to not give up hope. There were times that I was down and out, but I tried to keep my faith and stay strong and keep positive.”

It is difficult to see one ‘pass’, this is the first death. Can and will you ‘die’ more than once?
Yes!

“Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
Revelations 21:7,8

Difficult to share, and even more so, a second death where ‘time’ does not exist! This means ‘to die and die continually.’ Horror upon horror! Those that will be there are described, defined and mentioned! You have a chance! Want to do well? There are promises for you! All you have to do is commit to God. A lot easier than it sounds!

Do you have goals? What are they? To meet Bill’s, travel, own, be happy, be at peace. All these are yours if you believe! We will in a moment discuss how to give your life, which is a must to be ‘Home.’ One death is enough! A continuing all ways death with pain and horror!
I am not here to scare, simply to state what is. I am not here preaching! I am cognizant of various religions; we have discussed these in the past – numbers included. But, The One that has changed the world, affected the calender that all use, even changed the celebrations worldwide (Christmas, Easter…) is The Way to The Father, The Creator of all. To reviee:
There are some 4,300 religions of the world. This is according to Adherents, an independent, non-religiously affiliated organisation that monitors the number and size of the world’s religions.
Side-stepping the issue of what constitutes a religion, Adherents divides religions into churches, denominations, congregations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, cultures, and movements. All are of varying size and influence.
Nearly 75 per cent of the world’s population practices one of the five most influential religions of the world: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.
Christianity and Islam are the two religions most widely spread across the world. These two religions together cover the religious affiliation of more than half of the world’s population. If all non-religious people formed a single religion, it would be the world’s third largest.
One of the most widely-held myths among those in English-speaking countries is that Islamic believers are Arabs. In fact, most Islamic people do not live in the Arabic nations of the Middle East.
The world’s 20 largest religions and their number of believers are:

Christianity (2.1 billion)
Islam (1.3 billion)
Nonreligious (Secular/Agnostic/Atheist) (1.1 billion)
Hinduism (900 million)
Chinese traditional religion (394 million)
Buddhism 376 million
Primal-indigenous (300 million)
African traditional and Diasporic (100 million)
Sikhism (23 million)
Juche (19 million)
Spiritism (15 million)
Judaism (14 million)
Bahai (7 million)
Jainism (4.2 million)
Shinto (4 million)
Cao Dai (4 million)
Zoroastrianism (2.6 million)
Tenrikyo (2 million)
Neo-Paganism (1 million)
Unitarian-Universalism (800,000)
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/06/the_odd_body_religion/

For most, there is a central figure – The Creator, if He sent a part of Himself to prove once and for all that God in His Thid Part can live as Man, refute temptation with His Word and die the most brutal death that changed the world, we can center our lives around Him. I am in no way saying “stop believing” or following your traditions, but play it safe.

Besides Christianity, the most numerous in number is Islam, how does this relate?
Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world and share a historical and traditional connection, with some major theological differences. The two faiths share a common place of origin in the Middle East, and consider themselves to be monotheistic.
Christianity developed out of Second Temple Judaism in the 1th century CE. It is founded on the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and those who follow it are called Christians.[1]
Islam is a monotheistic religion that developed in the 7th century CE. Islam, which literally means “surrender” or “submission” (to God), was founded on the teachings of Muhammad as an expression of surrender to the will of Allah. Those who follow it are called Muslims.[2]
Muslims have a range of views on Christianity, from viewing Christians to be fellow possessors of monotheistic scriptures to regarding them as heretics. Christian views on Islam are diverse and range from considering Islam a fellow Abrahamic religion worshipping the same God, to believing Islam to be heresy or an unrelated cult.
Islam considers Jesus to be al-Masih, the Arabic term for Messiah, sent to guide the Children of Israel (banī isrā’īl in Arabic) with a new revelation: al-Injīl (Arabic for “the Gospel”).[3][4][5] Christianity believes Jesus to be the Messiah of the Hebrew scripture, the Son of God, and God the Son, while Muslims consider the Trinity to be a division of God’s Oneness and a grave sin (shirk). Muslims believe Jesus (Isa) to be a messenger of God, not the son of God.
Christianity and Islam have different scriptures, with Christianity using the Bible and Islam using the Quran, however Muslims believe that the Gospel was also sent by God. Both texts offer an account of the life and works of Jesus. Belief in Jesus is a fundamental part of Islamic theology, and Muslims view the Christian Injeel as altered, while Christians consider the Gospels to be authoritative and the Quran to be a later, fabricated or apocryphal work. Both religions believe in the virgin birth of Jesusthrough Mary, but the Biblical and Islamic accounts differ.

In essence, there are very similar beliefs. For some reason I was ‘sent’/allowed to come back. I spent years in denial and did my research and came up with the same conclusion as many who had clinically passed!
Again, your decision to make! Wouldn’t it be awful if you actually here the message and let it ‘slide’?
It is your decision.