Preparing to Go to Heaven - LRice - Sept 2025

Preparing to Go to Heaven My Dear Friend, Do you want to go to heaven? What do you think heaven will be like? Do you believe that when you die you will go to heaven? Recently Dave Schilling did an opinion piece in the Guardian entitled, “Trump Fears He Won’t Get into Heaven.” The piece goes on to say, “Trump fears he won’t get into heaven. His concerns are (he is 79) understandable after decades of acting in his own best interest… Having spoken on at least two occasions about what happens when we die. He called into a radio program called the Todd Staines show, Trump is quoted as saying, ‘There has to be some kind of report card up there someplace, you know, like ‘Let’s go to heaven, let’s get into heaven’. It's sort of a beautiful thing,’ he said to Staines. “On Fox News, Trump expressed serious doubt he is going to get called up to the big leagues of life after death, He said, ‘I want to try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well. I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole.’” Everyone wants to go to heaven, but like the rich man Jesus spoke of in Luke 16:19-30, they want to prescribe the terms of getting there. Such selfrighteous individuals ignore Lazarus as he tries to survive on the crumbs that they dropped from their tables. They consider Lazarus and his other homeless friends a nuisance they want to drive out of their neighborhoods in the name of economic development. The rich man had convinced himself he was going to heaven only to find himself in hell where Abraham told him, “Remember in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and you are tormented.” In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” Jesus tells us what the will of the Father is in Matthew 25:31-46. There we see Jesus separating the saved from the unsaved and declaring, “Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 1