Imagine for a moment that upon arriving at work tomorrow morning, you discovered that your boss wanted to have an urgent meeting with you. In order to keep your job, he demands that you take on an immediate assignment of traveling to a foreign country for six months. And you are under strict orders to depart thirty days from today. More than likely you would spend many sleepless nights learning about the assigned country. You would be devouring every bit of information you could about the country, its language, its culture, etc.

Or, imagine that you were to be given a mandatory exam that your entire livelihood depended on. If you passed this exam, you would live. If you failed, you would not live. It is highly probable that you turn off your computer this instant and would immediately begin studying night and day in order to pass this important exam.

Well, today you are facing something similar. How, you may ask? All of us are facing a most certain event in our future: our own death. Unfortunately, the majority of people today try our best to ignore this fact at all costs. In fact, studies have shown that most people spend more time choosing a refrigerator than they do pondering their own eternal state. When we avoid the contemplation of our own stake in eternity, we are greatly cheating ourselves. If we are not careful, our actions will demonstrate that we believe this temporary world is better than the next. But nothing could be further from the truth. This is what makes Paul's statement about dying as gain so radical. It stands in sharp contrast from this temporal world system.

Sadly, many people view their eternal hope of heaven as a glorified old retirement center. It is to be had only after all of this temporal life’s pleasures have been sucked dry. And if we aren’t careful, we begin to subconsciously view heaven as place for the worn-out and the useless. When old age comes and our health goes, or when we become a burden to those around us, then it is time to start thinking about heaven. How tragic! The Bible boldly declares that death is gain. Heaven is our glorious hope!

Instead of a glorified retirement home, heaven is place where our Christ's merciful work of redemption in us will be completed.

Instead of a place to go when we are useless, heaven is a place where we will stand 'face to face' with God Himself and behold Him in all of His majesty and glory.

Instead of a place for the worn-out, it is a place of reunion, of comfort, of peace, of love.

Using the Biblical account of heaven in the book of Revelation, one engineer estimated that the Holy City is 2,250,000 square miles. Using physical terms, this means that heaven would be: